Despite not making it to the 100-meter freestyle swimming final, Ning Zetao remained one of China’s most beloved athletes for the 2016 Olympics. The wall on Ning’s Weibo account — China’s most popular microblogging platform — filled up with more than 100,000 loving user comments after his competition.

In addition to Ning, there are several other male athletes — mainly competing in fencing and gymnastics — who have won the adoration of Chinese fans without having won any medals. All of them have handsome faces and sculpted bodies, and are described as xiao xian rou, or “little fresh meats,” by Chinese media and net users.

The phrase “little fresh meat” has been around now for several years and refers to someone who is athletic, young, and handsome. In 2014, the online media company Sina published an article rating the top 10 “little fresh meats” in China’s entertainment circle.

The popularity of the label has helped to change how the media portrays men. Only a decade ago, male leads in Chinese film and television were cast as tough, authoritative, and patriarchal characters. If a male character appeared meticulously groomed, he was normally portrayed as being a sissy, a eunuch, or gay — intended to be objects of contempt.

Not anymore. Little fresh meats have inspired the media to create new representations of male beauty, often characterized by well-built, topless torsos, and delicate, almost feminine, features. They signify female desire.

Last year Gong Yan — a 34-year-old columnist who runs a public account on mobile messaging app WeChat — published an article that was picked up by many online media sources. The article focused on Chinese actor Yang Yang, specifically taking time to praise his beauty. “If there was a television series in which Yang Yang only sat and ate melon seeds, I would happily watch 80 episodes of it.”

In a sense, the popularity of these men is the opposite of the “male gaze” — an academic term that refers to the cinema viewing women as objects and subjecting them to a controlling gaze. Under this new trend, young men become the objects of desire.

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In many cases, these little fresh meats are viewed as sexual objects whose fans don’t attempt to hide their erotic lust. Whenever a photo or trailer of one of these young men appears online, user comments invariably tend toward the bawdy. 

However, not every little fresh meat is the subject of erotic spectacle. One famous counterexample is the TFBoys, one of China’s most popular teenage-boy bands. At the time of their debut in 2013, the three members of the group were schoolboys between 13 and 14 years old, but the majority of their fans were females over 20. Their fans labeled themselves “aunts,” and their love for the TFboys was more protective than desirous.

Thus we can say that there are in general two types of little fresh meats. One is an alluring, passive sexual object, while the other is an innocent, naive boy. Both are beautiful, and more importantly, both of are markedly different from common male stereotypes in the Chinese popular culture in times past.

Unsurprisingly, while pleasing a large number of women, the popularity of the trend also upset many people. In a forum during the Shanghai Television Festival held in June, screenwriter Wang Hailin labeled the phrase “obscene.” Last year, film director Feng Xiaogang told the press that the phrase conjured up pornographic sentiments.

And yet it seems that these criticisms are having no effect on the public. An increasing number of films and television shows are casting little fresh meats as male leads, and new celebrities are appearing every day. According to the entertainment industry market research firm EntGroup, the commercial value of certain little fresh meats is enormous, and often comparable to some of China’s biggest stars, like Jackie Chan. 

In a way, Chinese women are using their power as consumers to forge the ideal male figure — one who is beautiful, understanding, and inoffensive. But does the label “little fresh meat” really, as critics attest, carry indelicate implications and objectify men? The answer of course is yes, but for me these flaws are outweighed by their merits.

We must not forget that modern-day China remains a society on the long road to gender equality. The United Nations Development Program ranked China as 40th among all countries for gender inequality in 2014. In a sense, by forging their own conceptions of beauty and showing how much influence these preferences can have in the free market, women can be seen to be challenging the stubborn patriarchal order.

Or perhaps it is not a deliberate attack on a male-dominated society, but simply an outpouring of feeling — a lust for beauty. Nonetheless, I believe that it is breathing fresh air into gender stereotypes, making them less rigid and more complex.

(Header image: The singer and actor Lu Han is pictured at the 5th Beijing International Film Festival in Beijing, April 18, 2015. Zhang Tianran/VCG)

When people hear the blind Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli sing “Time to Say Goodbye,” they are stirred not only by his chilling operatic voice, but are also touched by the fact that his disability doesn’t affect his capacity to move millions of people.

In 2002, my camera crew and I were shooting a project deep in the Taihang mountain range, in northern China’s Shanxi province, when we encountered a group of blind musicians known by the locals as meiyanren, or “the people with no eyes.” I held my breath the first time they sang for us. It was nothing short of stunning.

Many disabled performers call Shanxi’s mountain ranges home. These blind entertainers make their livings from singing, playing music, storytelling, and fortunetelling, often appearing at weddings, funerals, and other festivals.

The group I met during my travels specialized in playing music and singing. These meiyanren of the Taihang Mountains pass on their repertoire of ancient songs orally. They play an important role in maintaining the Zuoquan County folk song tradition — one of China’s official intangible cultural heritages.

The blind singers of Shanxi have a history dating back thousands of years, and have passed along countless music traditions from generation to generation. But in addition to what they bring to China’s culture, the meiyanren also hold a special place in the hearts of the Chinese for their contributions during the Second Sino-Japanese War. 

In 1940, one of China’s frontline command headquarters was stationed in Zuoquan County. To penetrate the Japanese blockade, the army organized the blind entertainers of the Taihang Mountains into four army squads. Led by one commander who would feign blindness, the squad would enter enemy territory disguised as entertainers to deliver intelligence and firearms to resistance efforts.

I spoke with a meiyanren who told me the story of his former commander, Chen Yuwen. Their squad had been tasked with distributing anti-Japanese leaflets to Chinese in enemy territory and bringing back an intelligence report from an agent on the inside. Unfortunately, they were discovered by sentries when crossing the line and captured.

Desperate, Chen asked the Japanese soldiers if they could sing for them, hoping that it might stay their imminent execution. Amused, the guards agreed. Chen managed to somehow choke his way through “The Three Kingdoms,” an epic song about Chinese imperial history, and the Japanese commander was so thoroughly impressed that he decided to let them go.

Since then, many of the meiyanren involved in the war have passed away and their traditions handed down to their apprentices. I have met 11 in total, all of whom were extremely talented vocalists or instrumentalists.

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This is a group of people who live at the bottom of society. In the past 70 years of wandering they estimate that they have visited around 1,700 villages around the Taihang Mountains, offering their entertainment services for money. Chen told me there used to be a mutual agreement that if one of the singers accidentally fell from a precipice, the others would shout a few times, and if they heard no response they would continue on their way, eating and singing together as they always had. They are believers in destiny, but this blind acceptance of fate is not something I see as negative; instead, I believe it to be a refreshing inner clarity.

Coming to know these people and the impact they’ve had on society has been an amazing journey for me. Thus, it was very distressing to learn that modernization is causing the traditions of the meiyanren to wither away, and I made it an obligation of mine to record the life story of this legendary group of people before that happened. I started shooting my independent film in 2006.

However, I quickly discovered how expensive it is to shoot a film. Severely underfunded, I had no choice but to mortgage my house, take on extra jobs, and secure a loan. My parents also supported me with their 200,000 yuan (about $30,000) in savings. In total, I have spent several million yuan and shot more than 500 hours of footage. The film is now in its final editing stages.

During the long shooting process one of the percussionists of the group, Meaty, passed away. In his final days he told me how sorry he was that he wouldn’t make it to the film’s release. Then, in July 2014 my father also passed away. On the day of his cremation, one of the meiyanren called to tell me that they had sung for an entire day and night in honor of my father.

During the 10 years it took to shoot the film, a number of media reports helped spread awareness of the blind entertainers. The government stepped in and one by one they were offered state-sponsored housing. They began receiving subsistence allowances, and each was offered a pension fund.

Four years ago they hired a driver to take them around the mountain villages for their performances. But the traditional folk songs have been waning in popularity in modern times. Most of Taihang’s villagers are migrants, working far from home, and those left behind have found new ways of keeping themselves entertained.

When performances can be secured, payouts are less than what they used to be. Several years ago the people in the mountain villages gave generously. The economy of the area has traditionally been kept afloat by coal mining, but the depression of the coal industry in recent years has affected flow of capital into the region.

At a promotional event in June 2016 for my recently published book, “The Eyeless,” a reader asked me if I thought that my part in exposing meiyanren culture to the world and spending time with them as an outsider had spoiled their traditions in any way.

I think my involvement has certainly had an influence on them, perhaps detrimental. But I believe that as a group, the meiyanren have fulfilled their mission of sustaining an important Chinese heritage. It’s time for them to rest. They now lead comfortable lives, which I think they’ve earned.

I spent 10 years filming these blind itinerant entertainers not so that others may pity them, but out of a necessity to keep a record of the songs which are an intrinsic cultural heritage. I wanted to show people the light and warmth they have brought to the mountains where they live, and to capture the unadulterated happiness and freedom of the people with no eyes.

(Header image: ‘Meiyanren’ perform at a charity concert in Changzhi, Shanxi province, Jan. 17, 2016. Yao Lin/IC)

China passed its first comprehensive law governing the film industry on Monday, a move that some said would simplify the process of approving and censoring films. Others, however, worried that it could put more pressure on filmmakers, particularly independent producers.

The new Film Industry Promotion Law, which was 12 years in the making, will take effect in March of next year. The legislation is aimed at better regulating the world’s second-largest film industry, which grossed $6.8 billion last year. 

The law stipulates a decrease in oversight from state censors, which will spur industry growth and make it easier to get new film projects off the ground, according to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China (SAPPRFT). Last year, box office revenues in China jumped 49 percent compared to the previous year.

The main focus of discussion among insiders has been the simplified approval process for new productions. Under the new law, only an outline of a film’s plot must be given the green light by SAPPRFT before filming can begin, whereas filmmakers currently must submit the entire script prior to production. Provincial radio, film, and television departments will also be given the authority to authorize the production of films following national guidelines, although it is not yet clear how the provincial and national governments will divide censorship responsibilities.  

In theory, the new regulations would give filmmakers the ability to choose the region with the most favorable production environment, cultural critic Han Haoyue told Sixth Tone. “For example, if a film is turned down in one province, they can try it in another province,” Han said. Ding Yaping, director of the film and television research institute at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, agrees that the new law makes life easier for filmmakers and encourages diversity of film subjects, he told state-owned paper the Guangming Daily.  

However, not all are optimistic about the simplified procedures. Though relaxing censorship at an early stage of production may be a positive change, experts such as film curator and documentary film producer Lesley Qin believe that the new law will put more pressure on the industry in the long run. Under current regulations, Qin said, the so-called dragon stamp that meant a film’s content was approved by censors before production began was a reassurance to investors that the film would make it to the box office. “After [directors] get the money, they can still play tricks to add in content they wanted to express,” she said.

Without this stamp of approval, it will be harder to secure funding, Qin said. “Investors will consider cautiously whether they are taking a risk in the investment, and this pressure will fall on filmmakers,” she said.

Other parts of the new legislation present obstacles for independent filmmakers in particular. For example, one article reaffirms an existing rule stipulating that those who participate in foreign or international film festivals without permission could be severely punished, including being banned from film-related activities for five years. In the past, many Chinese independent filmmakers who faced domestic restrictions on their work have turned to film festivals abroad. However, even as the Chinese film market has boomed over the last 20 years, films by internationally acclaimed independent directors like Jia Zhangke and Lou Ye are still outlawed in China. 

The new law also fails to clarify what type of content will be subject to censorship. Chinese filmmakers have long pushed to replace the current censorship system with a classification system similar to that of many other countries, in which movies containing violent or pornographic content are issued a rating and minimum age recommendation. 

Qin believes that the current system is unlikely to change under the new regulations, and that the status quo increasingly benefits successful commercial film studios while putting young, independent filmmakers at a disadvantage. “It’s difficult for filmmakers when they are facing pressure from both ideology and capital,” she said.

“The goal had always been that politics should not interfere with film creation,” Qin added, “but it seems like we have forgotten this goal and our original intention to call for a film classification system. Political censorship has become a default setting for us, and this self-censorship mindset has been deeply ingrained.”

