A Chinese toddler burst onto the daytime talk show scene last week when he appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to dance, do a “magic trick,” and giggle a lot.
Liang Liang, a three year old from Linyi in China’s eastern Shandong Province, went viral in July after his mother posted a video of him dancing to Facebook. The clip of him shuffling joyfully in a public square blew up not only in China but overseas as well, and was viewed over 60 million times.
The tiny star, who appeared on the show with the help of his mother and a translator, chatted with Ellen, performed an adorable “magic trick” for the crowd, and even showed off his English skills — reciting the alphabet and confusing the audience slightly thanks to his use of the rhythm many Chinese kids are taught it in. From the crowd’s raucous reaction, it’s fair to say that he was a hit.
After the chat, he gave a performance of his famous dance routine, complete with backup dancers:
The Ellen Show became the first American daytime talk show to stream in China in 2014, and remains a favorite among Chinese netizens. The video of Liang Liang’s time on the show has more than 2 million views, and netizens are abuzz with praise at seeing a small-town Chinese kid entertain American audiences.
Liang Liang seems to have shuffled his way into all of our hearts.
This week, we have a special guest — who for the purposes of the recording we’re calling “C” — who bravely came forward to share her deeply sad personal experience of being a victim of sexual assault when she was just 4 years old.
Through discussing this horrendous experience, this episode looks at the underlying problems in some rural and undereducated areas in China, where gender inequality is a manifest of some purportedly “patriotic” values. It also examines how some criminals can take advantage of the concept of “面子 mianzi” (face) and a pervasive “family shaming” culture to cover up their actions.
These photos are from Taojia Village in Jiading, a district on the outskirts of Shanghai. Depending on who you speak to, Jiading could be a quiet place to raise a family. It could be a run-down side effect of the nearby America-themed amusement park, itself abandoned in 2001. Or it could be the site of unspeakable horrors, and the restless spirits who are doomed to remain here for all of eternity.
Jiading is caught in the space between urban expansion and rural lethargy. The main road out front, like most of the community, is being slowly claimed by plant life. The area’s residents live in unassuming, thatched-up homes, artifacts from some long-forgotten civil development plan. On the horizon looms a battalion of modern high-rise apartments, which will inch closer and closer each year until Jiading, too, is swallowed whole by population and necessity.
Hang around the river and you might run into folks with fishing rods, stopping to catch a quick dinner.
“You can eat the fish here,” says one man. “The water quality is quite good nowadays.”
Another passerby chimes in. “I’ve lived here for over thirty years!” he says. “We work in the factory nearby.”
Looking out at the idyllic scene, it’s hard to imagine the macabre history that’s tied to it.
The municipality is infamously known in Shanghai as the site of the Jiading Massacre, a gruesome campaign of mass murder carried out by invading Qing forces in 1645, when the residents of Jiading refused to bow to the country’s new Manchu rulers. Bandit general Li Chengdong led his troops in a three-part massacre of the town’s civilians, killing as many as 30,000 on the first day.
First-person accounts recall that the sheer number of bodies tossed into the river was enough to stop its flow, while the corpses of other victims were dragged into large piles and set on fire. Soldiers raped the town’s women, nailing their hands to the wall with long spikes. Hundreds of years later, the area continued to be plagued by bandit activity, and then by Japanese soldiers, who carried out a new massacre against the people of Jiading, killing thousands of men, women, and children.
The massacre’s inciting incident was the refusal by the people of Jiading to cut their hair. The Qing rulers had mandated that all men cut their hair as a sign of loyalty, adopting the slogan “Keep your head and cut off your hair, or keep your hair and cut off your head.”
Given Jiading’s dark history, many people believe the area to be plagued by restless spirits.
Shanghai University’s Jiading campus is believed to have been built on the site of a mass grave, where strange occurrences were often reported. The problem become so apparent that the faculty of the school were forced to build a huge bagua — an ancient “energy map” used within Daoist cosmology — over the site in order to contain the dead.
In an Imgur post, filmmaker Justin Scholar details how a music video shoot in Jiading had his crew convinced they’d crossed paths with a ghost:
“I hope to share a bit of candid, first-hand experience with some surprisingly normalized Chinese superstition,” Scholar writes, explaining that his client wanted a nostalgic feel, and had asked for picture frames as part of the video’s motif.
