Where in the world is Fan Bingbing?

[GeneChing]

Continued from previous post

Fan with Marion Cotillard, Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, and Lupita Nyong’o.
BEYOND BOND
Before she vanished, Fan was slated to co-star in a spy thriller with Marion Cotillard, Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, and Lupita Nyong’o.
By George Pimentel/WireImage.

After her release, Fan issued an obsequious apology on social media. Saying she had endured “an unprecedented amount of pain,” she said she felt “ashamed and guilty” for not “setting a good example for society and the industry.” She went on: “Today I’m facing enormous fears and worries over the mistakes I made! I have failed the country, society’s support and trust, and the love of my devoted fans! I offer my sincere apology here once again! I beg for everyone’s forgiveness!” She concluded with a reference to a popular Chinese song from the 1950s: “Without the party and the state, without the love of the people, there would have been no Fan Bingbing!”

That same day, tax authorities reported that Fan had declared only a third of her $4.4 million salary for Air Strike, a Chinese action film starring Bruce Willis. The movie’s release was canceled, and a warrant was issued for one of its investors. Fan’s longtime agent, a former nightclub manager named Mu Xiaoguang, was found destroying the company books and was taken into custody. Fan was ordered to pay $131 million in back taxes and penalties—including $70 million from her personal funds. (In fact, Fang told me, Fan wound up paying only $2 million of her own money, which she raised by borrowing funds and selling off properties.) It could have been worse. Until 2009, first-time tax offenders in China could be charged with criminal liability. And until 2011, economic crimes such as tax evasion were punishable by death.

The harsh treatment of China’s biggest star sent a clear signal to everyone in the Chinese film industry: the boom days of the past were coming to an end. When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, actors and actresses were renamed “film workers” in an effort to cut “capitalist connections and remold them into socialist citizens,” according to Sabrina Qiong Yu, a scholar of Chinese film. For decades, film workers received salaries on par with factory workers, and most movies were imported from Hollywood. By 2000, the Chinese film industry was producing fewer than 100 movies a year—and only two dozen or so were shown in one of the country’s 8,000 theaters. The rest were stored at the national granary, in climate-uncontrolled archives.

Then, after 2010, the government decided there was big money to be made in movies. State banks began to finance mergers and acquisitions, and China’s studios went on a buying bender. They snapped up the U.S. theater chain AMC, tried to purchase Dick Clark Productions, which produces the Golden Globes, and signed major financing deals with Sony Pictures, Universal, Fox, and Lionsgate. In total, the deals added up to $10 billion, heavily financed by state-backed banks. Today the Chinese film industry produces more than 800 films a year, and China will soon overtake the United States as the world’s largest film market. For the past four years, China has been building 25 new movie screens every day.

Because show business is still so new in China—it’s been only 20 years since private companies have been allowed to make movies—there aren’t many bankable stars who can guarantee box-office success. As a result, A-list actors like Fan Bingbing were able to command top dollar: it was not uncommon for as much as 90 percent of a film’s production budget to go toward on-screen talent. “We are in the golden age of Hollywood, where the star is key,” said a Chinese film executive who asked not to be identified.

Last year, after Fan turned down the role of the Chinese oceanographer in The Meg, a sci-fi thriller produced by Warner Bros., the studio considered Tang Wei and Jing Tian before deciding on Li Bingbing. “It’s a very short list,” said the same executive, who was involved in the film. Fan seemed poised to become that impossible thing: a star who can appease fans in the three Chinas—mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—as well as Hollywood studios, and their sudden desire for Asian faces.

The star-dependent culture was on full display at a DVD store in Beijing where I bought pirated copies of Fan’s movies. Discs were organized not by title or category but by actor. Nicolas Cage, Tom Hanks, Tom Hardy, and Jason Statham all received the full-row treatment. Nicole Kidman, whom many Chinese consider a vision of unimpeachable beauty, also got her own row. Others—Natalie Portman, Michelle Williams, even Meryl Streep—were relegated to a row seemingly reserved for miscellaneous white actresses.

In the years that the Chinese film industry was allowed to grow unregulated, it became common for stars to falsify contracts to avoid paying taxes on the huge sums that they were commanding. That’s why Fan’s sudden fall sent a chill through the rest of the film world. “There was a certain surprise in the industry,” said Kwei, the producer. “Fan Bingbing was only doing the usual standard package.” David Unger, Gong Li’s manager, put it more bluntly. “The big error,” he said, “was that she was caught.”

Fan’s disappearance, and the subsequent crackdown, was the result of larger forces at play: After years of double-digit growth, the Chinese economy is slowing down. The government claims that economic output grew by 6.5 percent last year—the lowest rate in more than a decade—but observers believe the rate is as low as 2 percent. With consumer spending slowing and foreign investment plunging in the midst of a trade war, the government is seeking to redirect economic power back under state control. It won’t be long, many in China predict, before the tax scandal bleeds into other sectors. What happened to Fan was merely the “primary incision,” says Alex Zhang, executive director of Zhengfu Pictures. Soon, the authorities will “cut all the way down to the rest of the business community.”

In March 2018, President Xi established the National Supervision Commission, granting it sweeping powers to investigate corruption and tax evasion. Suspects could now be legally kidnapped, interrogated, and held for as long as six months. That same month, he also gave the Central Publicity Department, which heads up propaganda efforts, the authority to regulate the film industry. (The only other time film was put under the propaganda ministry, according to industry insiders, was during the Cultural Revolution.) Films that had passed the censors years ago have now been retroactively banned. “That liminal space where you can get away with stuff, that’s gone,” said Michael Berry, a professor of contemporary Chinese culture at U.C.L.A.

[QUOTE]Fan was not alone in evading taxes: “The big error was that she was caught.”

Under Xi’s crackdown, tens of thousands of people have disappeared into the maw of the police state. An eminent TV news anchor was taken away hours before going on air. A retired professor with views critical of the government was dragged away during a live interview on Voice of America. A billionaire was abducted from his private quarters in the Four Seasons in Hong Kong. Other high-profile disappearances include Interpol president Meng Hongwei in September, photojournalist Lu Guang in November, two Canadians who went missing in December, as well as the writer Yang Hengjun, who went missing in January. “The message being sent out is that nobody is too tall, too big, too famous, too pretty, too whatever,” said Steve Tsang, who runs the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Taken together, Xi’s moves represent a dramatic rollback of the economic reforms and relative freedom that enabled the film industry to flourish in the time before his reign. “Deng Xiaoping kept everyone together by promising to make them rich,” said Nicholas Bequelin, the East Asia director of Amnesty International. “What keeps things together under Xi is fear. Fear of the system, where no matter how high you are, from one day to the next you can disappear.”

