The Power of Stardom?

A Chinese teacher reportedly tried to snooker her students into lauding a Chinese actor named Xiaozhan-肖战 in Chinese , according to a Chinese article. Yet one of her students pooh-poohed her demands by jiving this actor directly. The student reportedly said "肖战必糊" in Chinese, which can be seen as a taunt used by this actor's detractors to belittle him-it means this actor's efforts to be a marquee star will go down the tubes in English. The female teacher railed at this recalcitrant student after hearing this.

Word on the street is that this actor's agent has spent lots of money trying to burnish this actor's public image and boost his popularity, such as hiring publicists online to blurb his songs or TV productions. The Chinese call such hired guns shui jun or 水军 in Chinese. It's customary for young actors and actresses to pull such tricks in a bid to attract eyeballs in China.


The plot thickens. A Chinese girl claiming to be the former editor of a school newspaper in Xiamen groused about the actions of some fans of this actor on her Weibeo, saying she had been perturbed by their incessant calls to her demanding that the school newspaper say sorry to this actor. The school newspaper had berated a local female teacher for having badgered her students to cheer for the same actor in class.

According to a video released by this former editor, the former editor also told them that she's no longer the editor of this newspaper even her phone number could still be found on the website of the school newspaper, asking them not to make such bothersome personal calls to her. " My old colleagues must have forgotten to remove my phone number," she wrote on her Weibo.

Yet to her chagrin, some fans of this actor wouldn't cut this former editor some slack , despite being told that she's no longer the editor. And at least two girls tore this former editor and the school newspaper to shreds for trying to abrogate their responsibilities.

" I don't know what are you talking about? Do you belong to an organization?" the former editor asked them spitefully , and then implored the two girls not to pester her with more agonizing questions.

" I'm just asking you to behave well. It would be wrong for your newspaper to take this actor to task. Is that understood? The two girls blurted out with more diatribes against the former editor.

"I fu le them, the aggrieved former editor said at length. Chinese people use the expression fu le to describe a situation in which you would be hard-pressed to find another pertinent word other than fu le to talk about someone's stupidity, which can be construed as a jab.