Chinese-American contestant Yu Haoran looks like a cross between Vic Zhou and Jerry Yan in this photo.
An intro to my favorite performances/ contestants so far based on the first round of Produce Camp 2019 创造营2019 aka the Season 2 of Produce 101, where 11 winners will be chosen to form the male equivalent of Rocket Girls 101.
The Wajijiwa boys – Xia Zhiguang, Yan Xujia, Zhao Lei, Peng Chuyue, Zhou Zhennan, Zhai Xiaowen – are clearly the stand-outs of the show so far. Honestly I just want them to get enough popularity for the four teens (Xia Zhiguang, Yan Xujia, Zhao Lei, and Guo Zifan) of X-Nine to keep being a group. Edit: I double-checked and Zhao Lei turned 20 earlier this year.
This is less of a Weibo Wednesday update and more of round-up of a bunch of celebrities who announced they were dating (or in one case, married) and whom we couldn’t bother devoting an entire post to. Let me know if there are any celebrities you’d like an update from, because the Weibosphere has been a little dry lately, tbh.
Whether you loved or hated The Romance of the Condor Heroes (神雕侠侣), you gotta admit that the way leads Chen Xiao and Michelle Chen went public with their real-life relationship is pretty cute.
Chen Xiao: There will be a day when you will share my surname.
The biggest news this week? Fan Bingbing and Li Chen announcing last Friday that they’re in a relationship. The two got close while filming The Empress of China (武媚娘传奇), though they didn’t portray a couple in that drama. This is the first time in her 19-year-long career that Fan Bingbing has publicly admitted that she was dating someone.
Their fairly low-key approach to announcing that they were dating — they simply uploaded a photo of them on Weibo with the caption “Us” — has been replicated throughout the Weibosphere in the few days since. Most of the usage has been tongue-in-cheek, such as Jiro Wang with the Incredible Hulk and a random netizen who somehow got actor Lee Pace to hold up fake marriage certificates with her.
Anyway, congratulations to Fan Bingbing and Li Chen, and I hope they don’t let all the rumors about their past relationships drag them down.
If there’s anything better than one Wang Leehom, it’s four Wang Leehoms. Here he is poking fun at himself in a recent photoshoot for L’Officiel Hommes.
You! You! You! It’s not polite to point like that!
Leehom also randomly started posting sheet music for his songs, starting with “Your Love” (你的愛), the title track from his new album. If you play violin, viola, cello, or bass, and have been dying to learn how to play his music, check out the link!
Tibetan Buddhist monks join Han Hong on stage in this week’s I Am A Singer.
I Am A Singer, this year, is sponsored by Honda and Oppo. So the singers drive up in their Honda cars which totally look like the Jeeps from Jurassic Park, and unbox their new Oppo smartphones. They watch the introductory video for the newest contestant, Korean singer The One, but none of them know who he is. Obviously they didn’t watch the first season. For shame.
The One’s “manager” on the show is Xiao Wu, the Korean member of Top Combine. He does most of the interpreting for him. Let’s hop straight into it.
Don’t worry. The dinosaurs don’t start eating people until after Newman shuts down the park’s security system.
Jane Zhang
If 是否 by Julie Su
Earlier in the competition, Jane performed Legend of a Hungry Wolf 饿狼传说 by Jacky Cheung. Everything about it was eerily similar to G.E.M’s performance of Lady Marmalade on last year’s show (especially the part where it actually segued into Lady Marmalade). Jane came second, but people were a bit iffy about it.
This time, Jane is singing a song that G.E.M recorded back in 2013. The similarities stop there, however. While G.E.M’s version was a demure, piano-only track, Jane’s arrangement features the whole band. Her voice harks back to her time on Super Girl. It’s powerful and free. It’s everythi- oh… and now it’s been jazzed up with trumpets. So not only did she not watch the first season of I Am A Singer, but she didn’t read my comments from last week’s episode either.
Besides almost ruining the song by turning it into a breezy jazz number, Jane actually did sing it really well. Nobody else has performed yet, but we have a strong contender for best vocal performance of the night. Continue reading →
You know you’re growing old when … you don’t recognize a dozen or so people on eeMedia’s New Year gimmick. No colorful New Year MV‘s this year, but eeMedia does have a fun calendar featuring favorites like Top Combine, Li Yuchun, Zheng Shuang, Wei Chen, Zhang Jie, Ou Hao, Fu Mengni, Yu Kewei, Yu Tian, Hua Chenyu,etc.
I know, I know, we’ve been behind on music, but real life is full of White Pears 鸭梨 (Pressure). To make it up, here are some new releases from boybands(Top Combine, M.I.C., Uniq), girlbands(Seven Sense), normal bands (Mayday), and ex-band members (Han Geng, JL’s Jason, RTA’s Liu Junling, and Da Zhang Wei).
Celebrities plus cute kids is always a plus, right? Hunan TV recently began broadcasting a new reality show called Grade One (一年级), in which actor Chen Xuedong and actress Song Jia are put in charge of a new first-grade class. Watch the show on Hunan TV’s YouTube account.
Me with my mouth full of plastic Mandarin*, I’m also intoxicated. Is Grade One fun to watch?
* “Plastic Mandarin” is a way of referring to Mandarin that is heavily influenced by the Hunan dialects.
Apologies for the lack of normal Weibo Wednesdays in the past… month. If I could spend more time each day scrolling through Weibo for memorable posts, I definitely would, but unfortunately, that’s not what I get paid to do! But we do have a deluge of goodies from the past month, so full speed ahead!
Jing Boran showed his support for real-life couple Feng Shaofeng and Ni Ni‘s first feature film together, Love Will Tear Us Apart (我想和你好好的), calling it a must-watch. Jing Boran and Ni Ni will soon star together in Up in the Wind (等风来), a film about two unlikely friends’ search for happiness, which eventually leads them to Nepal. Up in the Wind opens in theaters on December 29th. Forever LOLing at the person trying to sneak a pic of Ni Ni with their Minion phone in this photo below.
Top Combine covered in Chocolate because… they’re the Chocolate Bar?
After Top Combine’s mature and sophisticated image in Luck, You Are Here还好有你在, they are back with a sexy masculine image for Chocolate Bang 巧克力Bang. All the songs on the EP are composed by either Zhang Yuan or Ma Xueyang, including one song featuring Ma Yueyang as the producer. Watch TC dance in a box the MV for the title song Chocolate Bang below.
Fancam of a very special performance from their VeeLive concert below the cut. Continue reading →