“Here he is. This is the photo that bothers all my friends. Some people have gone as far to curse me for showing it to them. It really does look like a prop for a horror film.
“I noticed him and picked it up right away, saying ‘oh cool let’s get shots of this.’ My all-Chinese crew of four froze, looking at me like I was crazy.
“My business partner comes from a Buddhist family. My assistant is a practicing Daoist, and our fourth was not spiritual, to our knowledge. But every one of them felt something.”
After Scholar experienced a string of bizarre and unfortunate events the following week, including a broken bone and the death of a business associate, he returned to the house with an offering of fruit and cigarettes.
“I was against using the photo as a prop,” admits Ruby Xie, Scholar’s business partner. “If it’s a portrait of the deceased, in Chinese culture we believe that mishandling it could lead to misfortune. Spirits can be resentful, or powerful enough to cause real damage to your life.”
“I was worried about Justin,” she adds. “For real.”
A Daoist symbol of good fortune still hangs over this window. Such imagery remains common in rural China.
In the ‘60s, it was forbidden to practice traditional belief systems like Buddhism or Daoism in China. As a result, despite a deep history of religion, the country is often characterized as non-religious — but the spirituality and tenets of those systems still retain a firm foothold in China’s collective consciousness, particularly in rural areas where, despite the official bans, they never really went away.
The abandoned manor where the portrait was found.
An old-style stove, with hand-drawn design elements. The front face features designs of the Chinese “Good Luck Knot”, not linked to any particular belief system.
Had the Jiading development prospered, the owner of the house would have been living large. The mood-boosting effect of a spacious outdoor deck, ready for entertaining guests, is dampened by an eerie number of personal belongings left behind on the home’s balcony. Children’s shoes and bedding are strewn over the floor as though the family living here had disappeared overnight.
Jiading isn’t so different from other areas of Shanghai, or China, for that matter. The old is being torn down to make way for the new, simple living replaced with modern convenience.
“That house? Well, they’ve been tearing a lot of houses down these days,” offers one local resident when we inquire about the building. “They’re going to build a new commercial center here.”
Usually it’s bittersweet. But for Jiading, maybe it’s alright to let the past slip away quietly. Maybe that’s all the locals have wanted for centuries.
China’s scientific community has entered the conversation about the wave of fresh-faced, androgynous Chinese male stars known as “xiao xian rou,” or little fresh meat. Their conclusion after digging into this phenomenon? Blame the CIA.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which is the premier research institution for the social sciences under the Chinese State Council, released a report claiming that the CIA was responsible for the rise of “feminine” male celebrities across Asia.
According to The Times, the report, called “Do you know how hard the CIA is working?” condemns the rise of “feminine male artists” and pinpoints their origins to Johnny & Associates, a talent agency started by American-born Japanese businessman Johnny Kitagawa. It claims that Kitagawa colluded with the CIA to “weaken the male temperament of Japanese society,” which led to the effeminization of celebrities across Asia, spreading to China.
Xiao xian rou stardom, its subsequent beauty standard, and the rabid fan following that ensued across China are well-documented. However, the Chinese government has been more than clear on its disdain for these stars, who stand in direct contradiction the Chinese ideal of the virile, patriotic, and manly man. Last September, Xinhua, the state news agency, condemned these stars as “niang pao,” or “sissy,” and said they were destructive to society.
But despite the criticism, fans of “little fresh meat” stars such as Luhan and TFBoys seem to be just as dedicated as ever. Many say that these idols represent a changing of gender roles in a highly patriarchal society. Some just like them because they’re pretty. But whatever the reasons behind their rise, this new report shows that such changes may not be welcome by everyone.
China has had an uneasy relationship with Halloween in recent years, but it seems subway authorities in one of the country’s biggest cities are determined not to get into the spirit of spooky season after they recently asked partygoers to remove their makeup before boarding a train.
Staff at Hanxi Changlong Station, which is near an amusement park currently hosting a series of Halloween-themed activities, reportedly provided makeup remover to a group of passengers who had dressed up for the occasion and refused to let them board a train until they’d wiped off their “scary” looks.