(Header image: Two people walk past posters at a movie theater in Shenyang, Liaoning province, Feb. 25, 2015. VCG)

It’s Wednesday, Nov. 9. Donald Trump was declared America’s president-elect earlier in the afternoon, and Barack Obama and Kim Jong Un are smoking cigarettes in their hotel room. Both men, Chinese look-alikes of the foreign leaders, have little interest in the election result. They have come to the south of China to realize their dreams of becoming serious actors.

Here, on the ragtag outskirts of Dongguan, a city in Guangdong province, they have been cast in an upcoming drama film whose plot is a far cry from the stage of international politics. Instead, “Qingyi Meiying,” or “Green-Clad Phantom,” is a tale of murder, jealous lovers, and a Cantonese opera troupe struggling with the art form’s falling popularity.

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Xiao Jiguo, whose claim to fame is his resemblance to Obama, plays the part of the opera troupe’s leader in the film. Perhaps surprisingly for someone who has based his career entirely on the outgoing U.S. president, Xiao had no idea the U.S. election was happening or which candidates were running. Part of the reason is that the 30-year-old doesn’t really follow the news. But most importantly, Xiao has over the past couple of years strived to go beyond his imitation act and become a professional actor. His role in “Green-Clad Phantom” is his largest yet.

The man who looks remarkably like North Korea’s supreme leader is Zhang Daiming, 32, who plays the role of a criminal in the upcoming film. Zhang only recently embraced his Kim-like looks to become a full-time impersonator and already has ambitions to take his career to the next level. His act is lucrative, but stars can fade fast. “Imitating someone is always temporary,” Zhang tells Sixth Tone.

The two arrived in Dongguan a few days earlier and have spent most of their time idling about. They thought the film would begin shooting on Monday, then Wednesday, then Thursday. Zhang will have to wait the longest: His character only appears in one scene set to shoot later in the week, so he will have to kill time until then.

Lounging on their beds out of character, both are typical, unassuming men. Xiao, with his friendly eyes, neatly trimmed hair, and slightly tanned skin, looks remarkably like Obama. With his slight frame, however, Xiao doesn’t quite match his doppelganger in stature. Zhang, on the other hand, looks like Kim in features as well as build — that is to say, he carries some extra weight. He has also adopted Kim’s hairstyle to make the resemblance unmistakable.

Earlier that day, Zhang had put on his Mao suit, a pair of dark sunglasses, and a stern look for an hourlong session on Huajiao, a live-streaming app launched last year that now boasts 10 million monthly users. The contract Zhang signed with the company to exclusively use the platform is a profitable arrangement — depending on how many virtual gifts he receives from viewers, he earns between 20,000 and 30,000 yuan ($4,400) a month, roughly five times the average income in China.

Zhang doesn’t speak any Korean, but he has invented a patois of his own, intonating his Chinese sharply as if he’s speaking with the somewhat-harsh North Korean accent and peppering his speech with “sumnida” — a Korean word often used at the end of sentences. He says he learned Kim’s mannerisms and facial expressions from watching video clips online.

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During his live-streaming sessions, he interacts with fans, sings, tells jokes, and sometimes dances. All in all, the act is convincing and entertaining enough: This latest broadcast was among Zhang’s most popular, with more than 75,000 viewers. Xiao had joined in for the occasion, donning a shirt and tie to look like Obama.

“I’m very thankful to netizens. Without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Zhang says. “I have no education, no background, and didn’t have any intention to do this.” His life before he found internet stardom wasn’t easy. He dropped out of junior middle school after just one week and soon started working in mining and construction to support his family after the death of his father. “My hands were covered in blisters,” he says. “It was very hard work.”

“When I think about it, I get sad,” Zhang says between drags on his cigarette.

Zhang eventually married and had a child, but his wife couldn’t cope with their impoverished way of life and left him when their son was 1 year old. In 2013, Zhang borrowed money to open a small eatery near a university campus in Guangzhou, Guangdong’s capital city.

One of the many students who frequented his restaurant eventually realized that Zhang bore a striking resemblance to Kim Jong Un, and soon people would line up to take selfies with him. To complete the look, a friend bought him a Mao suit, which he started wearing at work. One day in February, on his way home, Zhang took some photos with a crowd of people. When he woke up the next day, the pictures were all over the internet, and before long every television station in the country had sent a crew to interview him.

Through one of the many journalists who visited him, Zhang got into contact with Xiao, and the two men became friends. While Zhang was just starting his career as an impersonator, Xiao had been doing his Obama act since 2008, when a colleague pointed out his resemblance to the then-president-elect. Now, however, Xiao is ready to move on from the shtick.

Late last year, Xiao signed with a manager: Hong Kong film industry veteran Billie Chan, who, like many Hong Kong filmmakers, had moved her business into the booming mainland movie market. Xiao once played an extra in one of her productions and caught her attention because of the constant stream of foreign journalists he attracted. Xiao had business partners before who had brought him work, but they often failed to give him the parts he wanted. With Chan, he aims high. “We don’t accept lowbrow events anymore, like evening shows or bars,” he tells Sixth Tone.

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Chan is also the producer of “Green-Clad Phantom,” and she spends most of her time glued to her 13-inch iPad, shooting off voice messages in several languages. She tells Sixth Tone that the movie will be shown online instead of in cinemas — users of Netflix-like platform iQIYI and other websites pay around 6 yuan to watch a film. This business model is more lucrative, she says.

After this film, Chan wants to make Xiao the star of a supernatural movie series. The first installment, in which Xiao’s character will battle demons to save his girlfriend, is already in pre-production. “If this movie is successful, I think Xiao won’t be ‘Obama’ — he’ll be a ghostbuster,” she says. Chan also used her industry connections to enroll Xiao at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, where he takes acting classes in a one-year program.

Chan is also Zhang’s manager, but her plans for him are less rosy. She only signed him for a few months, and only as a friendly gesture to Xiao. Zhang’s role in “Green-Clad Phantom” is small, and regarding his potential future roles, Chan simply says, “We’ll have to think.” Zhang tried to enroll at the film academy as well, but he was too late to sign up for the program.

For his part, Xiao tries to involve Zhang in his projects as much as he can. “I helped him into the acting world,” Xiao says. “He’s like me a few years ago: He doesn’t know anyone in the industry.”

In an attempt to help his friend build professional bridges in the acting community, Xiao gave Zhang a cameo appearance in his debut music video, a September release that sought to set the record straight with respect to his talents as more than just an Obama look-alike. Dressed in a suit and sporting his trademark Obama frown, he sings, “I’m not Obama; I’m Oppa,” a Korean term of endearment used by young women to refer to older men.

Set to a disco beat straight out of the nineties, the music video features Xiao — who harbors aspirations of a musical career — also dressed as his alter ego, walking side by side with Zhang. “People don’t expect me and him to appear in one video at the same time,” says Xiao, referring to the fact that Obama and Kim are adversaries in real life. “It has to be the coolest music video.” The video has been viewed a total of around 3,000 times across various platforms.

The life stories and careers of Xiao and Zhang are in many ways similar, but the two seem destined for different futures. After his initial discovery, Xiao’s career has seen its ups and downs, but he has somehow managed to hold the attention of journalists and variety TV programs alike. On the second day of the “Green-Clad Phantom” shoot, Xiao fields an interview with a British media outlet — he didn’t quite know which one — and is invited onto a television show later in the month. A documentary filmmaker is currently producing a short movie about him. But most importantly, Xiao has also found a certain footing in the movie industry with a powerful manager who believes in him: “He’s really lucky and successful,” Chan says. “I think he will have a better future.”

Zhang, on the other hand, has seen public interest in his work wane somewhat. His contract with Huajiao is about to end, and he does not have any future acting jobs lined up. But Zhang does have a backup plan in case his movie career doesn’t pan out: He’s been working on creating a line of hot pot ingredients with his Kim Jong Un likeness on the packaging.

An art form, in this case Cantonese opera, losing its appeal is one of the themes of the “Green-Clad Phantom” movie. The evening before shooting begins, part of the crew attends a village banquet where an opera troupe gives a performance. The singers are hardly paid any mind — even by the village’s eldest members — as everyone digs in to plates of pork, shrimp, and fried rice. But plenty of people visit the table that seats Xiao and Zhang — the latter dressed in his Kim outfit — for photos.

The next day, Zhang stays back at the hotel. Xiao, too, spends most of the day waiting, as his first scene isn’t scheduled until the evening. He takes shelter from the cold in another actor’s car, switching from playing mahjong on a phone, to “locker-room talk” with a co-star about getting massages, to practicing lines from a scene in which he advises another character to aim higher: “I hope you don’t walk down this path; it’s hard to do Cantonese opera nowadays. You’re so good — you can totally become an actor, a star.”

(Header image: Xiao Jiguo (right) waits while Zhang Daiming (left) has his hair done before an evening event in Dongguan, Guangdong province, Nov. 9, 2016. Kevin Schoenmakers/Sixth Tone)

Everything about the room I’m sitting in is an assault on the senses: the bright blue-and-white felt walls, the incandescent white lighting, the golden dragon carving on the far wall. But at this very moment, it’s the computer screen in front of me and the world it represents that are most alien to me. 

I see myself in the middle of the screen, sitting next to a stranger who is parked at a computer somewhere else in northeastern China. I can hear his scattergun voice coming through the earpiece at a piercing volume as he jokes around. A comically deep and disembodied voice can be heard, too, but I have no idea where it’s coming from.   

As I struggle to decipher the cacophony of sounds, my eyes are bombarded with messages and symbols from viewers that flash around the edges of the screen at a dizzying pace. This is what it feels like to live-stream to an audience of over 200,000 people, and there’s only one thing going through my head as I struggle to understand my co-hosts’ northeastern accents and exaggerated speech: Wow, this is awkward. 

“He’s feeling embarrassed,” says the man sitting to my left, as he shimmies over to take control of the situation. That man is Yu Li, also known as MC Brother Li to the more than 9 million fans he has on live-streaming platform YY LIVE. Yu slips effortlessly back into live-stream mode, and I feel an enormous sense of relief as I quietly slither off screen.

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Now 30, Yu belongs to a new generation from China’s northeast who have risen from poverty to make their fortune out of live-streaming. He earns an astonishing 1 to 1.5 million yuan (around $146,000 to $218,000) per month, mostly in the form of virtual gifts that Yu’s fans send during his streams. 

The live-streaming business model has proven incredibly successful around the country in the last five years. In 2015 there were close to 200 live-streaming platforms in China, and Yu estimates that the number has reached around 300 this year. Across all platforms, live-streamers broadcast anything and everything you could imagine, from eating inanimate objects, to snorting fake cocaine, to utter banality. But stars like Yu and his peers, who all use the YY LIVE platform, have made their names and money with content that draws from an entertainment culture native to China’s northeastern region. 

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Most of the top live-streamers on YY LIVE are male, and their aliases start with the letters “MC,” which stands for “microphone controllers.” Originally, the performance style of these Chinese MC live-streamers was called “hanmai” — literally “microphone shouting.” MCs record themselves rapping over high-energy dance music that sounds like it’s been lifted straight from the region’s nightclubs. Occasionally they’ll slow things down and rap over soft ballads, while other times they’ll do away with all musicality and let loose on a subject without paying attention to the beat. 

Earlier this year, drama-school educated Shanghainese woman Papi Jiang made headlines after her live-streaming content received millions of yuan in investment, but Yu and his peers come from a different world entirely. “At the age of 15 I stopped going to school, and at 16 I left my home for this city, to come and be a mechanic,” says Yu of Gongzhuling, the small city in China’s northeastern Jilin province where he now lives. His parents divorced when he was 6, and Yu spent the rest of his childhood living with his mother and his stepfather, both corn farmers. Yu’s mother passed away when he was just 17.

But Yu appears to have found himself a family of sorts here in Gongzhuling. The city has lost a lot of people to the nearby provincial capital, Changchun, but for Yu, who only needs an internet connection to make a living, it’s as good a place as any. It was here, when he was still working as a mechanic back in 2009, that Yu first came into contact with live-streaming. His first video stream was to five friends. Today, his streams draw hundreds of thousands of viewers, and his success has led him to launch Wudi Media, an incubator where fledgling broadcasters can sign up to be instructed in the fine art of captivating audiences and loosening wallets.

