Media and Advertising

Chinese online celebrities: from doggy style to hibiscus hag

furong_jiejie.jpg

City Weekend, one of Beijing and Shanghai's free English magazines, just published a story about China's newest online celebrity, a girl who calls herself Furong Jiejie (芙蓉姐姐) or Hibiscus Older Sister (pictured). The China Daily immediately pirate-published the City Weekend story, ensuring a little English language fame for China's newest female blog star.

Furong Jiejie writes boring nonsense about herself and publishes photographs of herself in sexually assertive but unrevealing poses. It's difficult to understand why she has become a blog star: perhaps it's because while she is not very attractive, she often talks about her beauty, and poses for photos like a minx.

As happened with Mu Zimei (aka Muzi Mei) — the sex blogger who shot to overnight fame after describing publishing a dismissive story about a doggy style tryst with Guangzhou rocker Wang Lei — domain name pirates have registered many variations of Furong Jiejie and are using them to direct web surfers to websites which pretend to offer soft porn films for download (link below).

No matter what the reason for her popularity, Hibiscus Sister shot to the top of Baidu's ranking of searches on 'personalities' a few weeks ago, and she is still there. Here then, is Baidu's list of top ten most searched for personalities, and what a collection it is:

1. Furong Jiejie (芙蓉姐姐)
29,085 searches on Baidu today.

2. Liumang Yan 流氓燕
A middle aged blogger who published nude pictures of herself and advice on how to seduce men.

3. Mu Zimei 木子美
The longest-running Chinese sex blogger, now with a few books under her belt and still going strong — her latest blog post is about 'vaginal skills'.

4. Juhua Meimei 菊花妹妹
Juhua Meimei means Chrysanthemum Younger Sister. She seems to be a knockoff version of Hibiscus Older Sister.

5. Zhu Ying Qing Tong 竹影青瞳
This female blogger appeared during the height of Mu Zimei's fame: she was rumored to have published nude photos of herself on a website, causing a lot of online discussion even though no one seemed to have actually seen the photographs. Her current website is subtitled 'sexy life'.

6. Guo Jingming 郭敬明
Male hearthrob teen novelist.

7. Huang Xin 黄薪
An instant celebrity from China's recent 'Super Female Voice' competition (超级女声 — something like American Idol).

8 Mao Zedong 毛泽东
You may have heard of him.

9 Anni Baobei 安妮宝贝
Also known as Baby Anni and Anni Babe, she is a online novelist who writes about independent urban girls. She has published several books.

10. Song Ci 宋慈
A legendary Song Dynasty judge, currently featuring in popular TV drama Dasong Tixingguan.

Links and Sources
Media Partners
Visit these sites for the latest China news
090609guardian2.png 090609CNN3.png
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
laomo2008fpA.jpg
Recommended blogs and new media
Books on China
AXL091030storiesforthcoming.jpg
Princess Der Ling: Two Years in the Forbidden City: Two years in the Forbidden City is largely a reminiscence of the minutiae of life for one of history's most powerful women, by one of her court attendants, a Manchu noble's daughter by the name of Der Ling.
Carl Crow's The Long Road Back to China: In 1939 Carl Crow - an American journalist, advertising executive and author who had lived in Shanghai for 25 years until forced out by the Japanese - travelled up the Burma Road from Rangoon to Chongqing on assignment for Liberty magazine - 'the most interesting assignment I have ever been given'.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ New Years Past: Other Spring Festivals by Geremie R. Barmé (2007.02): Sang Ye interviews two people about their experiences during Great Leap Forward-era Spring Festivals. Translated and annotated by Geremie R. Barmé.
+ Trend-spotting in online fiction (2007.06): An interview with Daniel Dan Fei (丹飞), publisher of Notes on Graverobbing (盗墓笔记), Rear Palace (后宫), and Those Ming Dynasty Things (明朝那些事).
+ China's 50 Most Beautiful People (2005.03): The Beijing News borrows a picture of Maggie Cheung from Cosmo for the cover of today's Entertainment insert, "50 Most Beautiful People in China". Ms. Cheung takes the top spot, with Takeshi Kaneshiro, Little S, Zhang Ziyi, and Liu Ye rounding out the top five in this exercise that is a conscious imitation of People magazine's yearly rundown.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky rsschiclet2.png (on the mainland)
or Feedburner rsschiclet.gif (blocked in China)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Main feed: Main posts (FB has top links)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Top Links: Links from the top bar
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Jobs: Want ads
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30