Video footage posted on microblog service Weibo showed a number of people dabbing at their faces next to a metro security checkpoint. The subway authorities have since stated that the people featured in the video had fake blood on their faces and that they asked them to remove it because they felt that other passengers could be startled.
The move has attracted significant attention on Chinese social media as many big cities gear up for a weekend of Halloween parties. The incident echoes a case back in March in Guangzhou when a young goth was barred from entering the subway due to her makeup. That story provoked a backlash with many citizens posting images of themselves in similarly “terrifying” makeup as a show of solidarity.
In this case however, a similar movement seems unlikely to materialize. Although there are some voices of dissent about how scary such costumes and makeup really are, many of the highest upvoted comments on Weibo are supportive of the authorities, suggesting such looks are ill-suited to public areas. One popular comment asks whether those in question would wear such makeup for Chinese festivals such as Zhongyuan or Qingming (Tomb-Sweeping).
Sitting at an intersection in Beijing, not far west from the bustling tourist traps of Prince Gong’s mansion and the shores of Houhai lake, is a small courtyard where China’s first truly global superstar performer, Mei Lanfang, lived out his retirement from 1951 until his death a decade later.
Mei Lanfang (the name he adopted for the stage) came from a family of actors. Both his father and grandfather had been in the theater. Orphaned at the age of 15, he was raised by family members, including a musical uncle. He began his training early and made his professional debut in 1905. His first taste of international stardom came when he toured Japan at just 25; he then returned to the country for another tour five years later in 1924. He was a sensation. Selling out halls and becoming something of a sex symbol, a 20th-century prototype of the xiao xianrou (“little fresh meat”: fresh-faced, young male celebrities), adored by Japanese girls.
Seeing Mei Lanfang perform became as essential for visitors to Beijing as walking the Great Wall or taking in the Temple of Heaven. He was a pre-modern superstar commanding high performance fees (and, like today’s stars, wasn’t above doing corporate appearances if the price was right.)
He dined with fellow international A-Listers like Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. When Charlie Chaplin — then at the peak of his popularity — arrived in Shanghai in 1936, Mei Lanfang was on hand to greet him. In one recorded anecdote, the two forty-something performers compared hair color with Chaplin complaining about his greying temples and Mei Lanfang’s still youthful appearances. (You work harder than I do, Mei was reported to have replied.)
In 1937, the Japanese occupation dramatically changed the performance landscape of Beijing. Mei Lanfang did his part in the resistance… by growing a dapper mustache. As Henry Cavill proved in Justice League, even millions of dollars of CGI can’t erase a mustache when it’s not supposed to be there. No matter if it’s on a famously clean shaven superhero or on the upper lip of a man pretending to be a coquettish maiden.
After the Communist Revolution, Mei Lanfang remained in China. He served in a variety of advisory roles for opera and the performing arts.
He was married for over 50 years, although to a slightly less than tidy and overlapping series of three wives, and his children followed Mei Lanfang into the “family business.” In particular, his son Mei Baojiu, born 1934, was a celebrated performer who succeeded as head of the Mei Lanfang Opera Company upon the death of his father in 1961. Forbidden from performing for nearly 15 years during the Cultural Revolution, Mei Baojiu revived the company in the late 1970s and, along with his sister Mei Baoyu, continued as an advocate for the arts and Peking Opera in particular into the 21st century. (Mei Baojiu passed away in 2016.)
Back at the old courtyard in Beijing, there’s a museum of Mei Lanfang memorabilia and photographs. A video screen shows clips from his performances, and there’s a section that dutifully highlights his “patriotic mustache.” Other parts of the yard feature reconstructions of his personal effects, art, calligraphy, and furniture.
Mei Lanfang remains one of the most successful global Chinese stars of the early 20th century. He brought an art form that hasn’t always had success on international stages — many people feel that Peking Opera, like the bagpipes, is best appreciated as outdoor performance art — to a broader audience. His use of pantomime, costume, and overall style influenced artists as diverse as Chaplin and Bertolt Brecht. Today as China occasionally stumbles to project soft power, it’s worth remembering a time when Mei Lanfang, born in Beijing 125 years ago this week, was the toast of New York and the artistic world.
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