Juggling the company and his own live-streaming pursuits is an exhausting job. “I start broadcasting at 10 p.m. and finish at 1 a.m. every day,” Yu says. “Sometimes if there’s a delay, I won’t sleep until 5 or 6 in the morning.” Yu’s shows combine singing, hanmai rapping, and talk-show-style sketches that take inspiration from errenzhuan — a form of live comedy skit popular in northeastern China.

On YY LIVE, users are split into different membership levels according to their spending habits. On the lowest rung are the youke, or tourists, who enjoy the shows but don’t spend much, while at the top are the tuhao, or nouveau riche, who throw money at broadcasters by the bucketload. On the night of my uncomfortable foray into Yu’s broadcast, he received a reward of 30,000 yuan early on in the stream from a tuhao YY LIVE member, but gifts are sometimes much higher in value: Yu says he was once awarded 8 million yuan in one transaction. In return, Yu looks after his patrons with live shoutouts and even face-to-face meetings. “Basically I can become friends with [the tuhao],” Yu says. 

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“It’s the same as bar or nightclub performances, but in the virtual world,” says fellow MC live-streamer and Li’s apprentice Wang Baocai, drawing a comparison to the habit of customers in many of China’s entertainment venues to shower performers with gifts and cash. “Within the live broadcast platform, they can find the same enjoyment. The difference between swiping 10,000 and 1,000 yuan is the amount of face it gives you,” he says, a nod to the concept of preserving dignity in social situations that is embedded in Chinese culture.

Teng Wei, director for the Center of Contemporary Cultural Studies at South China Normal University, believes there is more to the phenomenon than the concept of face. “Sometimes it’s a kind of brand consciousness,” she says. “Let’s say I’m in [famous YY live-streamer] MC Tianyou’s live-stream room and every day I give him virtual gifts like roses or cars, and I’m always the most generous. If one day, someone surpasses me with gifts, then all the money I spent before is wasted because I haven’t maintained my brand as the supreme.” Teng also believes the highest-spending tuhao feel territorial about their favorite MCs’ live streams. “It’s as if the live-stream room belongs to me. Whatever I say goes: It’s my world,” she says.

Whatever the motivation, the amounts of money that are being spent on live-stream platforms can be baffling, not least for the families of popular MC live-streamers. Wang, who has gone from working as a chef to earning a living through regular broadcasts to his 1 million fans, says that when he first started making money on YY LIVE, his mother couldn’t understand how something virtual could produce real cash. She suspected he was doing something illegal. “It wasn’t until I went with her to the bank and withdrew it that she believed me,” he says.

MC live-streaming may have brought Yu and Wang some fame and a lot of fortune, but the working-class culture they represent irritates others. Nowhere was this more evident than in the blowback to an October article in GQ’s Chinese edition that profiled MC Tianyou, a poster boy for the hanmai style and currently YY LIVE’s most popular user, with over 17 million fans. “GQ even interviews this kind of person?!” reads the first comment on the article. The second simply says, “Disgusting.” The third comment: “Damn, you’re making someone shady sound pure.”

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For Teng, this characterization is unfair. “From an art perspective, you could say it’s crude,” she says. “But we shouldn’t judge it without conscience.” Teng believes the gutting of industry in China’s northeastern region in the 1980s has shaped the culture in which today’s MC live-streamers have grown up. “In the ’80s, all of the northeastern region was on the decline,” she says. “Factories were being sold off, and people’s parents were being laid off without pay.” The result was that opportunities for advancement for people like Yu and his peers have been very limited. “They’ve had no opportunity to get a higher education, and they don’t come from rich or educated families,” says Teng. 

As for Yu, he isn’t concerned about the criticism — by his account, the standing of live-streamers like him is on an upward trend, pointing to the government’s ever-tightening efforts to clean up the content of broadcasts. “We are monitored when we stream,” says Yu, “and as soon as you say anything that breaks the rules, you will be fined or face repercussions.” 

New nationwide regulations on live-streaming were announced at the beginning of November as an attempt to crack down on lewd content. It’s still unclear what impact these policies will have on the industry, but YY LIVE’s strict approach means it is better prepared than many other platforms. Yu welcomes the new rules. “The more standardized [the industry] gets, the better,” he says. He also has more selfish reasons for supporting the crackdown: Every live-streamer taken offline means vying with one fewer person for his fans’ money. 

But just in case the live-streaming industry collapses, Yu and his employees at Wudi Media are already working on diversifying their income sources. In addition to running an e-commerce venture to sell clothes and merchandise, they are moving into online films. “I’ve already shot eight or nine online movies this year,” Yu says. His most recent production — “Fight in Causeway Bay 2,” a gangster comedy set in Hong Kong — has over 20 million views on pay-per-view Netflix-like video site iQIYI. 

The size of the audience that the film has garnered is all the more impressive given — by his own admission — the woodenness of Yu’s performance. Comments under the movie feature a number of criticisms of his acting skills, and Yu isn’t in denial. “I have never studied performance,” he says, “I’m just an ordinary, common person.” But as the size of his live-streaming pay check shows, for the right audience, ordinariness pays well.

Yu comes from humble beginnings and keeps himself grounded with a simple goal. “All I want to do is look after the dreams of my crew and help them move forward,” he says. “Everyone at the company depends on me, and that forces me to keep going.” 

Additional reporting by Yin Yijun.

(Header image: Yu Li broadcasts from his office in Gongzhuling, Jilin province, Nov. 9, 2016. Yin Yijun/Sixth Tone)

Audiences are divided over whether 23-year-old Olympic athlete Dong Li and 4-year-old Jiahui are cute or creepy as a fake father-and-daughter pair.

The fourth season of hit Chinese reality show “Dad, Where Are We Going?” pairs “intern” fathers, all celebrities, with children who are not their own. In previous seasons, the show only featured celebrity dads with their real children, but a government order banning the “overuse” of celebrities’ children shown on TV has made that format problematic. The show also moved off the air and is now only available online.

Since October, Olympic fencer Dong — known for his athletic prowess as well as his “fresh meat” looks — joined the program as the intern father to Jiahui. Dong takes care of Jiahui for several days a week, eats and sleeps with her, and bathes her.

Beijing native Wang Weixiao told Sixth Tone that as the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, she can’t understand why the program’s producers edited the show to make Dong and Jiahui look like a couple.

“If it were my own daughter, I would feel uncomfortable,” Xia Chaoyun told Sixth Tone when asked whether Dong bathing Jiahui is appropriate. The 30-year-old mother from Hangzhou said that the girl is at the age when children start to understand the physical differences between males and females. “It’s even inappropriate for her real father,” Xia said.
 
On social media the pairing has spawned thousands of so-called couple fans — people who believe certain TV characters are meant to be together. They point to one scene in which Jiahui tells Dong that when she grows up, she wants to marry him, as well as to an interview in which Dong says his dream girl is Arale, Jiahui’s nickname.

While some such fan reactions are relatively harmless — “please don’t break them up; they will be true lovers in 20 years,” one net user wrote — other online reinterpretations of the show arrange captioned episode screenshots to create sexually suggestive storylines. The show’s production company, Mango TV, fanned the flames by posting an online video clip set to a love song and captioned “Dong and Arale’s interpretation of ‘Let’s Fall in Love,’” referring to a famous Chinese dating show. Mango TV is the online division of Hunan TV, one of China’s largest television stations.

“I hope everyone will refrain from using words that describe couples when talking about Dong Li and Arale,” entertainment industry commentator Luo Beibei wrote in a post on Thursday to her public account on messaging app WeChat. “A 4-year-old girl shouldn’t appear in [couples’ fan fiction].”

In the post, Luo apologized for previously commending the chemistry between Dong and Jiahui — and she has since deleted the article containing those comments. “It looks cute, but actually it’s very inappropriate,” she said. To Luo, the show sets a bad example for gender education and is too flippant in its treatment of the safety risks that girls face. News and commentary website Guanchazhe warned that creating a couple out of a young girl and an adult stranger is misleading to the audience and could cause harm.

As of Friday, some footage of Dong and Jiahui had been removed from Mango TV’s website. The company could not immediately be reached for comment.

Additional reporting by Fan Yiying and Ni Dandan.

(Header image: A still from ‘Dad Where are We Going’ shows Dong Li blowing bubbles as his ‘daughter’ looks at him. From the TV show’s official Weibo account)

One of China’s leading directors has locked horns with the country’s largest film distribution and cinema company over accusations that the company was unduly limiting the screen time of his new film, “I Am Not Madame Bovary.”

In an open letter addressed directly to Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man and chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group, 58-year-old Feng Xiaogang said that Wanda Cinemas, the movie theater branch of Wang’s company, was maliciously damaging the film’s prospects because it was produced by industry rival Huayi Brothers. The open letter, published Friday to microblog platform Weibo, has been liked over 62,000 times and garnered almost 68,000 comments, including both voices of support and criticism.

Feng said that other cinema chains around the country were showing his latest release at a rate of above 40 percent of all screenings, while the equivalent rate at Wanda’s cinemas lay at just 10.9 percent. He urged cinemagoers to “hurry to other cinemas to see Madame Bovary for the last time before Wanda extends its grasp and buys up all of the country’s cinemas.”

Data provided on the mobile app of leading box office monitor EntGroup shows that the countrywide average screening rate for the film currently stands at 34 percent, while the film’s screening rate at Wanda’s cinemas stands at just over 10.8 percent.  

The satirical comedy, released today, tells the story of a rural woman who takes on the country’s legal system in a decade-long campaign, after being swindled by her ex-husband. Lead actress Fan Bingbing won an award for her portrayal of protagonist Li Xuelian at the Toronto International Film Festival in September this year. 

The release date of “I Am Not Madame Bovary” was changed from Sept. 30 to Nov. 18, leading to widespread speculation that the film had hit troubled waters with China’s film censorship body. At an event celebrating the film’s success at the San Sebastian Film Festival, Feng said that the delay was not due to censorship, but because the producers wanted to avoid clashing with a cluster of other blockbusters during China’s national holiday in October.

A Wanda Cinema public relations official declined to comment to Sixth Tone when contacted on Friday, and the company has not released any form of official statement regarding Feng’s accusations. But Wang Sicong, the son of Wang Jianlin who has a history of speaking his mind in a frank fashion, has jumped at the chance to offer his two cents.

In a post to his own Weibo account just an hour and a half after Feng’s, Wang Sicong accused Feng of using his status as one of China’s leading directors to incite the public and muscle in on a matter that was none of his business. “Pleasantries and grumblings between two private enterprises are a matter for those two companies,” Wang Sicong wrote in the post, which had received over 205,000 likes as of Friday evening.

Wang Sicong then asked Feng: “Are we not allowed to reduce the screen time of your film because we don’t think it’s any good?” He also took the opportunity to air his grievances about Huayi Brothers’ March appointment of new deputy CEO Ye Ning, formerly the deputy CEO of Wanda. “Are we not allowed to be unhappy that Huayi Brothers stole from us a high-level executive, who had signed a ‘professionalism agreement?’” — appearing to refer to a non-compete clause.

Wang Sicong, who is a shareholder in and board member of his father’s company, concluded his response by saying that Wanda would nonetheless add screen time if the film proved itself in the box office: “No one is bigger than money.”

A scathing response by Feng addressed to “Prince Chairman Sicong” appeared to connect the dots between the departure of executive Ye to Huayi Brothers and Wanda’s decision to limit the film’s screen time. “Thank you for making public the causes and consequences,” Feng wrote. “Your unhappiness led to you not liking the film, which in turn led to Wanda’s low screening rates for ‘I Am Not Madame Bovary.’”

“I don’t know what the principles of your professionalism agreement are,” Feng continued, “but I think respect for the rules of the market is also a kind of professionalism.”

Some users on Weibo have rallied around Feng, with the highest-rated commenter on his open letter saying: “Ever since Wanda’s deputy executive fled to join Huayi, Wanda has begun boycotting Huayi. Like [my comment], make more people see this!” Other Weibo users have obliged — that comment has been up-voted over 41,000 times.

