POP CULTURE CORNER

FANNING THE FLAMES

He Ziming is what you’d term a “minor celebrity,” known for acting in a few moderately successful TV shows. Together with his fellow minor-celebrity wife He Jie, who became popular in the nationally televised Supergirl singing contest in 2005, the couple reached slightly higher levels of, well, minor fame. A fair chunk of He Ziming’s fame has come crashing down after netizens became convinced that he was one half of a fairly damning phone call to the host of a late-night radio show about relationships. In the call, the man tells the host of the late-night relationship advice show that his marriage is on the rocks and his wife is asking for divorce, leaving him with nothing. He claims that his wife is domineering, makes more money than him, is more famous than him, and that if he gets a divorce he wants one of their two kids (not a specific one, just half of the total number of kids). The call included a few details, such as the length of the couple’s relationship and level of fame, that led netizens to deduce the caller was He Ziming himself (for the record, TWOC has no idea whether this is or is not him). In the call, he also accuses his wife of having an affair and says that the couple’s sex life is “not harmonious.” Anyway, shortly after the controversy, He’s Weibo fan page became a cesspool of hatred toward him. “Loyal” fans indeed. - daVid daWSon

GAME ON

Could Onmyoji become China’s biggest cultural export of the year? Mobile games have become a massive money-earner, nowhere more so than in China where many rely on their phones to access the internet. At first sight, it seems rather unusual that arguably China’s biggest mobile-game success story of the year has been NetEase's Onmyoji, which deliberately models itself on Japanese styles of animation. The gameplay itself is nothing particularly unusual; it’s an RPg adventure involving a card deck. The animation and voice acting, however, have been praised as top notch. Already dominating the gaming markets in China, Onmyoji is set to take to Japanese and other foreign markets soon if the company has its way. - d.d.

HIGH PRICE TO SING

On December 30, Chinese pop singer Faye Wong held a concert in Shanghai. This, in itself, is not news, but the fact that the minimum price of a ticket was 1,800 RMB ($259 USD) was sufficient to outrage Wong’s legion of fans. The tickets came in three price tiers, ranging from 1,800 RMB to 5,800 RMB and 7,800 RMB.To make matters worse, tickets at that obscenely high price sold out within the space of just 32 seconds from the official website, with scalpers and secondary agents buying them up and reselling those basic 1,800 RMB tickets for between 3,000 and 5,000 RMB. In an already outraged atmosphere, an industry insider by the name of Yang Yue claimed that there had been more dirty, diabolical, no good deeds: the official website had released just 800 tickets at an 8,000-seat venue in a naked effort to inflate prices. - d.d.

GREAT WALL OF OUTRAGE

China’s biggest ever blockbuster was released in December, starring Matt Damon and a whole lot of CgI monsters. The great Wall by and large met with a resounding “eh, it’s okay I guess” from audiences and critics in China, earning a rating of 5.4 out of 10 rating on review aggregator Douban. There were, of course, critics who had stronger views. One reviewer even said director Zhang Yimou was dead (i.e. artistically), which prompted a furious response from the studio. Casting a white guy to be the frontman of a film about ancient China was always a risky gambit, and it’s not certain whether it is paying off, with plenty of claims of Hollywood whitewashing and Matt Damon saying in an interview that these criticisms were “a bummer.”The film is doing reasonably well in China, though the real test will come once profits from its US release are tallied. - d.d.

you’Ve goT queSTionS, She’S goT anSWerS

(BuT you proBaBly Won’T liKe TheM)

I am a Rabbit and my husband is an Ox. Can you tell me our fortune in the coming Year of the Rooster?

Zodiac Zelda

Rabbit and Ox? It’s not exactly a 天作之合(ti`nzu7 zh~ h9, a match made in heaven). He may have seemed steady when you first met, but he’ll turn out as stubborn as, well, an ox. And you? You are too timid to challenge him. More bad news: Ill feng shui awaits you as a Rabbit in the Year of the Rooster due to 犯太岁 (f3n t3isu#, offending Tai Sui, or god of the planet Jupiter). Your husband, on the contrary, will have 吉星高照 (j!x~ng g`zh3o, a lucky star shining overhead). He will receive 贵人相助 (gu#r9n xi`ng zh&, an auspicious person offering help), and it will be a year when his 事业上升 (sh#y- sh3ngsh8ng, enterprise rises). I also see a bit of 桃花 (t1ohu`, peach blossom, referring to romantic affairs) in his near future. I think the signs are clear: He will get a big promotion, make a lot of money, and dump you. You’d better prepare for that. The heavenly cycles don’t lie.