When I arrived in Beijing, just before Christmas, everyone in the film industry seemed to be in a state of panic. The tax authorities had issued a directive calling for all film companies to do ziwo piping, or “self-criticism,” and “rectify themselves” by paying the back taxes they owed on unreported income before December 31. Those who paid up would not be fined. Starting in the new year, however, there would be “heavy, random checks,” and those who were caught would be “dealt with seriously.”
[/QUOTE] continued next post

[GeneChing]

Continued from previous post

Fan in X-Men: Days of Future Past
VANISHING ACT
Fan made her proper Hollywood debut as Blink, a mutant with the power to disappear and reappear, in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
From AF Archive/Alamy.

The authorities also declared that special tax zones, which had allowed stars to pay lower taxes, were no longer legal. Following the proverb “The mountains are tall and the emperor is far away,” many film studios had registered in these special zones, far from the major coastal cities. Tax rates in the zones could be as low as 0.15 percent. Now, overnight, those working in the film industry would be taxed at the highest rate—45 percent. And all this was to be paid for not only 2018 but also for the two previous fiscal years, dating back to January 2016.

The rising fear was palpable on WeChat, where people were sharing ad hoc formulas meant to help calculate how much tax they owed in lieu of any official guidelines. Many faced staggering sums that dwarfed Fan’s tax bill. Open letters protesting the yidaoqie, or “one knife chop” approach, of the tax bureau made the rounds before being taken down.

Because of Fan’s clout in the industry, the probe of her finances had incriminated many companies that were partnering with her on projects. Scores of films have been put on hold. “Everyone you can think of is dealing with taxes right now,” said Kwei, the producer. Many had either already been “invited for tea” at the tax bureau, or were awaiting their turn. Others were rushing to meet with their accountants, or were holed up in their offices reviewing past budget sheets. Victoria Mao, who runs a production company, told me that all of her projects had been put on hold just days earlier, after she received a call from the tax bureau asking her to self-audit. “We don’t have any time to go forward,” she said, “because we have to go back.”

People were even more reticent than usual to talk on the phone. “We are not the only people on the line, so to speak,” producer Andre Morgan told me, before suggesting we meet at his hotel. Morgan, who is widely credited for introducing Jackie Chan to Hollywood, described how things have changed since he came to China in 1972. “There weren’t that many rules back then,” he said. Now the bureaucracy is catching up with the industry. As he sees it, the people aren’t afraid of the state—the state is afraid of the people. That’s why the government singled out and punished a select few, like Fan—to keep everyone else in line. Morgan quoted a Chinese proverb: the state is “killing the chicken to scare the monkey.” (He also said, in a burst of animal metaphors, that it is only a matter of time before “the chickens come home to roost,” and that the government is doing whatever it can to “catch the mouse.”)

After the government issued the new tax directive, screenwriters had protested to the authorities, who in turn agreed to tax income on original screenplays at only 16 percent, the maximum rate on intellectual property. This enraged directors, who were being taxed the full 45 percent for their work. If a completed movie is not intellectual property, they demanded, then what is? “What is culture?” wondered Fan’s producer, Fang Li, who himself owed $1.7 million in taxes. “What is intellectual property?” The tax authorities, it seemed, had thrown the film industry into a state of existential crisis.

My first Saturday in Beijing, I attended a dinner at the home of an actor. Dinner begins early in the city, and by the time I arrived, at seven P.M., the ayah had already put out dishes of pork belly, cured beef, tofu curds, lotus root, and chicken feet. And those were only the dishes I could discern.

Before we sat down to eat, the actor, who had moved in only two days before, offered to give his guests a tour of the multi-million-dollar home. We walked past a Japanese rock garden and a patio that opens up to a sweeping view of the city that was at once dystopian and weirdly beautiful. Because the house was shaped like a spaceship, and because I had fallen into a jet-lagged sleep the night before watching a dubbed version of the new Blade Runner, and because I was about to eat dishes I would never learn the names of, I felt like I had been transported into the future. Fan, predictably, was said to be living “just three houses down.”

The dinner party consisted entirely of film people. It’s a socially incestuous community, where everyone either went to the same film school, or belongs to the same agency, or lives in the same gated community. Even those who were meeting for the first time that evening discovered they had many friends in common, and bonded quickly.

The first bottle of the night was a Merlot from a Bordeaux winery that Zhao Wei, Fan’s co-star from My Fair Princess, had purchased for an estimated $6.4 million in 2011. Now Zhao, who had recently been banned from the stock market for misleading investors, was rushing to pay her back taxes before the December 31 deadline. As we moved on to more expensive wine, the talk turned to other colleagues who were scrambling to raise money to pay their back taxes—selling cars, mortgaging homes, taking out loans. A director said he owed $29,000. An actor responded by saying he owed $73,000.

Was anyone angry? “If we get angry, we are done,” explained the actor’s agent, who was the only one not drinking with abandon. “You can’t make movies anymore. We have just the one government.” People, he added, were “not mad, but confused.” The informal rules that had governed the industry for decades were changing, which was unnerving. Even worse, no one seemed to know what the new rules were. Meanwhile, the government was “taking money from your pocket.” But what could you do?

Around one in the morning, after our host had passed out in one of the guest rooms, a neighbor complained about the noise we were making with the newly installed sound system. The same neighbor, the agent told me, had complained the night before. That party had also gone on for hours, with interminable talk of tax woes over interminable glasses of baijiu.

In 2015, Fan told the South China Morning Post that she had no guanxi, or connections, in show business. “In China, to be successful, it is often not enough to have talent and earn merit,” she said. “Some guanxi is almost always necessary. But when I walked into the entertainment industry, my family had no guanxi. So I knew I had to risk failure and bear the consequences alone.”