But the overwhelming reaction to Feng’s outburst has been one of scorn, with many citing pure financial gain as the sole cause of his campaign. “Why do they owe you so much screen time?” asked the author of a comment with more than 6,000 likes under Feng’s open letter. “This is just about normal competition,” the comment continued, “why do you have to fan the flames?” 

Additional reporting by Yin Yijun.

(Header image: People wear 3-D glasses while watching a movie at a Wanda Cinema Line Co. cinema in Beijing, March 14, 2015. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images/VCG)

Tune into any of the soaps, period dramas, or Sino-Japanese War series that dominate daytime TV in China, and there’s a good chance the words spoken by the actors you see will have been replaced with those of voiceover artists. The end result: clinical enunciation void of regional imperfections, eerily silent background noise, and speech that is often noticeably out of sync with lip movement.

There are a number of reasons why TV producers choose to dub the voices of their actors, says leading voice artist Jiang Guangtao, and these range from excessive background noise on-set in China’s crowded production complexes to the occasional need to follow orders from the country’s media regulators to change dialogue content post-production.

But perhaps the reason most telling of the state of China’s TV and film industries is the caliber of today’s actors, whose substandard deliveries mean voiceover artists are left tidying up after them.

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When asked how he copes with having to dub the voices of poorly trained actors, Jiang is initially very diplomatic. But when pressed, he pauses. “Wait a moment,” he says. There is the sound of movement on the other end of the line. When Jiang starts talking again, it’s clear he’s found quieter place to talk.

“In the past 20 years, if all of China’s actors were outstanding — if their performances were all good and their lines were all OK — then dubbing actors like me would have […] found it tough to survive,” he says. “I’m thankful for these actors who aren’t good enough in the eyes of viewers for having helped the voice-dubbing industry be so good for so long.”

The soft-spoken 40-year-old got his big break in 1999, when he was picked to voice the role of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character on the Chinese DVD release of “Titanic.” Since then, he’s taken on the voices of Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings” and Sam Witwicky in “Transformers,” as well as characters in TV shows, anime, and computer games.

In an interview with Sixth Tone, Jiang explained why dubbing is so ubiquitous, spoke about the chaos of China’s premium film studios, and speculated on why the future is looking bright for China’s dubbing industry. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Sixth Tone: As a voice actor you are integral to a production, yet your role is very much removed from the limelight. What is the appeal of the profession?

Jiang Guangtao: I like things that are more creative. When I entered the industry, it was 1995, and I was working at the Changchun Film Studio. At that time, dubbing was mostly done on foreign films. Later in my career, I realized there were lots of animations, as well as national television shows, that needed dubbing. I didn’t realize that many of China’s actors needed other people to help them dub their lines.

Today, animations, computer games, and audiobooks make up more of our work. The director’s inspiration is expressed through the dubbing actor’s voice, and the audience can experience the soul that has been created behind the scenes. This soul comes from the voice actor.

Sixth Tone: What is unique to voice artistry in China?

Jiang Guangtao: If you look at where voice acting is most common, often the dubbing doesn’t match the movements of the actor’s mouth. There are many reasons for this. Maybe the actor adjusted the script, or didn’t remember their lines correctly, and it’s not discovered until later. Or maybe there’s trouble with an actor’s enunciation — there are lots of potential problems.

In China, movies and shows have to be approved by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT). If SAPPRFT thinks something is reactionary, violent, bloody, erotic, feudalistic, superstitious, or one of the many things they want to avoid, we have to address this and make corrections.

There are many other problems. For example, the location where the shooting is taking place might be too loud, or the shooting process might not be well-arranged, or the general standard of work might not be high enough. All of these lead to baffling situations where the only solution is dubbing.

Sixth Tone: Aren’t modern-day production centers like Hengdian in eastern China’s Zhejiang province well-equipped for dealing with issues like background noise?

Jiang Guangtao: Hengdian is quite a small place, and these days it’s very crowded. At Hengdian, in one place there might be someone shooting something about the war of resistance against Japan, while in another area, a crew might be filming an old romance, while over here is something else, and over there is another — it’s an awkward situation.

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Hengdian is a tourist spot, and every day it welcomes lots of tourists. Frequently, when dubbing a film you will hear the tour guides shouting on the recording, because Chinese tour guides use loud speakers. It’s annoying for the actors.

Sixth Tone: What is the relationship between the caliber of actors in China’s TV and film industries and the work that you do as a voice actor?

Jiang Guangtao: I can’t judge and say people are bad or good, because I once also tried to do regular acting. As a layperson, it’s very easy to comment on someone else’s performance and say it’s bad. If you are an insider, though, then you know how difficult the work actually is. Everyone’s thoughts on a performance are different, so I can’t say whether it’s bad. Dubbing is my job, and all I can do is put all my effort into turning a performance around.

In the past 20 years, if all of China’s actors were outstanding — if their performances were all good and their lines were all OK — then dubbing actors like me would have had to rely only on foreign-language films and animations for work, and we would have found it tough to survive. I’m thankful for these actors who aren’t good enough in the eyes of viewers, for having helped the voice-dubbing industry be so good for so long.

Sixth Tone: Other than poorly trained actors, what else has made the voice-acting industry as healthy as it is today?

Jiang Guangtao: Before, there were more TV shows to voice and not as many games or animations, but in the last two years — particularly this year — the number of games and animations has increased a lot. Things seem to have suddenly exploded. From this, we’ve got a much larger number of fans than we had before, and we have more opportunities to step out from behind the scenes and participate in shows and events. 

These days, young people watch a lot of Japanese animation, play Japanese games, and like the characters in them. All these characters are voiced by actors, so when people love a certain character, they will also love the voice, and this will make more people want to do this kind of work.

When animations are being promoted, they often don’t have a star, and the director may not be well-known, so more and more voice actors will make public appearances. If you see someone is not particularly attractive but they are still able to take the stage, the effect on ordinary people can be infectious.

Two decades of sticking it to the establishment have made Wu Wei a cautious man. The 41-year-old punk rocker always carries with him two phones: a smartphone with no SIM card and an old Nokia brick that is only switched on for six hours of the day.

Wu traces this particular habit to 2010, when a protest he was planning to take part in against an aggressive housing development was foiled before it could even begin. During questioning by local police, Wu was presented with printouts of private conversations he’d had on messaging platforms.

That incident took place in Wu’s native Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei province. To many, Wuhan stands for stifling heat, spicy duck neck, and national tennis superstar Li Na. To others, it is known as “Punk City” because its vibrant underground music scene gave birth to a number of punk bands throughout the ’90s.

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One of those bands is SMZB, an acronym for a Chinese phrase meaning “bread of life.” Founded in 1996 by Wu and two friends, the now six-piece outfit is China’s oldest surviving punk band, going strong over the past two decades even as others have fallen by the wayside. Given Wu’s penchant for writing undisguised critiques of the authorities into his lyrics — not to mention his own run-ins with officials — this is a feat worth celebrating. To mark two decades in the business, SMZB released an album in September titled “The Chinese Are Coming” and have embarked on a three-month tour of 25 cities around China.

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Known in punk circles as “Boss Wu,” the front man’s heavy build and sprawling tattoos belie his gentle and polite manner. “Some people think punks are just people who don’t give a damn,” he tells Sixth Tone, “but the kind of person I want to be is quiet, kind-hearted, honest, and brave, someone who observes public order. To me, there’s more punk in that.”

But the next day, at a small live house on the Shanghai leg of SMZB’s tour, kind-hearted and quiet have been left at the door. Wu screams into his microphone as sweat-drenched limbs flail in the mosh pit before him. “The Chinese are coming; occupying the whole world is their mission!” he half sings, half shouts in English. “Their job is to destroy civilization!”

Hyperbole seems to be one of Wu’s favorite currencies, which he doles out by the handful between songs. At a gig in Nanjing three years ago, he says, the band’s manager Zhang Hua was slapped by a local official backstage because Wu had broken an unwritten agreement when he began chatting with the audience. Wu had been told he could only sing — no talking between songs.

Wu is clearly energized by rebellion, but his first foray into music 20 years ago was actually born of a desire to escape the debauchery of his high school circles in Wuhan. “All my friends were using drugs,” he says. “I felt bored. I didn’t want to use drugs; I just wanted to run away from the city for a while.” In 1995, after spotting an ad at a newsstand, he set out for the country’s capital to study bass guitar at China’s first music-education institute dedicated to modern genres: the Beijing Midi School of Music.

There, in the company of like-minded music lovers and under the spell of cassette tapes by Western bands, Wu found his calling. “They were totally different from the street gangs I knew,” he says of his peers at the school. “They were so pure. They just loved music.” The following year, two of them joined Wu in setting up SMZB.

In 1996, the concept of punk was almost as new to China as SMZB itself. There were no professional live-music venues, and when the band members were lucky enough to find a bar willing to let them play, they would never be invited back a second time. “The bar owners thought we were too loud,” Wu says, “and so did the audiences.”

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By the late ’90s, however, live houses had begun to spring up, and the members of SMZB found themselves with a stage from which to spread their music and an audience hungry to hear their message, a demand that has stayed with the band until the present day.

Despite the undercurrent of anger and resentment toward the establishment that has coursed through SMZB’s music since the beginning, Wu maintains that the band’s message has always been an apolitical one. “I don’t know a lot about politics,” he says. Rather, much of the inspiration for his lyrics comes from the stories of people around him: “I’ve just seen so many things happen in society,” Wu explains. 

Several years ago, a friend working at a state-owned steel company told Wu of his moral dilemma when tasked with preventing an elderly colleague from traveling to Beijing to petition the government. A month later, the friend was replaced by a relative of the company’s manager. “I should petition,” the friend joked. The irony and futility of the story left its mark on Wu and inspired one of the tracks in the band’s latest album, a song called “Road to Petition”:

Your home is torn down, you’re beaten,
When you protect your family in self-defense but are seen as breaking the law.
You cannot get help; you can only cry, full of tears as you step onto the road that only China has.
There’s no way out from the road to petition; walking toward death on the road to petition.

Music has brought little in the way of wealth to Wu and his bandmates. Since 2009, Wu has run a music bar in Wuhan, which brings him a modest 3,000 yuan (around $430) a month. Tours and albums barely break even. Due to the overt social critique within the band’s music, only two of their eight albums have ever been given the stamp of approval by China’s music regulators. The remaining albums, without official classification numbers, cannot be distributed through regular channels, which limits the amount of income the band can expect from each release.

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In the face of such financial gloom, the band’s dogged resolve has won admirers in China’s punk scene. “In the dog-shit music market of today, their existence is an uncompromising one,” says young punk singer and guitarist Yu Ziyang. Yu started punk band D-Crash in his native Beijing four years ago, at the age of 19. In his eyes, SMZB is a rarity in that they have not been swayed by the pull of the commercial world.

“Many punks of our generation wear new leather coats and pants,” Yu tells Sixth Tone, “so shiny, so proper, as if it’s a fashion show. They have evolved from proletariats to middle class — the people they should have hated most.”

For Nevin Domer of Maybe Mars, the indie record label that has produced four of SMZB’s eight albums, the rise of consumerism means that the existence of grassroots bands like SMZB is growing ever more crucial to the sustainability of punk. “In the ’90s, when everyone was poor, you didn’t really have a choice,” he says. “It makes a difference now that you can choose to be commercialized or not.”

Nathanel Amar, a recent doctoral graduate of Paris’ Sciences Po university where he specialized in Chinese underground culture, says the trajectory of China’s punk scene over the past two decades is closely tied to the country’s drastic socio-economic pivot. In the ’80s, a decade marked by the growing exposure of China’s economy and society to Western cultures, Chinese youngsters fixated on a brighter future turned to rock music. Flagbearers of the genre were generally musically trained: Before his distorted guitar became the call to arms of a disillusioned generation, “godfather of Chinese rock” Cui Jian was a classically trained trumpet player.

