How to become famous in China

Super star over China

The cover story of the current issue of New Century Weekly (新世纪周刊) is titled ‘A history of getting famous in China’. It’s a list of celebrities, each of whom represent a different way to get famous in China:

• Liu Xinwu (刘心武) is a writer who became famous in the late 1970s. One of his novels, Drum and Bell Tower (钟鼓楼), was very popular and also won the Mao Dun Literature Award (茅盾文学奖), which is the most prominent official award in Chinese literature.

• Ma Shengli (马胜利) was an entrepreneur, who made his mark during the early years of economic reform (1980-1992). As one of the first group of entrepreneurs who took over the management of state-owned factories, he appeared in many newspapers and gave many lectures. People call him Ma Chengbao (马承包) — chengbao means to get a concession to run or manage a factory or store etc.

• Shi Yuzhu (史玉柱) has had a legendary career. He first got famous in the early 1990s for producing Han Ka, a popular Chinese word processing software. After that he started the Ju Ren Group, a company dabbled in many industries. Leaving Ju Ren Group, he got into health tonics, namely Brain Gold (脑白金) and Golden Partner (黄金搭档). Advertisements for these two products are possibly the most famous but also most detested ads in China, but the products have made him millions. Recently, there has been talk of Shi moving into the online games industry.

• Qiu He (仇和) is a government official, but once was “the most controversial official in China”. He became famous when he was the chief party secretary of Suqian, Jiangsu Province. His radical reform policies made a hit in China, including forcing official to run businesses rather than work in government, selling state-owned kindergartens and hospitals. He is now the Vice Governor of Jiangsu province.

• Shi Yang (师洋) was born in the 1980s. He became famous in Wo Xing Wo Xiu, a televised talent contest produced Dragon TV similar to Hunan TV’s Super Girls. Shi Yang says he has about 800,000 fans.