It’s a Cinderella story worthy of Hollywood. In fact, however, Fan had the ultimate guanxi—her family’s longtime involvement in the Communist Party. Throughout her career, Fan has continued to be openly friendly with the authorities. Indeed, two of the biggest awards she’s received—the Hundred Flower and the Golden Rooster—represent “official opinion from the government,” according to Gao Yitian, a producer who runs the First International Film Festival. Fan’s tax breaches were not especially egregious. But she had the money to pay, says Zhang, the film executive. And most important, he adds, the government “knew she is smart enough to cooperate.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Continued from previous post

Fan walking inconspicuously
FAME AND MISFORTUNE
The first public sighting of Fan after her release, on October 15, 2018.
From VCG/Getty Images.

“That’s what happens here,” said Michael Gralapp, an entertainment recruiter who has consulted for a subsidiary of China Central Television. “You play ball, or you are screwed. So you play ball.”

Like many movie stars, Fan is famous more for the iconic traits she embodies than for her talents on-screen. (“When she is with a great director,” one publicist says, “she’s a great actress.”) In 2013, she made a China-only cameo as an unnamed nurse in Iron Man 3, a role that earned her the disparaging epithet of “flower vase”—a pretty prop in a Hollywood production. But the movie went on to make $121 million in China, and Hollywood took note. In 2014, Fan landed a bigger role in X-Men: Days of Future Past, as the teleporting superheroine Blink. She was also nominated for a Golden Horse Award, the Chinese equivalent of an Oscar, for her starring role in I Am Not Madame Bovary.

As her fame spread, Fan always made sure to stay in the good graces of the Communist Party. In 2017, she appeared in Sky Hunter, directed by Li Chen, to whom she is now engaged. Like Top Gun, the film is an unabashed work of military propaganda. In one scene, Fan appears in a bomber-pilot outfit, wielding an ax and running to save a boy and his mother. As the building disappears beneath their feet, Fan gets them to a helicopter just in time.

For the most part, Chinese films that have done well in the West have been either art-house pictures like Raise the Red Lantern or martial-arts movies in the tradition of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. (Ang Lee, whose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became the highest-grossing foreign-language film of all time in the U.S., was born in Taiwan.) Until recently, Fan has selected her roles with an eye not for potential exposure in Hollywood but for how she will be received at home. Her beauty, too, appeals to the domestic market. Taoists have long considered outer beauty—from “eyebrows like faraway mountains” to “feet like bamboo shoots carved in jade”—inexorably linked to inner virtue. And the Communist Party, scholars note, has expanded such time-honored definitions of beauty to include devotional sacrifice to the people. Fan, with her mix of patriotism and elegance, hits all the right notes. She is the perfect star for a modern China.

Since her release last October, Fan has consciously kept a low profile. (She and her agency declined to speak with VANITY FAIR for this story.) Her first post on social media after her public apology was an overt display of fealty to the Chinese government. On November 17, when a director made a pro-Taiwan comment at the Golden Horse Awards, Fan shared a pro-China post from the Communist youth league. “China,” she said, “cannot miss out on any inch.”

Her collaborators followed suit. On November 20, Feng Xiaogang, the director of the two Cell Phone movies, who was reported to have been fined $288 million, announced that his next film would be about the 70th anniversary of the founding of the party. Creative Artists Agency China, which represents Fan, was rumored to have lost more than half of its income with the scandal, and its agents have been scrambling to sign new talent. One analyst predicts that a third of the Chinese film industry will go out of business in the coming years, leaving fewer than 1,000 production companies standing. Not since the Cultural Revolution have artists in China been as wary of the state, and as aware of the necessity of appeasing it.

But capitalism, once unleashed, does not give up on its privileges and profits easily. The film industry in China remains huge. A studio movie in America typically opens on fewer than 2,500 screens. A wide release in China, by contrast, can open on more than 20,000 screens. More crucially, the country is said to need an estimated 500,000 scripts to fill all its available screens and airtime over the next five years. If the story of Fan is the story of modern film in China, then both are far from over.

Fan, for her part, appears to be quietly plotting a comeback. Throughout the crisis, her production company never shut its doors. “Of course she lost a lot of money,” said Fang, the producer. “But she’s not completely depressed.” Fang and Li, Fan’s best friend and frequent collaborator, have been discussing future projects for their favorite star. When I asked Li why she would risk casting Fan, she told me that the anguish Fan has gone through would become the well she draws from. “Nobody can be a better actress than her,” Li said.

Zhengfu Pictures, which was co-founded by the former head of the state-run China Film Group, has been in discussions to purchase the rights to 355, the spy thriller that Fan had been slated to star in with Jessica Chastain. The Hollywood star had personally contacted Fan about the movie, wanting to know why there were no female James Bonds. Wouldn’t it be cool, Chastain wondered, to make a super espionage movie with actresses from around the world?

Universal pledged $20 million for the rights to 355, but the movie’s Chinese distributors pulled out in the wake of the tax scandal. Now, backed by a venture-capital fund in Hollywood, Zhengfu hopes to resurrect the project. In China, at least, big money still depends on big stars—and big money, it appears, is still willing to bet on Fan Bingbing.

The subject of 355 came up as I was having a late lunch in the lobby of my hotel with Zhang, the director of Zhengfu Pictures. The sun was out, but it was so diffused through the infamous Beijing smog that you couldn’t be sure where the mountains ended and the high-rises began. Eighty years ago, before Chairman Mao, the building we were sitting in was a brick factory. Now it is a luxury hotel, with a penthouse frequented by Alibaba founder Jack Ma. While I was there, it was undergoing a top-to-bottom renovation, and the interior shifted daily: a wall I leaned on in the morning would be gone by the time I returned at night. I found it disorienting, but everyone around me seemed to regard the constant disruption as the price of progress.

Zhang, at age 30, personifies this particular brand of optimism. On January 22, the state tax authorities announced that they had collected a staggering $1.7 billion in back taxes from film and TV stars—an amount equal to 20 percent of China’s entire gross box office last year. But as Zhang sees it, President Xi isn’t out to ruin the film industry. He is making China more powerful. And a stronger China will, in the long run, be good for Chinese moviemakers.

Like most of the filmmakers I spoke to, Zhang mentioned both the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square—not as cause for fear but as a way of emphasizing that they aren’t going to be deterred by a few billion dollars in back taxes. Picking up his fork, he traced an imaginary path in the air to illustrate the film industry’s attitude toward the government crackdown. “If you see a mountain,” he said, “just go around it.”