However, says Amar, the ’90s brought about a widening income gap and, with it, a new generation of disillusioned youth: economically disadvantaged urban youngsters who did not necessarily share the musical tastes of their forebears from the previous decade. Punk, driven not by musical complexity but guttural emotion, was their weapon of choice. “If you knew three chords, you could start a band,” says Amar. Indeed, fiddles and tin whistles come and go, tempos change, but those very chords — the root, fourth, and fifth — are a constant throughout many of SMZB’s songs.

In fact, Wu believes that his music has changed very little over the past 20 years. “There’s no big change for myself,” he reflects. “Maybe the only difference is that the lyrics are heavier and more serious, as so many things have happened in society.”

Despite what SMZB’s admirers say of the group’s tenacity, Wu rejects the idea that the band clings to the prototype of punk. “Punk,” he says, “is a way to help me keep my mind fresh.”

(Header image: Wu Wei performs onstage at Yuyintang Livehouse in Shanghai, Nov. 18, 2016. Beatrice Di Caro/Sixth Tone)

Chinese celebrity Wang Baoqiang is once again in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Earlier this year, the 32-year-old found himself at the center of one of China’s highest-profile divorce cases in recent memory.

Now, Wang has been linked to a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending scheme that began to collapse over the summer, wiping out investments from tens of thousands of people and landing one of the company’s founders in detention.

P2P platforms have mushroomed in China in recent years, mainly because individuals and small enterprises find it easier to secure loans through these arrangements than to borrow from banks. Investors, meanwhile, are lured by the promise of higher returns.

This latest scandal involves Jingjinlian, a company based in Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei province. The company had the added appeal to investors of being backed by the Agriculture Fund of China (AFC), a foundation under the national agricultural research institution Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS).

The website for the AFC is no longer accessible, and calls to the CAAS went unanswered Wednesday evening.

But another draw of Jingjinlian was its ability to tap Wang’s star appeal — in particular, his upcoming comedy film “Buddies in India,” which the lending platform featured in its marketing material as one of the projects that it would fund.

It was the tacit understanding that a film project directed by Wang was part of Jingjinlian’s investment portfolio that led some customers to sign up.

A statement posted Friday on the film’s official account on microblogging platform Weibo denied any involvement with Jingjinlian, saying the film’s producers never raised funds from any financial platform.

Some net users sprung to Wang’s defense: “He’s unlucky. I hope his career won’t be destroyed.” Others were not so convinced, with one user saying Wang was not without fault. “If someone used his name to organize such a big scheme,” the person wrote, “why didn’t he notice?”

One investor’s son, a 24-year-old surnamed Li, told Sixth Tone that his mother had invested a total of 110,000 yuan (around $15,800) in the company in March after she saw marketing materials from one of Jingjinlian’s branches in Wuhan that contained references to Wang’s upcoming movie.

Li said his mother had also trusted Jingjinlian because it was backed by a government-affiliated organization and had furnished investors with appropriate certificates and contracts. He added that the company had pledged to begin paying out interest beginning in September but failed to do so.

Another investor, surnamed Zhu, told Sixth Tone that she invested 50,000 yuan in May but heard in July that the company was restructuring and would not return her money.

A copy of a Jingjinlian contract shared with Sixth Tone by victims of the scheme — but whose authenticity could not be immediately verified — shows Jingjinlian listing “Buddies in India” as part of its investment portfolio.

Calls to Jingjinlian’s customer service hotline by Sixth Tone on Wednesday went unanswered, and the company’s website is currently out of service.

A report by Sixth Tone’s sister publication, The Paper, cited Wuhan police as saying that around 20,000 people were involved in the scheme.

The same report quoted a former employee from Jingjinlian as saying that the company had raised about 2.2 billion yuan online and 500 million yuan from its offline stores. The company has since failed to pay back a total of around 2 billion yuan, the report added.

Wang Can, co-founder of Jingjinlian, was detained by Wuhan police in November, according to a media report.

The movie was co-produced by eight companies, one of which — Shanghai Mengmi Entertainment — is mentioned on the supposed Jingjinlian contract seen by Sixth Tone. Shanghai Mengmi Entertainment could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. An employee at another of the film’s production companies, Beijing Wanhe Tianyi Media Co. Ltd., told Sixth Tone that she was unable to comment on the case.

“Buddies in India” is Wang’s directorial debut. Inspired by the Chinese classic “Journey to the West,” the kung fu-themed film recounts one man’s quest to track down his father’s will, a journey that takes him to India. Wang also plays a leading role in the movie.

Actor-turned-director Wang last sparked widespread internet debate over his recent divorce after he posted a shocking message on social media in August saying that his wife, Ma Rong, was involved in an affair with Wang’s agent, Song Zhe.

Wang’s movie is due to hit cinema screens next January on the first day of the lunar year, a holiday period in China. The film is a part of the hugely successful series of movies that includes the 2012 production “Lost in Thailand” and its 2015 sequel, “Lost in Hong Kong,” both produced and directed by actor Xu Zheng.

“I’ve been watching Wang Baoqiang’s movies since I was in junior middle school and had a good impression of the characters he portrayed in those films,” said Li, the son of the investor burnt by Jingjinlian. “But if he did have any connection to this case, I would think twice about watching his movies again.”

(Header image: Wang Baoqiang during a press conference for ‘Buddies in India’ in Shenyang, Liaoning province, Dec. 6, 2016. VCG)

Chasing down Pokemon is a thing of the past.

Instead, the latest in augmented reality (AR)-enhanced quest games, developed by a Chinese mobile payment app, offers players a quick payday if they can track down virtual red envelopes.

Launched on Thursday by Alipay, AR Red Envelope works like this: Alipay users hide virtual hongbao, or red envelopes, in locations of their choosing. Then, they upload a photo of the spot to the app along with a clue. The app automatically records the location. 

Those who want to track a hongbao can message the person who hid the treasure and ask for additional clues. When the envelope is located, the player can use the app to scan the spot, and the hongbao will appear onscreen. A simple tap deposits the money into the user’s Alipay account.   

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On Friday, when an Alipay user who goes by the handle Neighbor’s Big Orange was having lunch at a McDonald’s in the central Shanghai district of Jingan, he left a virtual red envelope at the restaurant. His somewhat-cryptic clue was “M-ji” — a popular nickname for McDonald’s in Chinese. Three hours later, a hongbao with a value of 0.17 yuan (around $0.02) was discovered by a Sixth Tone reporter.

When Sixth Tone contacted Neighbor’s Big Orange, the 25-year-old Alipay user said that his friend had sent him a message about Alipay’s new function during his lunch break. “I thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’” he said, adding that he had hidden only one red envelope — the one found by Sixth Tone — and had yet to find any virtual money himself. 

The concept of giving red envelopes can be traced to the Chinese tradition of handing out small red packets containing cash to family members and friends on special occasions — most notably during the Lunar New Year holiday, but also at other celebrations, such as weddings. 

In recent years, the hongbao custom has spread to the virtual world and has become increasingly popular on the net, mainly due to the success of internet giant Tencent’s WeChat messaging app, which launched the first viral red envelope feature during the 2014 Lunar New Year holiday, attracting around 8 million users. 

But now, Alipay and other online payment companies are trying to tap the popularity of virtual red envelopes, which have evolved from their roots in offline tradition to a form of online entertainment. 

“We would like to make red packets more fun,” a spokesman for Alipay told Sixth Tone. Alipay is operated by an affiliate company of internet giant Alibaba. 

Such functions also make business sense, as they link users’ mobile payment platforms to their real-world bank accounts — an important step toward increasing the proliferation of mobile payment systems.  

This year, more than 100 million users won red packets totaling 800 million yuan through Alipay during a promotion that coincided with the state broadcaster CCTV’s annual Lunar New Year gala show. 

On the same evening, 420 million people sent and received more than 8 billion red envelopes on WeChat.

Tencent’s QQ Wallet, the third-largest mobile payment app after WeChat and Alipay, started to develop its own AR red envelope function — which is similar to Alipay’s — in August. The QQ version will officially launch in January, ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. 

Alipay’s AR product is already on the market and generating buzz among consumers, although not everyone is happy with it. 

Wang Wenhui, a 23-year-old editor based in Beijing, told Sixth Tone that she tried the game but found the clues to be too cryptic or the treasure locations too difficult to access. “I won’t play this game anymore,” she said.

(Header image: A photo illustration shows red packets as seen on Alipay’s AR game map, Shanghai, Dec. 23, 2016. Yang Shenlai/Sixth Tone)

Have you ever been on a blind date and felt there was something missing — such as your parents?

A new television series that premiered on Saturday provides just that, with the slogan “Chinese-style blind dating; feel more secure with parents present.” 

Anchored by popular host Jin Xing— who has been called China’s transgender Oprah — and produced by Shanghai’s Dragon TV, “Chinese Dating” mimics traditional blind dates arranged by parents, placing a female candidate in front of five bachelors’ families instead of the potential suitor himself. 

Parents ask questions and decide whether the woman is a good match, while the sons wait in a room offstage. The bachelorette only wins the right to choose a date herself if three families voice interest in her. Producer Liu Yuan told Sixth Tone on Tuesday that the next episode will show the women’s families judging the men.

The show has provoked lively discussions about dating in contemporary China, with some viewers saying the program reveals the double standards for men and women, as well as the complications created by meddling parents with superficial, narrow, and materialistic ideals.

The first episode saw contestant Lin Jiali enter with a bowl of soup that she cooked herself. “She’s my cup of tea!” shouted contestant Zhao Haoran, 23, from the bachelors’ waiting room. “Whoever picks her will be looked after,” another male contestant said. 

All of the parents seemed satisfied with Lin, until they found out she was 40 years old and had a son. None turned on their lights to indicate approval. “It’s just because of her age,” several families said. “I hope my daughter-in-law will give birth to two to three kids,” Zhao’s mother said, implying that Lin was too old for her son, who expressed that he was still interested. 

“I’m standing here for women who have rich experiences and capabilities but still believe in true love,” Lin said, holding back tears.

Many online comments supported Lin and criticized the male contestants as overindulged man-children. “The girls are mature, understanding, ambitious, and responsible, but the boys are spoiled, so they never grow up,” one user on microblogging platform Weibo said. “They’re selfish giant babies."

Other commentators slammed the “vulgar” and “retro” tradition of blind dates arranged by parents with too many restrictions and requirements. “This TV program is full of male and female inequality, discrimination against single mothers, ‘straight man cancer,’ and other problems,” said a commentary in The Beijing News on Tuesday.

Parents on the show were uninhibited when describing the characteristics they hoped to find in a daughter-in-law, requesting that she be hardworking, pretty, capable, intelligent, and elegant. She should not be significantly older or taller than their son, the parents said, and she should have her own career but also put his needs first.

Relationship consultant Shi Xiuxiong told Sixth Tone that he wants to see such standards challenged. “It neglects the uniqueness of women and gives them no breathing space,” he said. He feels dating shows have reduced romance to a shopping list. “It gives the audience the misconception that you could choose a mate by simple and harsh standards,” Shi said. 

In addition to exacting demands, some parents on the show also came with unusual superstitions. Zhao’s mother even had strict rules for the temperature of a girl’s hands. “Cold hands mean a cold uterus,” she said, explaining that she believed it signified ill health. “A bad daughter-in-law will bring eight generations of bad luck,” she added. Only one mother on the show said that her son’s opinion is the most important factor in choosing a mate.

But show producer Liu maintains that “Chinese Dating” aims to create a platform for parents and children to communicate. “There are natural conflicts between generations over how to choose a spouse,” she said. “We hope to find points of convergence in their values through an open conversation.” 

Host Jin Xing pointed out that many parents lacked real understanding of their children. “What you want is different from what your son wants,” she commented on the show.

“For the parents, it’s more like a trade,” wrote one Weibo user, expressing disappointment with the notions that parents presented on the show.

“But that’s the reality,” another user commented.

Additional reporting by Lin Qiqing.

(Header image: A still from ‘Chinese Dating’ shows a male guest talking as his parents sit beside him. From the reality show’s official Weibo account)

An online cooking show hosted by Taiwanese singer Xu Xidi — more commonly known as “Little S” — has disappeared from the web.

