The real story behind George Michael and Wham!'s historic China trip
The real story behind George Michael and Wham!'s historic China trip
Kim Willis, USA TODAYSun, July 26, 2026 at 3:00 PM UTC
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Artfully big hair. Awkwardly giddy girls. And two extremely photogenic pop stars strolling the Great Wall of China for the cameras.
Forty years on, the visual charms of Wham! and their history-making 1985 visit to China have held up well.
The footage – long beloved to fans as the backdrop to George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s music video “Freedom” – is back in a surprisingly unvarnished new documentary.
“We understood we weren't just going there to perform,” Ridgeley tells USA TODAY. “There was a diplomatic element to it, and we understood that.
“What we couldn't have known at the time was the legacy it would leave in China itself.”
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“Wham! 10 Days in China” (in theaters July 28) offers a different perspective from “Foreign Skies,” the 1986 tour film about their experience as the first Western pop band to perform there.
“We were already successful in America. We'd had a No. 1 single with ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,’ a No. 1 album with ‘Make It Big,’ and ‘Careless Whisper’ had also been a huge success,” Ridgeley, 63, recalls. “The goal was to elevate Wham! in the United States to the same level we enjoyed in Britain. … I was skeptical that it would work, but it did. It got Wham! into American living rooms in a way a conventional tour couldn't.”
When the duo returned to the United States after the trip, they were playing stadiums, he notes. “It was a very calculated, strategic move, and it succeeded.”
The familiar beats reappear in director Mike Christie’s new movie, in restored clips: George and Andy engaged in an energetic game of soccer and performing for overly polite crowds in Beijing and Guangzhou. Fresh interviews are done with Ridgeley, the band’s management and long-grown Chinese fans who recall the formative experience with reverence.
But what’s captured more bracingly in previously unseen footage is the growing discomfort of the young stars as they’re thrust into a geopolitical role as quasi-ambassadors. A news conference with the British media ends contentiously after questions about their communist hosts and whether fame had gone to their heads.
“We knew” what to expect, says Ridgeley, who made his first trip back to China for the new film, in which he revisits the Great Wall. “Our relationship with the press was famously difficult. Mine was particularly antagonistic, so we were aware of the dynamic.”
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In the vintage footage, Ridgeley raises eyebrows with a glib remark as he introduces the Chinese crowd to the band’s latest song: “It could be No. 1 here in China with your help. It’s called ‘Freedom’!”
“It was the title of the song, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I would have said to any audience,” Ridgeley says. “In hindsight, perhaps I could have thought about it more carefully. Still, it didn’t do any great harm. Nobody got shot, which is the important thing, right?”
At one point, George is so frustrated by inauthentic interactions with fans – orchestrated for a planned Lindsay Anderson documentary – he vanishes, leaving Andy to make apologies.
“It was unusual for him. I knew he'd reached the end of his tether,” Ridgeley acknowledges. “George wasn't interested in wandering through street markets or participating in constructed scenes for the cameras. He wanted to spend time listening to music, talking with me, Shirlie (Holliman) and Pepsi (DeMacque, the duo’s backup singers) – not playing along with staged situations. It was symptomatic of the pressure we were under.”
But Ridgeley recalls the trip fondly for its “interesting and amusing moments,” including a raucous evening of bowling in Guangzhou and trying his first century egg, a Chinese delicacy.
“I enjoyed exploring China. I think I even got a Mao suit tailored while we were there,” he says. “It was a privilege to be there and to experience a completely different world.”
Michael died in 2016, and Ridgeley, a friend since childhood, says George is “ever-present” as he works to preserve and celebrate the Wham! legacy.
“The moments that best capture our friendship are the ones you see in the film – like us bickering in the back of the car,” says Ridgeley, a clip in which the two pals map out their remarks for an official banquet. “That's the kind of intimacy anyone recognizes with someone they're deeply connected to: a sibling, a parent, a partner.
“It's moments like him trying not to laugh at one of my ridiculous speeches that remind me of the depth of our friendship, the bond we shared, the mutual respect – and occasionally, the mutual lack of respect – we had for each other.”
Wham! split amicably a little more than year after the trip, and Michael went on to massive solo success. Ridgeley remains proud of what the duo achieved: “People hear the music more clearly and pay less attention to all the noise and distractions that surrounded Wham! at the time.”
He says their relationship “survived everything because it had such a solid foundation.”
“By 1984, we both understood George would eventually move beyond Wham!. He had to. His talent demanded it,” Ridgeley says. “But that reality never affected our friendship.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The real story behind George Michael and Wham!'s historic China trip
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