That sense of determination is apparently shared by Fan Bingbing. China’s film industry was built on the hustle and grit of young entrepreneurs like her—and as true hustlers know, there’s always money to be made, even in the face of authoritarian rule. “She is a businesswoman first, then an actress,” an industry insider told me.

Not long ago, Fan had drinks with her friend Li, who told me that they discussed Fan’s ordeal. If the best art reflects its times, the two concluded, who better to cast as a lead than Fan Ye herself?

Fan laughed at her luck. Perhaps there was an upside to becoming the world’s most celebrated missing person. “I worked so hard,” she told her friend, “and this is how I become famous.”

Isn’t the biggest error of any criminal that they got caught? :rolleyes:

[GeneChing]

Fan Bingbing Movie Comeback to Happen “This Year”
After being disappeared due to tax evasion last year, Fan Bingbing looks set to return via Jessica Chastain-led spy thriller 355
By RADII CHINA 3 days ago

She may not have opened a crazily expensive beauty salon to claw back some money after her enormous fine for tax evasion, but disgraced Chinese movie star Fan Bingbing looks set for a comeback after all.

Rumors have been bubbling away about her returning to the movie business via Jessica Chastain’s spy thriller 355 for a while, but now they’ve been given extra credence by director Simon Kinberg.

Talking to Collider, Kinberg referenced Fan Bingbing by name and stated that she, Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz, and Marion Cotillard were “not just interested, but committed” to the project.

Kinberg’s interview, taking place as part of WonderCon 2019, was mostly a promotional push for X-Men movie Dark Phoenix, and the director wasn’t pressed on whether participating in the film may prove difficult for Fan, given she’s yet to return to work following her disappearance and subsequent fine for tax evasion last year.

But he added that “we plan to make that movie this year” and that he’s currently tweaking the script and casting for male characters in the female-led spy thriller.

THREADS
355
Where in the world is Fan Bingbing?

[GeneChing]

reemerging

ASIA APRIL 26, 2019 12:35AM PT
Fan Bingbing Starts to Re-Emerge Months After Tax Scandal
By REBECCA DAVIS

CREDIT: ALVARO BARRIENTOS/AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Half a year after she was found guilty of tax fraud and disappeared from the public eye, Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing has begun to signal her comeback, attending a gala event and launching her own beauty product on social media this week.

The 37-year-old actress unexpectedly hit the red carpet in Beijing on Monday at a ninth-anniversary event for streaming giant iQiyi, though she arrived late and didn’t answer media questions. “iQiyi hosted a closed-door event of entertainment professionals, unrelated to any specific projects,” the company told Variety in response to a query about Fan’s attendance.

Industry watchers saw her presence as an attempt to assess public reception of her re-emergence months after she issued a groveling public apology and was ordered to pay more than $100 million in penalties and back taxes. Reactions on social media to her re-appearance suggest that Fan could face a tough road back to public favor.

At the iQiyi event, she wore what is assumed to be sponsored luxury clothing – an Alexander McQueen suit, a Louis Vuitton handbag, and De Beers jewelry – in a sign that the fashion world, at least, appears ready to forgive. (Fan was the public face of Louis Vuitton and De Beers for years before her fall from grace.) A selfie of the star holding up a V-for-victory hand gesture in the company of Yue Hua Entertainment CEO Du Hua has made the rounds online. She herself posted her red-carpet photos on her Instagram account, which has lain more or less dormant since last May.

Commenting on the post, Jessica Chastain wrote “Beautiful” with a heart emoji. Chastain is set to begin shooting this year alongside Fan, Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard in the all-woman spy thriller “355,” directed by Simon Kinberg, a film whose fate had been uncertain in the wake of the Fan’s fall from grace.

The response in Fan’s home country, whose highly censored online space is often swept up in fits of nationalism, has been much frostier, with many netizens apparently unwilling to forgive and forget.

Under the top news story about her iQiyi appearance on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform, amidst the comments extolling her beauty, hundreds of thousands had posted and liked vitriolic retorts, many calling her a thick-skinned liar.

“So we’re supposed to pretend that nothing happened?” wrote one commenter, while another added sarcastically: “It’s so great to be an artist in China – Chinese people apparently only have a three second-long memory.”

Another said of her tax evasion: “If an act is wrong, even if thousands upon thousands of people are doing the same thing, it’s still wrong.”

On Wednesday, her beauty brand Fan Beauty announced the launch of a “seagrape deep hydrating water gel” face mask, which goes on sale in Hong Kong on Friday. Included was a promotional video message from the actress.

Last month, Fan was photographed at the opening of a new beauty salon in central Beijing. Although the designer Zhang Shuai publicly stated that it was his business venture, Chinese databases show that Fan’s mother holds 98% of shares and her father the other 2%.

Membership cards begin at RMB50,000 ($7,400) and go up to RMB1 million ($148,000), leaked photos circulating online showed.

Since last fall, Fan has posted only a few times on either Chinese or foreign social media: wishing fans a happy lunar new year in February on Instagram (a platform blocked in China), giving a shout-out to Chinese film “The Crossing” in March, and honoring firefighters who battled a big forest fire in the southwestern province of Sichuan in April.

Tempted to search for that “seagrape deep hydrating water gel” promo vid…

[GeneChing]

broken engagement

If Fan is rebounding, I’m easy to find.

Chinese Star Fan Bingbing Calls Off Engagement After Tax Scandal
10:10 PM PDT 6/27/2019 by Patrick Brzeski

George Pimentel/WireImage
Fan Bingbing

The actress shared the news of her split from actor Li Chen in a social media post, writing, “In one’s lifetime, there are many goodbyes…”
Fan Bingbing, China’s highest-paid actress who mysteriously went missing last year amid a tax scandal, has split from her fiance, actor Li Chen.

Fan announced her breakup with Li late Thursday in a short message posted to her official page on Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like service.

“In one’s lifetime, there are many goodbyes,” she said. “Thank you for everything you have given me the support and love along the way. Thank you for your care and love in the future.”

She added, “We will not be an ‘us’ anymore, but we are still us.”

“Fan Bingbing and Li Chen break up” has been the leading trending item on Weibo since Fan went public with the split.

Fan and Li met while working together on the hit Chinese period drama The Empress of China, which aired in 2014. They became engaged in September 2017, after Li, 40, proposed to Fan at her birthday party.