“S-Style Show,” whose Chinese title translates to “Sister Is So Hungry,” was launched in August 2016 on Netflix-like video platform iQIYI. In each of the 12 episodes, Little S invites male guests to cook with her. However, it soon becomes clear that culinary skills are hardly the focus of the show, with audiences being drawn more to how Little S interacts with her handsome sidekicks, hugging and flirting with them as they prepare their dishes.

In one episode, Little S and actor Gao Yunxiang re-enacted an emotional scene, with S running her fingers from his face to his stomach and even jumping into his arms. In another episode, the Hong Kong singer and actor Chen Weiting and Little S seemed to hit it off well together, flirting throughout the show and at one point nearly kissing, to the audience’s audible excitement.

In the show’s trailer, Little S, wearing a tight black dress, is tied to a chair as a man with a whip interrogates her. “Why do you like flirting with men?” he asks. “I touch their bodies for the ratings,” she answers. “Only if I have an audience will I have work.”

Viewership numbers for the show are no longer available, but Little S’s approach seems indeed to have won her a large audience. On microblog platform Weibo, hashtagged posts about “S-Style Show” had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times as of Wednesday, and the show’s official account has nearly 130,000 followers.

As is often the case when Chinese TV shows are taken offline, the reason for the abrupt removal, as well as the entity behind it, are unknown. Only in some cases are more details forthcoming, as when popular vlogger Papi Jiang was ordered by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television to remove vulgar language from her videos.

Sun Lixia, a spokesperson for iQIYI, told Sixth Tone that the program was taken offline temporarily “due to adjustments being carried out to its content,” and declined to answer any further questions.

Commentators online have speculated that authorities ordered the show be removed because they thought Little S’s flirting was in bad taste. Some net users have agreed that the show was of questionable quality. “I felt embarrassed while watching three episodes,” one Weibo user wrote. “The content is meaningless and vulgar, and not funny at all.”

“S-Style Show” is the latest in a string of TV shows to have been taken offline in the last year. In July, “Roast Convention,” a show on which comedians made jokes about each other, was removed after its first episode had been online for just three days. Then two seasons of iQIYI’s bad-boy cop drama “Yu Zui” disappeared in October. That same month popular dispute resolution show “Agony Uncles” failed to broadcast during it’s usual timeslot after two particularly controversial episodes.

(Header image: A still frame from ‘S-Style Show’ shows host ‘Little S’ hugging guest Wu Qilong. From the show’s official Weibo account)

The original “Star Wars” trilogy — released between 1977 and 1983 and distributed by Fox — hit theaters when China was just beginning to open up to the rest of the world after decades of isolation under Chairman Mao’s leadership. American audiences were snaking around blocks to see “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980, but in a galaxy far, far away, the only outlet for a curious Chinese citizen would have been a bootleg VHS tape.

The prequel trilogy — released between 1999 and 2005 and also distributed by Fox — found its way to newly-built Chinese multiplexes, but the box office back then was a fraction of what it has become; “The Phantom Menace” grossed 34 million yuan ($4.1 million) as the highest-grossing imported film of 1999; “Zootopia” took the same honor in 2016 with 45 times that total.

Walt Disney executives were no doubt seeing dollar signs from domestic ticket sales when the company purchased Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4 billion, but surely China’s exploding box office and burgeoning middle-class consumer culture put the country squarely in their sights.

Given the history of “Star Wars” in China and its unfamiliarity to audiences, however, Disney may have underestimated the uphill battle they’d have to fight to connect with young, modern Chinese moviegoers.

The strategy preceding 2016’s release of “The Force Awakens” — the first “Star Wars” episode distributed by Disney — was an all-out marketing blitz. There’s nothing that says “We come in peace” more than 500 Stormtroopers lined up in battle array on the Great Wall of China.

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On the practical side of things, Fox and Disney formed a partnership with internet giant Tencent to stream all six prequel films and opened a dedicated portal for viewers to learn about the “Star Wars” universe… and to sell merchandise.

And maybe Disney’s most interesting move to bring in Chinese youth: hiring “it” boy Lu Han as official “Star Wars” ambassador. Tasked with posting “Star Wars”-related Weibos to his millions of followers and gyrating in “The Inner Force,” a music video directed by Monster Hunt-helmer Raman Hui, Lu Han’s impact on box office of “The Force Awakens” is still up for debate.

The film scored a robust two-day opening weekend of $52.6 million, fueled largely in part by Disney’s marketing hype and groups of older, dedicated “Star Wars” fans.

Those new to the universe, however, were bored stiff by the by-the-numbers plot of “The Force Awakens,” outright confused by its character relationships, and unimpressed with a level of swordplay that they were more used to seeing in low-budget television series. Negative word of mouth hobbled the film in subsequent weeks, and it ended with 826 million yuan.

It’s this bad taste in the mouths of younger Chinese moviegoers that Disney must overcome with “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” opening Friday, Jan. 6.

While the studio was constricted with “The Force Awakens” catering to audiences already familiar with and wanting the same as previous “Star Wars” episodes, the stand-alone nature of “Rogue One,” while still related to the overall story, means fresher elements could be added for an audience not 100 percent in-the-know.

Moreover, Chinese actors Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen have both been given essential roles in “Rogue One” — meatier than the token Chinese faces thrown willy-nilly into Hollywood films these days — and one may hope for box office success to see smarter collaborations like this in the future.

Unfortunately, the negativity surrounding “The Force Awakens” and “Star Wars” in general seems to have affected box office prospects for “Rogue One.” Presales for Friday’s opening day are pointing at just 40 to 50 million yuan and a three-day debut between $25 million and $30 million. Overall, “Rogue One” may struggle to finish with even half of the total box office of “The Force Awakens.”

The Force isn’t strong in China. But hey, at least Disney has Marvel.

This is an original article by China Film Insider, and has been published with their permission. The article can be found on their website here.

(Header image: Stormtroopers stand in a line at the launch event for ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ in Beijing, Dec. 21, 2016. VCG)

There isn’t a case that the genius mind of heartthrob forensic expert Qin Ming cannot crack. The character has won his web series— “Medical Examiner Dr. Qin” — 1.5 billion views since its premiere in October 2016, making it one of the highest-performing dramas on Netflix-like platform Sohu TV, its exclusive broadcaster.

More striking than Qin’s Holmesian knack for solving cases is that, unlike most of its competition, “Dr. Qin” is not the work of a seasoned web TV production company. Instead, it is the fruit of a new generation of TV producers in China: book publishers. The show, which just completed its opening season, is the first venture by Beijing Bojitianjuan Film and TV Co. Ltd., a production company set up by CS-Booky, one of the country’s largest literary publishers. 

This trend comes at a time when, according to a report by entertainment industry monitor Entertainment Capital, the cost of producing books in China — from the price of materials to editor salaries — is rising. Yet profits continue to narrow, as furious competition among online vendors drives down book prices. “There is a limit to the growth of book sales,” Bojitianjuan’s vice president, Guo Linyuan, told Sixth Tone. “Developing film and television has given us a new means of making a profit.” 

Of course, collaboration between the worlds of the page and the screen is nothing new to China. A number of the country’s most popular TV series are based on novels, an adaptation phenomenon that has gained particular traction in the genre of online literature.

In most cases, those who bear the rights to a literary work — be it the publishing house or the individual author — will sell off those rights to a production company. In developing its own production team, CS-Booky has eliminated the middleman, giving it more autonomy over the screen-adaptation process. 

Filling a gap in the market — those with a thirst for forensic drama could previously only choose among foreign imports like “CSI” and “Criminal Minds” — the success of “Dr. Qin” suggests that CS-Booky was right to choose it as the first adaptation of its new drama production venture. Its performance has already surpassed the Bojitianjuan team’s expectations, said Guo, laying the foundation for a second season set to begin filming in April. The production company also has two feature films — a romance and a travel memoir — scheduled to enter production this year. Guo said that the success of “Dr. Qin” has also piqued the interest of new investors, though she could not specify figures or companies, as negotiations are ongoing.

CS-Booky is not alone in making the jump from page to screen. Fellow private publishing goliath Beijing Motie Book Co. Ltd. set up a film and TV production company in 2013 and released its first film in 2016. Motie’s prospects for business success received a significant boost when, in early 2016, the Heyi Group — owner of two of China’s leading video-streaming sites, Youku and Tudou — became its second-largest shareholder. Among state-owned publishing houses, Yilin Press joined hands with best-selling novelist Rao Xueman in 2013 to establish its very own film and TV production company.

In the case of CS-Booky’s “Medical Examiner Dr. Qin,” the show’s success has not only meant huge audiences online; it has also bolstered interest in the novel on which it is based: “The 11th Finger.” Part fiction, part autobiography, the book was penned by former forensic expert Qin Ming — the protagonist’s less heartthrob-inducing namesake — and began life as a successful online novel, all but guaranteeing interest in the web drama among internet users. Since the show first screened, CS-Booky has reprinted 300,000 editions of the series to which “The 11th Finger” volume belongs. 

“The 11th Finger” is just one title in CS-Booky’s vast repository of works: The net price of books sold in 2015 reached 1 billion yuan (over $144 million). The quantity of content at the company’s fingertips puts it in a unique power position, believes Guo. “Our advantage is that we have a large volume of content,” she said. CS-Booky itself is a conglomeration of more than 20 smaller publishing outfits; the size of its combined staff and resources means unending book recommendations from editors to the company’s production branch, sometimes even before the works have been published. 

Yet the sheer amount of content that publishing houses like CS-Booky have to play with is meaningless unless they can find suitable distribution channels. The production company’s decision to stick closely to the original text meant that “Dr. Qin” — replete with gruesome autopsies and other gore — would have faced a tough time making it to television sets in China. In one of the series’ opening scenes, detectives discover what appears to be a fried chicken claw in a barrel of cooking oil. It turns out to be the charred hand of a woman whose body had been hacked to pieces along with her husband. The gore was one of the reasons Bojitianjuan opted to release the show as a web series. “We were more likely to get it approved by the authorities this way than by producing it as a TV drama,” Guo explained. “After all, there are children watching television.”

But in 2016, it was announced that stringent industry guidelines issued by a subsidiary of the country’s media censors were to apply to all dramas, be they broadcast on television or online. Whether those regulations — which forbid explicit violence, alongside themes like homosexuality and superstitious ritual — will affect “Dr. Qin” remains to be seen.

To navigate the often-treacherous waters of film and TV production, vice president of Peking University’s Institute of Cultural Studies Chen Shaofeng believes that “You’re better off collaborating with a TV and film production company that has experience.” Chen, who is lukewarm about the trend of publishers pivoting to TV and film production, said that the only real advantage of a publishing house-turned-production company is the close relationships forged with authors and, as a result, the competitive rates at which production rights can be secured. 

But with increasing intimacy between authors and production crews comes the prospect that authors will begin to pen novels with screen adaptability in mind. Geshuyi is a novelist whose publisher — Shanghai Haolin Culture Communication Co. Ltd. — has collaborated on TV and film projects based on the work of sci-fi author Cai Jun. Haolin offers advice to prospective writers regarding the suitability of their work for TV adaptation, though such suitability is not a deciding factor when signing new authors, said Geshuyi, who writes exclusively under a pen name and is thus unwilling to disclose his real name. 

Geshuyi said he knows of many writers who have permanently transitioned into screenwriting, though he is not concerned about the effect of such a migration on the long-term health of Chinese literature, as there are enough novelists who would find the idea of adapting their work for the screen unpalatable. “Not every writer can be a screenwriter, ready to revise their work upon requirement,” he said.

Geshuyi himself has his heart set on developing his romance novel “The Sleeping Girl” into a film or drama series. Having already won approval for screen adaptation from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the project now hinges on Geshuyi’s ability to secure investment and build a production team. The novelist’s views on publishing houses moonlighting as producers suggest that he won’t be seeking a publisher for the task: “The profession of publishers is publishing, and the profession of film and TV producers is film and TV production,” he said.

“If it is the case that the publishing house is a subsidiary set up by a TV and film production company, then there’s the possibility that it will work,” Geshuyi said. “But the problem for now is that neither China’s publishing houses nor TV and film production companies are particularly accomplished, in my opinion.”

