It's not every day you find a diplomat who's also a hit singer.

What's even more remarkable is how Charles Aznavour deftly shifts between the two roles at age 88.

Over the weekend, Aznavour flew in from Geneva - where he serves as Armenia's ambassador - to perform at the Shanghai Soong Ching Ling Foundation's charity gala. That he agreed to do the show in exchange only for transport to and from Shanghai was a pleasant surprise to the organizers.

"What is shocking to me is that when he decided to come as a guest of the charity, to sing for free, he asked for only one first-class ticket. One ticket," Yue-sai Kan, the gala's chairwoman, says.

"A lot of our Chinese stars or Korean stars, they have one person holding their lipstick, one holding their bag, one holding their shoes. They have five or six people around them all the time, and they're just attending an event. They don't even have to do anything."

The gala on Monday drew close to 1,000 guests and raised 14 million yuan ($2.2 million), according to the organizers. Part of the earnings came from an accompanying auction, whose offerings included six pairs of exclusive Christian Louboutin shoes.