Fan, 37, has been one of China’s most recognizable stars for over a decade, and she became familiar to international moviegoers thanks to a role as Blink in the X-Men franchise. As much a fashion icon as an actress, she also was the go-to face for luxury endorsements in China, which helped propel her to the very top of China’s list of highest-paid celebrities.

The past year has been epically challenging for the actress though. She made headlines around the world in mid-2018 thanks to a very public tax evasion scandal, which resulted in a months-long disappearance from public view. It later emerged that she had been detained and interrogated by Chinese authorities at a remote location. Fan eventually emerged in October to issue a groveling seemingly coerced apology, while also agreeing to pay fines and back taxes allegedly totaling around $100 million.

Fan has seen most of her Chinese film projects put on hold in the wake of her tax problems. It now appears likely that her first attempt at a comeback will come courtesy of Hollywood. In the months prior to her scandal, Fan signed on to star opposite Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard, Lupita Nyong’o and Penélope Cruz in the spy thriller 355, produced by FilmNation and distributed in the U.S. by Universal. Following her disappearance and public humbling, her role and the project overall was thought to be in jeopardy, especially once Chinese studio Huayi Brothers Media stepped back from a $20 million deal for the Middle Kingdom distribution rights to the title.

During Cannes, however, Chinese film finance company Golden Title stepped in to replace Huayi Brothers on 355. The film is scheduled to begin shooting in Paris in early July.

Fan’s former fiance, Li, has suffered some career turbulence of his own in recent months. Best known for his appearance in Feng Xiaogang’s 2010 blockbuster Aftershock and several popular TV series (Beijing Love Story and The Good Fellas), he was next set to star in Huayi Brothers’ war epic The Eight Hundred, which was tipped to become one China’s biggest hits of the summer. The film’s release plans were abruptly scrapped last week under suspected censorship pressure from Beijing.

Li also made his directorial debut in 2017 with the military action film Sky Hunter, which co-starred Fan but disappointed both critically and commercially, earning about $47 million from a production budget of over $30 million.

THREADS
Where in the world is Fan Bingbing?
355

[GeneChing]

Fan Chengcheng

Who is Fan Chengcheng? New face of Fenty Beauty in China and Fan Bingbing’s little brother
Recently named the face of Rihanna’s beauty line in Greater China, Fan Chengcheng has earned a string of luxury brand endorsements in the past year
One of a group of emerging stars dubbed ‘little fresh meat’, the singer and model is among the most in-demand young celebrities in East Asia
Lauren James
Published: 5:00pm, 15 Sep, 2019

Fan Chengcheng in a promotional shot for French jewellery brand Fred. The teenager has picked up a number of brand endorsements and accolades in the past 12 months.

Fan Chengcheng, the younger brother of Chinese megastar Fan Bingbing, has described himself as “very happy” to have been named the face of Fenty Beauty in Greater China.
His affiliation with the company was only announced last week, but the 19-year-old singer and model – a member of pop groups Nex7 and Nine Percent (in which he is known as “Adam”) – has already featured in a video campaign for the brand, founded by pop star Rihanna in 2017.
A clip released by Fenty Beauty shows Fan waking up, showering, hopping into a car and heading to perform at a nightclub to an audience of women, who are pictured getting ready for the gig with Fenty products. In another video, this time posted on social media app Tik Tok, he demonstrates the brand’s highlighter by flicking it at the camera.
Fan is following in the footsteps of Naomi Wang Ju – dubbed “China’s Beyoncé” – who was announced as the brand’s first spokesman for China earlier this summer.

[QUOTE]
@gonrises
fine i understood m putting my fenty foundation tomorrow u got me fan chengcheng

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The cruelty-free brand has earned praise for its range of foundation shades and refusal to test on animals; in China it sells products through online retailer Tmall, which ships items from outside the country to circumvent the law that requires all cosmetics sold there to be tested on animals. (Tmall is a unit of Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post.)

Fenty is expanding to several Asian markets, including South Korea, where the brand has hinted at a collaboration with K-pop singer Kai.

Fan Chengcheng, the younger brother of actress Fan Bingbing, has enjoyed a rapid rise in China since his appearance on a TV talent show in 2018. Photo: Weibo

“The increasing demand for make-up among young Chinese consumers, a high sensitivity towards social media and a preference for online shopping has pushed Fenty Beauty into the Chinese market,” a spokesman for Fenty Beauty’s Tmall shop told Chinese newspaper Global Times last week.
Fan, a talented singer and rapper, is showbiz-savvy. In 2018 he was catapulted to fame at the age of 17 after becoming one of the final nine contestants on the hit Chinese television talent show Idol Producer. In November, he wrote the Nine Percent song I’m Here, which sold more than a million copies in its first five minutes of release.
From then on, he began collecting a string of accolades, which so far have included being honoured as the “most influential fashion male celebrity of the year” at the Sohu Fashion Awards in Beijing.

Fan Chengcheng models a Versace look.

The exposure won him attention from luxury fashion brands Louis Vuitton and Loewe, and he soon found himself tagged by Chinese internet users “little fresh meat” – a term used to describe young, attractive, up-and-coming male celebrities.
In a market where celebrity endorsement has a big influence on retail sales, Fan and other “little fresh meat” stars, including rapper Kris Wu, found themselves bombarded by brands looking to tap their large social media followings and ability to reach young, mostly female consumers.
Adding to an already impressive roster of brand signings, Fan was also revealed earlier this year as the first China spokesman for French jewellery retailer Fred, which praised his “talent as a composer” and “enthusiasm towards life”.
.
Fan Chengcheng models jewellery by Fred. The French brand announced him as its first China brand spokesman this year.

As the beauty industry shifts towards inclusivity and embraces the gender spectrum in its marketing, Fenty Beauty is one of several brands to actively promote its products to a male audience, posting tutorials aimed at men and selling a “Gentlemen’s Fenty face” kit, which includes foundation and oil-blotting tools.
Although “little fresh meat” are noted for their feminine features and personalities, the brand does not appear to have lined up Fan to model its products on his own skin. In a promotional image, he is shown brandishing a tube of crimson lipstick, but does not wear any.
Fans of the singer have flooded Weibo, China’s Twitter, with messages applauding the brand for its newest hire and urging others to buy Fenty Beauty products. “Thank you very much for choosing Fan Chengcheng as the brand spokesperson! A great honour indeed!” one fan wrote. Another posted: “I don’t know why, but I suddenly need to buy buy buy!”