Additional reporting by Wu Haiyun. 

(Header image: Blend Images/VCG)

Tune into any of the soaps, period dramas, or Sino-Japanese War series that dominate daytime TV in China, and there’s a good chance the words spoken by the actors you see will have been replaced with those of voiceover artists. The end result: clinical enunciation void of regional imperfections, eerily silent background noise, and speech that is often noticeably out of sync with lip movement.

There are a number of reasons why TV producers choose to dub the voices of their actors, says leading voice artist Jiang Guangtao, and these range from excessive background noise on-set in China’s crowded production complexes to the occasional need to follow orders from the country’s media regulators to change dialogue content post-production.

But perhaps the reason most telling of the state of China’s TV and film industries is the caliber of today’s actors, whose substandard deliveries mean voiceover artists are left tidying up after them.

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When asked how he copes with having to dub the voices of poorly trained actors, Jiang is initially very diplomatic. But when pressed, he pauses. “Wait a moment,” he says. There is the sound of movement on the other end of the line. When Jiang starts talking again, it’s clear he’s found a quieter place to talk.

“In the past 20 years, if all of China’s actors were outstanding — if their performances were all good and their lines were all OK — then dubbing actors like me would have […] found it tough to survive,” Jiang says. “I’m thankful for these actors who aren’t good enough in the eyes of viewers for having helped the voice-dubbing industry be so good for so long.”

Then there is the requirement by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT) that all words in television be spoken in a standard Mandarin void of regional accent. Regulations emphasize the importance of this when a television show depicts a national leader; Mao Zedong, for instance, had a notoriously thick Hunan accent, but on TV his lines are delivered with flawless pronunciation. When the Mandarin of actors is not up to scratch, producers will call upon voice actors like Jiang. 

The soft-spoken 40-year-old got his big break in 1999, when he was picked to voice the role of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character on the Chinese DVD release of “Titanic.” Since then, he has taken on the voices of Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings” and Sam Witwicky in “Transformers,” as well as characters in TV shows, anime, and computer games.

In an interview with Sixth Tone, Jiang explained why voice actors are in such high demand, spoke about the chaos of China’s premium film studios, and speculated on why the future is looking bright for China’s dubbing industry. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Sixth Tone: As a voice actor you are integral to a production, yet your role is very much removed from the limelight. What is the appeal of the profession?

Jiang Guangtao: I like things that are more creative. Today, animations, computer games, and audiobooks make up more of our work. The director’s inspiration is expressed through the dubbing actor’s voice, and the audience can experience the soul that has been created behind the scenes. This soul comes from the voice actor.

When I entered the industry, it was 1995, and I was working at the Changchun Film Studio. At that time, dubbing was mostly done on foreign films. Later in my career, I realized there were lots of animations, as well as national television shows, that needed dubbing. I didn’t realize that many of China’s actors needed other people to help them dub their lines.

Sixth Tone: Why does the voice of an actor so often need to be dubbed over in post-production? 

Jiang Guangtao: Maybe the actor adjusted the script, or didn’t remember their lines correctly, and it’s not discovered until later. Or maybe there’s trouble with an actor’s enunciation — there are lots of potential problems.

In China, movies and shows have to be approved by SAPPRFT. If SAPPRFT thinks something is reactionary, violent, bloody, erotic, feudalistic, superstitious, or one of the many things they want to avoid, we have to address this and make corrections.

There are many other problems. For example, the location where the shooting is taking place might be too loud, or the shooting process might not be well-arranged, or the general standard of work might not be high enough. All of these lead to baffling situations where the only solution is dubbing.

Sixth Tone: Aren’t modern-day production centers like Hengdian in eastern China’s Zhejiang province well-equipped for dealing with issues like background noise?

Jiang Guangtao: Hengdian is quite a small place, and these days it’s very crowded. At Hengdian, in one place there might be someone shooting something about the war of resistance against Japan, while in another area, a crew might be filming an old romance, while over here is something else, and over there is another — it’s an awkward situation.

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Hengdian is a tourist spot, and every day it welcomes lots of tourists. Frequently, when dubbing a film you will hear the tour guides shouting on the recording, because Chinese tour guides use loud speakers. It’s annoying for the actors.

Sixth Tone: Dialects and even regional accents are banned in television, something to which the ubiquity of dubbing is sometimes attributed. Is a little regional flavor really that bad?

Jiang Guangtao: China is huge, and the difference between the dialects of each place can be very big. Even Chinese people can’t understand other Chinese people if they’re not from the same place or belong to the same linguistic group. It’s such a headache. That’s why SAPPFRT has this requirement.

China is actively seeking collaboration with foreign TV and film production companies — for instance, with Hollywood — while actors from other Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan will often film with us. I once saw a series that had people from northeastern China, Taipei, Hong Kong, Thailand, and South Korea. In China, we have a saying: “A chicken talking to a duck.” It’s at times like these that the importance of voice actors is so evident.

Sixth Tone: What is the relationship between the caliber of actors in China’s TV and film industries and the work that you do as a voice actor?

Jiang Guangtao: I can’t judge and say people are bad or good, because I once also tried to do regular acting. As a layperson, it’s very easy to comment on someone else’s performance and say it’s bad. If you are an insider, though, then you know how difficult the work actually is. Everyone’s thoughts on a performance are different, so I can’t say whether it’s bad. Dubbing is my job, and all I can do is put all my effort into turning a performance around.

In the past 20 years, if all of China’s actors were outstanding — if their performances were all good and their lines were all OK — then dubbing actors like me would have had to rely only on foreign-language films and animations for work, and we would have found it tough to survive. I’m thankful for these actors who aren’t good enough in the eyes of viewers, for having helped the voice-dubbing industry be so good for so long.

Sixth Tone: Other than poorly trained actors, what else has made the voice-acting industry as healthy as it is today?

Jiang Guangtao: Before, there were more TV shows to voice and not as many games or animations, but in the last two years — particularly this year — the number of games and animations has increased a lot. Things seem to have suddenly exploded. From this, we’ve got a much larger number of fans than we had before, and we have more opportunities to step out from behind the scenes and participate in shows and events. 

These days, young people watch a lot of Japanese animation, play Japanese games, and like the characters in them. All these characters are voiced by actors, so when people love a certain character, they will also love the voice, and this will make more people want to do this kind of work.

When animations are being promoted, they often don’t have a star, and the director may not be well-known, so more and more voice actors will make public appearances. If you see someone is not particularly attractive but they are still able to take the stage, the effect on ordinary people can be infectious.

(Header image: Two voice actors dub for cartoon characters at a studio in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, Dec. 6, 2016. Li Zhanjun/Southern Metropolis Daily/VCG)

Even as their counterparts in the West enjoy unprecedented popularity, podcasts in China have only recently begun to attract the attention of the country’s 560 million smartphone users. From “The New Yorker Radio Hour” to “My Dad Wrote a Porno,” English-language podcasts cater to every conceivable listener and every conceivable taste. Yet in China, use the word for podcast, boke, in conversation, and you’re likely to be met with blank stares.

According to a Pew Research poll, 21 percent of Americans surveyed in 2016 reported having listened to a podcast in the last month, the highest figure since the poll was first conducted in 2008. In China, however, just 5 percent of the population — around 72 million people — listened to “mobile internet radio” in the second quarter of 2016. Why, then, is podcasting so underappreciated in China compared to other forms of content entrepreneurship that seem to have such limitless potential?

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One reason has to do with accessibility. Apple’s iTunes, a one-stop shop for mobile media, debuted in 2001 but did not start carrying podcasts until June 2005. As iTunes was not available in China until 2009, Western listeners effectively had a four-year head start.

Even as Ku6, Tudou, and other early podcasting clients, or “podcatchers,” pioneered the trend in China — initially by aggregating radio programming — listeners were hard to come by because there was no RSS-like function through which they could subscribe to channels and automatically receive new episodes. Perhaps tellingly, both Ku6 and Tudou are now exclusively dedicated to video content.

Lifestyle is another factor that influences the popularity of podcasts in China. Because more Chinese use public transport than their American counterparts, people in the two countries face different choices.

“In the U.S., if you listen to the radio on your morning commute, you get to work — but if you watch TV, you crash,” Clay Shirky, an associate professor at New York University Shanghai and a prominent commentator on internet trends, tells Sixth Tone. “In China, this is often not the case.” Because taking the subway or riding the bus is a passive means of transit, Shirky argues, people in China have more options when it comes to entertaining themselves as they travel from one destination to another. According to U.S. census data from 2013, only 5.2 percent of Americans used public transport to travel to work, while 76.4 percent drove alone.

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And then there’s the elephant in the room: censorship and the increasingly fickle State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT). Shirky credits one particular event for a dramatic upswing in the popularity of podcasts in the United States: a 2008 episode of “This American Life” in which two reporters tried to make sense of the subprime mortgage crisis in a way that average people could understand. The episode won a Peabody Award, a highly acclaimed national medal that recognizes exceptional public service by American media outlets.

“China, meanwhile, had ‘Under the Dome,’ and we saw how that went,” says Shirky, referring to the scathing documentary on the country’s air pollution that initially received praise from state newspaper China Daily and environmental protection minister Chen Jining — before disappearing from the Chinese internet one week later. The film remains a testament to the fact that hard-hitting journalism is inherently more challenging to pull off in China, and explains why investigative podcasts in the vein of NPR’s “Serial” or “Embedded” have yet to see Chinese imitations.

The specter of censorship also explains the relative popularity of audiobooks, which, appearing either in their entirety or in serialized installments, account for 25.6 percent of China’s online audio content. For comparison, 14 percent of Americans surveyed in 2014 reported listening to an audiobook in the past year, according to a Pew Research poll. So why are audiobooks so ubiquitous in China?

The answer may come down to liability, as words that are initially written rather than spoken are easier to police. A word processor’s search function can quickly identify any potentially sensitive keywords; to do the same for audio content would require as-yet-undeveloped technology, Shirky says.

As a result, many of China’s largest providers of audio content, including Ximalaya, Qingting, Koala, and Lizhi, which together account for 80 percent of the market, initially embraced audiobooks and user-generated content — though with increased competition and demand for quality, these companies are now directing more resources toward the higher production value of professionally generated content.

But with such content comes the risk of copyright infringement, an inescapable reality in a country whose idea of intellectual property is less rigid than the West’s. In April 2015, for example, Koala accused its closest competitor, Qingting, of illegally distributing Koala’s own copyrighted material. Now, because of the occupational hazard of having content “repurposed” by other providers, some companies have turned to a “professional user-generated content” strategy, by which they recruit and train amateur podcasters to produce high-quality material. Qingting alone has signed more than 12,000 grassroots content-creators whom it has high hopes of turning into cash cows.

Podcasting in China is a relatively new phenomenon still waiting to truly catch on. Instead, live-streaming — which in the U.S. occupies a specific, largely gaming-inspired niche — garners more devotees in China and draws covetous glances from investors who see its potential. For podcasting to flourish in China, quality content will be key — but whether this is even possible within such a restrictive environment remains a subject of debate, as does the question of whether Chinese consumers, who are just coming around to the idea that high-quality entertainment might actually be worth paying for, will ever be fully sold on the trend.

With contributions from Yin Yijun.

(Header image: A boy listens to an audiobook through headphones in Shanghai, Aug. 20, 2016. Wang Yadong/VCG)

Year in year out, the Spring Festival Gala hosted by China’s state broadcaster CCTV is a chance for the country’s ruling Communist Party to stoke patriotic sentiment, praise ethnic unity, and flex military muscle. It’s also the subject of ridicule from the country’s younger generation, who see the unending supply of dated jokes and token celebrities as reminiscent of an elderly uncle trying just a bit too hard to be hip.

Anticipating the onslaught of criticism, a commentary published Friday afternoon by the Party’s mouthpiece newspaper The People’s Daily welcomed the prospect of constructive feedback. That people would criticize a show that was striving to be “fashionable and down to earth” was simply a sign that people’s aesthetic tastes were advancing along with the development of society, the commentary said.

