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In light of the growing body anti-fan studies, this article tries to fill the gap of empirical studies on Chinese anti-fandom by investigating the textual dislike of traffic stars – those who usually are good-looking and possess a huge fan base yet are perceived to lack good texts. This form of stardom has proliferated in China since its emergence in 2015, usually involving high traffic of fans, metadata orientation and mega publicity in the media. By drawing on one of Gray's anti-fandom categories 'bad object', this article examines anti-fans' discourses about the 'badness' of traffic stars. Using anti-fandom of Cai Xukun as a typical case, I present how anti-fans frame the 'badness' as due to attributes of both Cai himself (misalignment of achievements and talent, plagiarism, being unpatriotic, femininity, sexually suggestive performance and being a bad role model) and his stardom (capital operation by the culture industry). As such, we shall see how this anti-fandom takes on a critical perspective towards traffic stars. These attributes together constitute the site for 'coalitional dislike' towards Cai, and by extension traffic stardom in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Zhao Dan's (1915–1980) career in film after 1949 to investigate a specific type of stardom unique to Mao Zedong's China (1949–1976). We argue that this new stardom was similar to what conventionally defines stardom, but with an added political dimension: Zhao Dan's acquisition of high political standing in the People's Republic of China (PRC). To arrive at a fuller understanding of the state–artist relationship in the PRC, this article challenges the paradigm of accommodation and resistance between the tyrannical state and subordinated artists, which presupposes a subjectivity or selfhood on the part of artists that pre-existed and was maintained against the intrusive hegemonic ideologies of the state. Instead, we underscore that the making of Zhao Dan's subjectivity in the PRC—his subjectivity-in-stardom in this case—was a dynamic process, a "becoming." Zhao Dan's checkered career indicates that he not only acclimated himself to the ever-changing political atmosphere of Mao-era China but also sought to benefit from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine the stardom of Li Yuchun, a star from Super Girls’ Voice (an American Idol-type show), from the perspective of media power. Based on Couldry’s framework of media power, which focuses on the symbolic boundary between the media world and the ordinary world, this study compares the stardom of Song Zuying, who represents party stars; the stardom of Jay Chou, who represents commercialized stars; and the stardom of Li Yuchun to explore the ways in which audiences construct the stardom of Li Yuchun. Their implications for the Chinese entertainment industry and popular culture are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To account for the complex performative and cultural phenomenon of cinematic sex appeal, this article investigates Chinese actor Tony Leung Chiu-Wai Leung as a regional and global star, focusing on attributes of his acting that convey sex appeal or have been received as sexy. Leung appears as a popular star in a regional Asian context but as a more rarefied, art-cinema performer internationally. Despite this bifurcated reputation, his sex appeal provides a powerful symbolic currency bankable in local as well as global contexts. Through attention to the elusive category of sex appeal, I identify features of Leung's acting and stardom that inform his overall career activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore the star status of Brigitte Lin according to the concepts pioneered by Richard Dyer in his Stars and Heavenly Bodies monographs. In contrast to most works that examine Lin's star phenomenon exclusively in terms of her Hong Kong films and 'Invincible Asia' role in particular, this study emphasizes the importance of her early Taiwan films made during 1972-84 as well as the transitional Taiwan films of the 1980s directed by Chu Yen Ping when the star sought to change her earlier image. It suggests that Lin was a much more active agent in this process than Tsui Hark. It concludes by noting the significance of the star's off-screen presence as commentator in two post-retirement films, one of which parallels her well-known Hong Kong star image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jackie Chan is a dragon of the Hong Kong cinema. Certain life experiences mould his star image as narrative, such as his childhood operatic training, his cheeky brand of kung fu comedy, and the high-risk on-screen stunts that he performs himself But star images are made, not born. This essay looks at Jackie Chan's rise to stardom through two key texts: the film Drunken Master/Zuiquan (1978) and his English-language autobiography, I am Jackie Chan (1998). Both narrate a rite-of-passage story that defines Chan on and off the screen in terms of a painful transition from kung fu kid to dragon through his operatic training and translated into martial arts lessons on screen. This training is crucial to his brand of comic genius. Chan acknowledges these aspects of his image when he sees his operatic training — ten years of hell — as the foundation of his stardom. He writes that his blood fat her is 'the father of Chan Kong-sang' but his opera school master is 'the father of Jackie Chan'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an uncanny link between martyrdom and stardom in Zhao Dan's film career. In real life he was twice incarcerated for multiple years, and on screen he appeared often as suffering martyrs. His stardom, based on 'I play myself' after Crossroads/Shizi jietou (1937), acquired an eerie dimension of spectrality as his self-performance was attuned to a ghostly mechanism engineered by precarious history more than individual subjectivity. Through Zhao's fated star performance of self as others, this study investigates spectrality as an irrational logic that integrated martyrdom and stardom in socialist China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]