Fan Chengcheng is promoting Fenty Beauty lipstick, but isn’t shown using it himself. Photo: courtesy of Weibo

Fan is 19 years younger than his sister, and his family have long fought off rumours that he is Fan Bingbing’s son, not her brother. The actress has addressed the gossip in interviews, claiming she was the one to convince her mother to keep the child and that they had to pay a fine due to China’s one-child policy.
Fan Chengcheng’s nascent career seems not to have been affected by his house arrest in 2018, along with his sister, in connection with her tax evasion, a scandal that saw several luxury brands terminate their contracts with her. He is quickly emerging as one of the most in-demand young faces in East Asia.
Rihanna, through her own newly created Weibo page, heralded the arrival of her brand’s newest spokesman, saying: “Welcome to the Fenty Beauty Global Family!!”[/QUOTE]

THREADS
Where in the world is Fan Bingbing?
Sissy Men

[GeneChing]

The Return of Fan

Exclusive | ‘It’s like a restart for me’: Chinese actress Fan Bingbing on relaunching her career in Green Night after tax scandal, and why staying grounded is ‘important’
Fan was at the Berlin film festival promoting new film Green Night, and revealed ‘the biggest challenge’ was returning to acting after her enforced absence
The X-Men star also talked about why staying humble helps her perform, how shooting in Hollywood and China is different and her plans for more films in English

James Mottram
Published: 7:15am, 1 Mar, 2023

Chinese star Fan Bingbing opened up at this year’s Berlin film festival about returning to the screen after a long hiatus following a tax scandal in 2018, and her plans to do more English-language films. Photo: Getty
In a first-floor corridor of the Grand Hyatt Berlin hotel, Fan Bingbing is applying her own make-up, holding up a small compact mirror and tilting her head backwards as she touches up her mascara.
Only one room has been assigned for publicity purposes for her new movie Green Night, which has just been unveiled in the Panorama strand of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. And for the moment, the director of the film, Han Shuai, is doing a TV interview in there.
Fan, however, doesn’t seem to care about the makeshift nature of her makeover or the fact that, in a minute or so, we’ll be chatting on two stools in the corner of said corridor, as festivalgoers walk past, blithely unaware of who is sitting there.
A superstar in China following her appearance in films like Cell Phone and I Am Not Madame Bovary, the 41-year-old has already made headway in Hollywood, appearing in films such as X-Men: Days of Future Past and recent all-female action movie The 355.

//youtu.be/zu_u8l-v018

It’s surprising, then, how low-key she is in person.
Today she’s wearing a light-pink crochet jumper with tassels, white sneakers and dark jeans bedecked with glitter. It’s a cute outfit, but down to earth. There’s no sign of any expensive designer wear, and she isn’t surrounded by a huge entourage.
Is she always this grounded? “For me, I really feel it’s important to maintain this sort of life,” she tells the Post in an interview, “because then you can see the details of real people, in real life, and then I can bring those emotions and experiences into acting. So it’s really helpful for me to stay grounded.”
Her director, back at the festival for the first time since 2020 with her film Summer Blur, explains that this is simply how Fan is. “Actually, she’s very straightforward and frank rather than a ‘star star’,” she says. “She’s very warm with the crew. And she’s a human being rather than an idol.
“She had a very good relationship with other members in the crew on [the] set [of Green Night].”

[QUOTE]It’s quite cruel on you if you don’t act for five years, because I love performing
Fan Bingbing

It is 16 years since Fan was last at the Berlin festival with her 2007 film Lost in Beijing, but the big point here is that the actress is back at all – after a protracted hiatus.
As most followers of Fan will know (and she has a lot; 3.8 million on Instagram to be precise), it’s been a trying time for the actress.
In July 2018, she disappeared from public view and social media, sparking rumours that she had fled China, was in jail or under house arrest. Three months later it was revealed that she had been fined for tax evasion. She and her companies were ordered to pay about 880 million yuan (US$129 million) in fines.

Fan in a still from Green Night. Photo: Demei
She later issued a statement on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo apologising for her actions which read in part: “Without the good policies of the Communist Party and the state, without the people’s love and care, there would be no Fan Bingbing.”
Whatever happened then, she is ready to put it behind her. Shortly after we meet in Berlin at a press conference for Green Night, a reporter asks her to reflect on that period of her life.
While the moderator tried to steer it back to the film to help her evade a potentially awkward question, Fan answered with confidence.

Fan (second from left) with co-star Lee Joo-young (left), and director and screenwriter Han Shuai (second from right) at a press conference at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: Reuters
“I was at home, I was dealing with some things. But, you know, everybody’s life has highs and lows. And when you reach a low, you steadily, gradually climb back up again. And it’s a tough process.
“But you learn a lot of new things at the same time, and you learn a lot about the world, a lot about people. And for me, it was a very good experience in retrospect … and everything’s fine with me now.”
In some respects, it’s an answer that says very little about the realities behind those lows, although it’s clear how delighted she is to be back.[/QUOTE] continued next post

[GeneChing]

Continued from previous post

[QUOTE]Acting is something that I’ll probably be doing for my whole life. I’m going to stick at it.
Fan Bingbing

In Green Night, the actress plays Jin Xia, a Chinese immigrant living in Korea with an abusive, fundamentalist Christian husband.
Working as an airport security official, she meets a mysterious green-haired woman (Lee Joo-young from the 2022 Korean hit drama Broker), who is a drug mule. Before long, the two end up on a 24-hour mad dash through Seoul as they make a break for freedom.
The film has already drawn comparisons to Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise for its feminist slant, as two women attempt to find agency in a male-dominated world.
“She always had this longing in her heart to get out and to be free and do something crazy,” says Fan of her character, “but she just didn’t have that match to set it off. Right? So she was waiting for that moment.
“And the green-haired girl was that thing that really set her off. So she was able to let go and escape her relationship and her boring job.”

Fan in a still from Green Night. Photo: Demei
It’s clearly been a rejuvenating experience for Fan, especially given she’s working with a female director, female producer and female co-star.
“I felt there was a lot of unspoken understanding between us and a type of warmth that we were able to share because we were all female. Not to say anything against men, but just to say that there was this kind of camaraderie between us because we were an all-female team,” she says.
“Maybe issues that women have, men don’t really understand that well … so we felt that we really got each other.”