But as hundreds of millions tuned in on Friday night, eve of the Lunar New Year, for their yearly dose of disappointment and schadenfreude, the show started with a slick one-two-three punch that had viewers wondering if the Spring Fesitval Gala had become a true, modern media spectacle.

Teenage heartthrobs TFBOYS and the leading cast of China’s widely loved answer to “Sex and the City” kicked things off at 8 p.m. with a tasteful ode to the “Chinese Year.” A comedy skit followed where a woman found out her husband’s high-up job was not among the senior ranks of a company but hanging from skyscrapers cleaning windows. Third up was a duet between megastars Hu Ge and Wang Kai, one of China’s best loved bromances.

Web users were at a loss. Where were the caodian — unintentionally laughable, embarrassing elements that are usually a staple of the annual show? “Looks like I’m watching a fake Spring Festival Gala,” lamented one microblog Weibo user, “Are there no caodian????”

Netizens needn’t have worried. Durex China — always up for stretching boundaries— drew a likeness between the beanie of one elderly character to the shape of a condom, much to the glee of Weibo users.

But a skit in which a woman suggests divorcing her husband out of fear that he will abandon her because she cannot conceive drew criticisms of a more serious note. “The sketches in the Spring Festival Gala are an annual climax of prejudice against women,” wrote columnist Lin Jian on his Weibo.

That the female protagonist — played by actor Yan Xuejing — felt the need to do such a thing reflects the burden to continue the man’s family name, Lin told Sixth Tone. “In this day and age people actually still treat women like child bearing machines,” he said. “China used to be at the forefront of feminism. I don’t know why it feels like we’re going backwards.”

But as criticisms both serious and playful proliferated online, some viewers soon found that their avenues to vent were being blocked by China’s media regulators. 

Users of popular knowledge sharing platform Zhihu were prohibited from searching for “Spring Festival Gala,” while those on messaging app WeChat found that they were unable to post certain words into group chats or onto their Moments — a function similar to Facebook’s newsfeed. Posting the sentence “Cherish life, stay away from the Spring Festival Gala” — a play on a similar expression referring to drugs — returned an error message saying: “Failed to send; your text contains inappropriate content.”

Users searching for the same expression on Weibo came up against the same brick wall — other users switched the word for “cherish” — zhen’ai— for an exact homonym meaning “true love,” before that expression, too, was promptly blocked. 

Soon after the gala began, TV star, musician, and campaigner against plagiarism and lip-syncing Liang Huan said in a since-deleted Weibo: “Looking at the way things are going — fake enough to break your heart into pieces — I’ll just say which [performances] are real.” 

An assistant to the 28-year-old told Sixth Tone that Liang was unable to accept an interview due to the sensitivity of the subject, though they confirmed that he had been prohibited from posting following his previous Weibo regarding lip-syncing.

But it seemed that producers had taken on board the criticism levelled at the 2016 gala by some viewers, who ridiculed the show for its overdone political messages. The director of that show — Lü Yitao — became a meme in himself when he proudly proclaimed, “I’d give that Spring Festival Gala 100 points.”

Compared with last year’s streams of marching soldiers and songs praising the latest Party campaigns, this year’s political messages were arguably more subtle, with a visibly stronger focus on family life and children — a feature that some viewers read as implicit encouragement for couples to get on with making the most of the country’s relaxed family planning laws. 

Ethnic and national unity underpinned many of the acts, as it always has. In one of the evening’s most high-profile performances, Hong Konger Jackie Chan sang “Nation,” a song celebrating the relationship between a strong country and a prosperous home. With Chan on stage were university students from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as ethnic minorities: a royal flush in the country’s efforts to insist on unity across geographical, political, and ethnic lines.

That performance was applauded by many, not necessarily for its message, but for the use of sign language by the performers, with one Weibo user who described themselves as working in special education saying: “It looks like our special education is developing. This is our motherland showing itself in great ways.” They did add, however, that Chan had yet to master the sign for “nation.” “You have to tuck your thumbs in.”

That kind of criticism would have struck a chord with Friday’s People’s Daily commentary, which implored viewers to strive to applaud the good and be tolerant of the bad. “You shouldn’t look down on plain tea and simple food just because you’ve eaten fish and meat,” it said. “Neither should your choice of more freedom make you fail to see the unending efforts of the Spring Festival Gala production team to improve.”

With contributions from Yin Yijun.

(Header image: Performers conclude CCTV’s 2017 Spring Festival Gala with the song ‘Tonight Is Unforgettable,’ Beijing, Jan. 27, 2017. Yu Zhuo/VCG)

One of China’s leading directors has locked horns with the country’s largest film distribution and cinema company over accusations that the company was unduly limiting the screen time of his new film, “I Am Not Madame Bovary.”

In an open letter addressed directly to Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man and chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group, 58-year-old Feng Xiaogang said that Wanda Cinemas, the movie theater branch of Wang’s company, was maliciously damaging the film’s prospects because it was produced by industry rival Huayi Brothers. The open letter, published Friday to microblog platform Weibo, has been liked over 62,000 times and garnered almost 68,000 comments, including both voices of support and criticism.

Feng said that other cinema chains around the country were showing his latest release at a rate of above 40 percent of all screenings, while the equivalent rate at Wanda’s cinemas lay at just 10.9 percent. He urged cinemagoers to “hurry to other cinemas to see Madame Bovary for the last time before Wanda extends its grasp and buys up all of the country’s cinemas.”

Data provided on the mobile app of leading box office monitor EntGroup shows that the countrywide average screening rate for the film currently stands at 34 percent, while the film’s screening rate at Wanda’s cinemas stands at just over 10.8 percent.  

The satirical comedy, released today, tells the story of a rural woman who takes on the country’s legal system in a decade-long campaign, after being swindled by her ex-husband. Lead actress Fan Bingbing won an award for her portrayal of protagonist Li Xuelian at the Toronto International Film Festival in September this year. 

The release date of “I Am Not Madame Bovary” was changed from Sept. 30 to Nov. 18, leading to widespread speculation that the film had hit troubled waters with China’s film censorship body. At an event celebrating the film’s success at the San Sebastian Film Festival, Feng said that the delay was not due to censorship, but because the producers wanted to avoid clashing with a cluster of other blockbusters during China’s national holiday in October.

A Wanda Cinema public relations official declined to comment to Sixth Tone when contacted on Friday, and the company has not released any form of official statement regarding Feng’s accusations. But Wang Sicong, the son of Wang Jianlin who has a history of speaking his mind in a frank fashion, has jumped at the chance to offer his two cents.

In a post to his own Weibo account just an hour and a half after Feng’s, Wang Sicong accused Feng of using his status as one of China’s leading directors to incite the public and muscle in on a matter that was none of his business. “Pleasantries and grumblings between two private enterprises are a matter for those two companies,” Wang Sicong wrote in the post, which had received over 205,000 likes as of Friday evening.

Wang Sicong then asked Feng: “Are we not allowed to reduce the screen time of your film because we don’t think it’s any good?” He also took the opportunity to air his grievances about Huayi Brothers’ March appointment of new deputy CEO Ye Ning, formerly the deputy CEO of Wanda. “Are we not allowed to be unhappy that Huayi Brothers stole from us a high-level executive, who had signed a ‘professionalism agreement?’” — appearing to refer to a non-compete clause.

Wang Sicong, who is a shareholder in and board member of his father’s company, concluded his response by saying that Wanda would nonetheless add screen time if the film proved itself in the box office: “No one is bigger than money.”

A scathing response by Feng addressed to “Prince Chairman Sicong” appeared to connect the dots between the departure of executive Ye to Huayi Brothers and Wanda’s decision to limit the film’s screen time. “Thank you for making public the causes and consequences,” Feng wrote. “Your unhappiness led to you not liking the film, which in turn led to Wanda’s low screening rates for ‘I Am Not Madame Bovary.’”

“I don’t know what the principles of your professionalism agreement are,” Feng continued, “but I think respect for the rules of the market is also a kind of professionalism.”

Some users on Weibo have rallied around Feng, with the highest-rated commenter on his open letter saying: “Ever since Wanda’s deputy executive fled to join Huayi, Wanda has begun boycotting Huayi. Like [my comment], make more people see this!” Other Weibo users have obliged — that comment has been up-voted over 41,000 times.

But the overwhelming reaction to Feng’s outburst has been one of scorn, with many citing pure financial gain as the sole cause of his campaign. “Why do they owe you so much screen time?” asked the author of a comment with more than 6,000 likes under Feng’s open letter. “This is just about normal competition,” the comment continued, “why do you have to fan the flames?” 

Additional reporting by Yin Yijun.

(Header image: People wear 3-D glasses while watching a movie at a Wanda Cinema Line Co. cinema in Beijing, March 14, 2015. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images/VCG)

While most of the country was on a weeklong holiday to celebrate Chinese New Year, Shanghai Disney Resort saw a peak in visitor numbers — and also in scalpers who cashed in on the long lines.

The Shanghai International Tourism and Resorts Zone, where the Disney park is located, was visited more than 580,000 times during the Spring Festival holiday, Sixth Tone’s sister publication The Paper reported Thursday.

To mitigate the long lines, the park offers so-called Fast Passes for its most popular rides that can be picked up for free and presented at a later time in exchange for a trip to the front of the line. But there is a limited number of passes available for each ride, and during the holiday week, visitors found they were already gone early in the day.

“It’s impossible for regular visitors to get a Fast Pass for Soaring Over the Horizon,” a woman surnamed Zhang told Sixth Tone, referring to the park’s most popular ride. “I saw several scalpers holding a lot of tickets,” the Shanghai native said. “All the Fast Passes were gone within 10 minutes.”

A woman surnamed Liu, who traveled to Shanghai from Dalian, a city in northeastern China’s Dalian province, told Sixth Tone she was also approached by scalpers during her visit to the Disney park. “We should have bought Fast Passes for Soaring Over the Horizon from scalpers,” she said. “We met one in the morning, and he said he could give us the Fast Passes for 200 yuan [$29] each.”

Liu didn’t accept the deal then, nor did she accept the same offer later in the day at double the price. “I waited for more than four hours outside Soaring Over the Horizon, which I really regret” she said. When Liu visited Shanghai Disney on Tuesday, she was one of over 100,000 tourists at the park.

The Disney scalpers were creative in their moneymaking schemes. During Liu’s four-hour wait in line, a middle-aged woman appealed to those passing by, saying that for 100 yuan per person, she could take them to the front of the line, where a spot was being held. “Lining up on behalf of others is the most disgusting thing,” Liu said. “The line didn’t move at all because there were so many people cutting.”

Long lines could be found throughout the park, and everywhere scalpers were making the most of these opportunities. One net user complained on microblog platform Weibo that at one of the park’s eateries, a scalper was selling turkey legs for 120 yuan each. “My goodness! It really made my blood boil,” he wrote.

Alli Ward, who visited the resort on Thursday, told Sixth Tone that she saw scalpers selling everything from merchandise to entry tickets. Ward, an Australian who lives in Shanghai, said she was surprised staff were not making an effort to deter the scalpers. “There were scalpers walking up and down the queues at the park entry in clear view of security, and yet they weren’t addressed,” she said. “It’s definitely a negative aspect of going to Shanghai Disney.”

Shen Qing, a representative for the tourist zone’s police department, told Sixth Tone that authorities do try to stop the scalpers. “We have plainclothes officers to crack down on their business,” she said. 

A Shanghai Disney Resort spokesperson told Sixth Tone that the park works closely with local authorities on matters of security but added, “We do not share details about our security measures because it would compromise their effectiveness.”

Even before the park opened it became a target of scalpers. When tickets went on sale two months before the resort was ready to receive its first visitors, they sold out quickly and could soon be found online for double the price.

Some scalpers even had satisfied customers. One net user wrote on Weibo that she and her three fellow travelers had spent 3,000 yuan on Fast Passes during a recent visit. “Money can be earned, but time cannot be wasted,” she wrote. “Though expensive, overall, we had a great time.”

(Header image: Tourists stand outside the Shanghai Disney Resort, Jan. 29, 2017. Zhong Yang/IC)