Fan (left), with Green Night co-star Lee Joo-young (right) and director and screenwriter Han Shuai at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: Reuters
In the film, the two main characters find solace in each other’s arms in a love scene that might shock some of Fan’s more conservative fans. The men don’t come out of the film well, we put it to the actress. The green-haired girl’s paymaster, for example, is a deaf-mute sadist.
“We don’t emphasise the badness of the males specifically,” Fan says, “but actually just how the women are together … that warmth between them and that understanding. It helped them rely on each other.”
Green Night might seem like a rather small project for an actress who, between 2013 and 2017, was ranked the highest-paid person on the Forbes China Celebrity 100 rich list.
In that time she ran her own company, Fan Bingbing Studio, became an ambassador for designer fashion brands such as Montblanc and De Beers, and launched her own skincare brand, Fan Beauty Secret.
It’s little wonder Time magazine put her on its 100 Most Influential People list in 2017 (“a woman who knows her own strength,” remarked fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg. “She is the woman she wants to be”).
This comeback feels like baby steps for Fan, who is still in the process of rescuing her reputation. As Fan noted at her Berlin press conference, “the biggest challenge was basically that I haven’t acted for five years.”
By and large it is true she has not acted since the tax issue came to light; she’s obviously discounting The 355 (as one should – it was terrible), which was mostly shot in 2019. Fan said: “It’s quite cruel on you if you don’t act for five years, because I love performing."
On the surface, easing her way back into Asian cinema via a film that deals with the Chinese-Korean immigrant crossover seems like a smart move.
Will she choose another English-language project any time soon? “Yes, we’re reviewing some screenplays right now,” she says. “So maybe my English will get better and better.”
Perhaps she could return as Blink, her X-Men character who was capable of teleportation? Now Disney controls the rights to Marvel’s mutant heroes, there’s every chance they will be rebooted in another movie series.
“I would definitely love to reprise my role as Blink,” she says. “Her abilities were really cool!”

Fan as Blink in a still from X-Men: Days of Future Past. Photo: 20th Century Fox
Fan is accustomed to appearing in Chinese epics, such as Chen Kaige’s 2010 historical tale Sacrifice, so did it feel different to be in a blockbuster like X-Men: Days of Future Past?
“Hollywood is so developed and they really know every single minute what they’re going to do on set and what you have to be doing,” Fan says. “And [they’re] very on track and on top of things. It was different from shooting in China, but I was able to learn a lot from that experience.”
Her Green Night director feels like this is a different Fan that we’re seeing now, a more seasoned performer. “I think she’s become a more mature and grown-up woman,” Han says.

Fan on the red carpet at the Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: AFP
Perhaps the humbling experience she faced back in 2018 has changed her. Certainly, the girl in the corridor opposite this writer has no airs and graces about her. She is just happy to be back.
“It’s like a restart for me,” she says. “Acting is something that I’ll probably be doing for my whole life. I’m going to stick at it.”
Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

James Mottram
James Mottram is a film critic and journalist based in London. As well as writing for the SCMP for over 10 years, he’s also written a number of books on cinema including The Sundance Kids, The Making of Memento and Die Hard: The Ultimate Visual History.[/QUOTE] Bingbing is back!

[GeneChing]

Fan at the Oscars

Chinese film star Fan Bingbing makes rare appearance at the Oscars
Fan was ordered to pay US$130 million in taxes and penalties by the Chinese government in 2018 and has largely disappeared from public view
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s indie hit Anything Everywhere All at Once has 11 nominations, including nods for Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan

Published: 6:40am, 13 Mar, 2023

China’s Fan Bingbing arrives at the Oscars in Los Angeles on Sunday. Photo: AP
Disgraced Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, who appeared in X-Men films before disappearing amid a tax case in China, is at the Oscars.
Fan was becoming a crossover star with roles lined up in a Bruce Willis film and appeared in a pair of films based on Marvel Comics characters before she was ordered to pay US$130 million in taxes and penalties by the Chinese government in 2018.
Before the fine was levied, Fan went dark on social media, her management offices closed and she largely disappeared from public view.
Fan has had a few recent credits, including the spy thriller The 355, which was released in 2022.
She has re-emerged this year, appearing at the Berlin Film Festival last month with a new film, Green Night.

Will Smith, right, hits presenter Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars in March last year, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Photo: AP
Last year’s Oscars ceremony was arguably eclipsed by Will Smith, who strode on stage and slapped Chris Rock in the face over a comment Rock had made about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, in his speech.
Jimmy Kimmel, the show’s first solo emcee in five years, is hosting for the third time. The late-night comedian has promised to make some jokes about The Slap; it would be “ridiculous” not to, he said.
Bill Kramer, chief executive of the film academy, has said that it was important, given what happened last year, to have “a host in place who can really pivot and manage those moments.”
“Nobody got hit when I hosted the show,” Kimmel boasted, tongue in cheek, on Good Morning America on Thursday. “Everybody was well-behaved at my Oscars.”
Kimmel will preside over a ceremony that could see big wins for the best-picture favourite, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s action-comedy indie hit comes in with a leading 11 nominations, including nods for Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan.
Producers are giving some aspects of the Oscars a makeover. The carpet is champagne-coloured, not red. The broadcast has been planned to be more interactive than ever.
There were surprises before the show even got started. Just days after producers had said Lady Gaga would not be performing her nominated song Hold My Hand from Top Gun: Maverick, a person close to the production with knowledge of the performance confirmed on Sunday afternoon that the pop superstar would perform, after all.
And presenter Glenn Close told Associated Press that she would no longer present at the show because she had tested positive for Covid-19.
But the academy, still trying to find its footing after several years of pandemic and ratings struggles, is also hoping for a smoother ride than last year. A crisis management team has been created to help better respond to surprises. The academy has called its response to Smith’s actions last year “inadequate.”

Harry Shum Jnr, whose mother is from Hong Kong and whose father is from Guangzhou, arrives at the Oscars on Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Shum Jnr plays Chad in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Photo: Invision / AP
Neither Rock, who recently made his most forceful statement about the incident in a live special, nor Smith, who’s been banned by the academy for 10 years, are expected to attend.
The Academy Awards will instead attempt to recapture some of its old lustre. One thing working in its favour: This year’s best picture field is stacked with blockbusters. Ratings usually go up when the nominees are more popular, which certainly goes for Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water and, to a lesser extent, Elvis and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
But the late-breaking contender that may fare well in the technical categories – where bigger films often reign – is Netflix’s top nominee this year: the German WWI epic All Quiet on the Western Front. It is up for nine awards, tied for second most with the Irish dark comedy The Banshees of Inisherin. Netflix’s Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio also looks like a shoo-in for best animated film.
The awards will also have some star wattage in the musical performances. Fresh off her Super Bowl performance, Rihanna will perform her Oscar-nominated song, Lift Me Up, from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. This Is Life, from Everything Everywhere All at Once will be sung by David Byrne and supporting actress nominee Stephanie Hsu with the band Son Lux. Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava will perform Naatu Naatu from the Indian action epic RRR. Lenny Kravitz will perform during the In Memoriam tribute.
Last year, Apple TV’s CODA became the first streaming film to win best picture. But this year, nine of the 10 best picture nominees were theatrical releases. After the film business cratered during the pandemic, moviegoing recovered to about 67 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. But it was an up and down year, full of smash hits and anxiety-inducing lulls in cinemas.
At the same time, the rush to streaming encountered new setbacks as studios questioned long-term profitability and re-examined their release strategies. This year, ticket sales have been strong thanks to releases such as Creed III and Cocaine Bear. But there remain storm clouds on the horizon.

Chinese-American veteran actor James Hong, part of the Everything Anywhere All at Once cast, with April Hong at the Oscars in Los Angeles on Sunday. Photo: Invision / AP
The Writers Guild and the major studios are set to begin contract negotiations March 20, a looming battle that has much of the industry girding for the possibility of a work stoppage throughout film and television.
The Oscars, meanwhile, are trying to reestablish their position as the premier award show. Last year’s telecast drew 16.6 million viewers, a 58 per cent increase from the scaled-down 2021 edition, watched by a record low 10.5 million.
Usually, the previous year’s acting winners present the awards for best actor and best actress. But that will not be the case this time. Who will replace Smith in presenting best actress is just one of the questions heading into the ceremony.

Where-in-the-world-is-Fan-Bingbing
The-Academy-Awards
Everything-Everywhere-All-At-Once

[GeneChing]

Hong Kong

China actress Fan Bingbing rents Hong Kong flat for US$84,000 a month, setting media abuzz
Fan says she will split her time between Hong Kong and various locations, including Hollywood
Reading Time:
2 minutes

Fan Bingbing’s decision to rent a super luxury property on The Peak has intensified speculation about her plans to settle in Hong Kong. Photo: SCMP composite/Weibo
Yating Yangin Beijing

Published: 9:00am, 5 Dec 2024Updated: 3:52pm, 5 Dec 2024

Controversial Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has generated significant media buzz following her recent appearance at a Hong Kong event, fuelling speculation about her potential long-term residency in the city.

On November 28, Fan attended a brand event in Hong Kong, captivating netizens in a black gown that many likened to a “villainous queen”.

During the event, she revealed that she had filmed two movies this year, including the Hollywood film The Ice Road 2, starring Liam Neeson, and the Malaysian movie Mother Bhumi, where she plays a farmer who performs nighttime exorcisms for women.

For her role in Mother Bhumi, Fan reportedly tanned and gained weight.

Although she has not fully shed the extra pounds, she shared: “I gained about 6 to 6.5kg for the movie. I’ve lost most of it now by eating less and exercising hard.”

Expressing her enthusiasm for the Hong Kong film industry, she noted: “I am among the first batch of mainland actresses to come to Hong Kong to make films.”

Barker Road on The Peak is renowned for its luxurious residences, attracting super-rich individuals and prominent figures not just from Hong Kong and mainland China, but from around the globe. Photo: SCMP/Winson Wong
Adding to the speculation about her future in the city, she has reportedly rented a super-luxury property on Barker Road on The Peak for about HK$650,000 (US$84,000) a month.

In response to inquiries about her plans, she stated that she would divide her time between Hong Kong and other locations, including Hollywood.

The 43-year-old actress was once one of China’s highest-earning stars and gained international recognition before a tax evasion scandal in May 2018.

Fan began her acting career in 1998 with her role as “Jin Suo” in the iconic TV drama My Fair Princess. She later made significant strides in the film industry, with influential roles in Buddha Mountain and I Am Not Madame Bovary, earning her Best Actress awards at the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival and the 64th San Sebastian Film Festival.

Following the tax evasion scandal in 2018, Fan has focused on her international career, notably attending the Georges Hobeika Haute Couture show in Paris in June 2024. Photo: AFP
Her stunning outfits, such as the dramatic “Dragon Robe” worn at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival in 2010, further established her as a stand-out star at international film festivals.

In October 2018, Fan faced a hefty fine of about 884 million yuan (US$122 million) from Chinese tax authorities for overdue taxes and fines, which tarnished her career and public image.

Following this, she was banned from acting and producing films in China, leading to a significant reduction in her public presence and sparking widespread speculation about her future.

Since then, she has shifted her career focus internationally. In June, she was appointed as a tourism ambassador by Malaysia’s Melaka state, aiming to attract more Chinese tourists by leveraging her 63 million followers on Weibo.

Fan, now a tourism ambassador for the Malaysian state of Melaka, was recently spotted enjoying durians during her visit. Photo: Instagram/@bingbing_fan
Fan, now a tourism ambassador for the Malaysian state of Melaka, was recently spotted enjoying durians during her visit. Photo: Instagram/@bingbing_fan
Although Fan receives less coverage from Chinese mainstream media now, she remains a beloved figure on mainland social media, where fans are captivated by her red-carpet appearances.

One admirer commented: “I have to say, she really looks good, and no other actress can match her.”

Another echoed: “Every appearance of hers is uniquely refreshing. The mainland red carpets are already dead water. She is the pinnacle, and there’s no substitute.”

“But it’s a pity, the dominant radiance in her eyes is gone,” remarked a third.

Yating Yang
Yating is a Beijing-based culture reporter at the Post. Previously, she worked for CCTV-6, covering international film and culture. Her journalistic expertise includes pop culture, entertainment industry, gender equality, education, workplace discrimination, and social welfare.

She got me with that durian pic. I cannot say why…:o