Several skywriting planes above Hollywood attracted many people's attention on Sept. 20. At 10,000 feet, the planes spelled the name of a Chinese young pop star in the sky 18 times -- "Wang Junkai ♥18." At the same time, 12 large screens at L.A. LIVE, the venue of the Grammy and Emmy Awards, were rolling videos of Wang Junkai 24 hours straight.
These are not commercial advertisements or publications, but a celebration of the young celebrity's 18th birthday. All these were paid for by his fans.
Lu Han, named as the "Chinese Justin Bieber" by CNN, is a Chinese singer and actor. He was a former member of the Korean boy group EXO. He left the group in 2014 and released his first album that year in China. In 2017. Han was listed as the second most influential celebrity on the Forbes China 100 Celebrity list, with around $31.8 million revenue and a Guinness World Record for most comments on a post for the social media site Weibo.
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TFBoys: Wang Yuan (left), Wang Junkai (middle), Yi Yangqianxi (right)/ Weibo:@SuperSue_KRJ
TFBoys is a teenage Chinese boy band consisting of three members, Wang Junkai, Wang Yuan and Yi Yangqianxi. Debuting at the age of 13 to 14, they swiftly became the most popular group in China with their wholesome and naive "boy-next-door" images. Because of different career focuses, the three idols started their solo career in 2017 with separate personal studios.
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Fan-sponsored displays like this are not common in the United States, but in large Chinese cities, they are becoming more and more common. In the last three years, China's super-fans have begun to invest large amounts of their own money and time to advance their favorite stars' careers. The social media posts of these celebrities, known as "idols," usually get millions of reposts, and magazines in which they are featured can be sold out overnight.
Many of them are also top-earning celebrities in the country. Lu Han, one of the most popular such idols in China, ranks the second in the "2017 Forbes China Celebrity List" with an annual income of $30 million.
Young male celebrities like Wang Junkai and Lu Han are called "Little Fresh Meat" ("Xiao Xian Rou") because of their youthful good looks. Besides their youth and accomplishments, what makes these young men different is the crucial role fans are playing in their success.
Fans not only contribute to their vast income by purchasing their merchandise, but also participate in the idols' career development. Fans volunteer to produce online content, create marketing and publicity campaigns, and even use personal relationships to find resources for their idols.
Experts say these fans' wild devotion to celebrities' careers has become increasingly common in China because of the impact of China's rapid social media development and the country's lack of traditional entertainment agencies.
"Social media marketing in China is already a year to 18 months ahead of the West," said David Craig, a professor at the University of Southern California who is an expert in international entertainment and is familiar with the Chinese media industry. "They're better integrated, they're more networked ... (Their) e-commerce system and virtual goods system ... are further evolved than us."
In addition, China hasn't developed as mature of a traditional marketing business as Hollywood marketing, Craig said. As a result, the Chinese entertainment industry has "jumped right ahead of" traditional marketing approaches and let super-fans do social media marketing for them.
Fans of the popular boy band "TFBoys" describe themselves as an "empire" with complex demographic composition and high content productivity. As loyal fans, they are willing to devote themselves silently to the success of their idol, even if the latter will never know who they are.
Wang Junkai's Birthday Celebration Videos at L.A. Live./ By courtesy of Sherry Yan
The 26-year-old actor graduated from the Department of Dance in People's Liberation Army Academy of Art in China. Though Debuting in 2008, Yang gained huge surge of fame after starring in an action-adventure web series The Lost Tomb and a romantic drama series Love O2O in 2016. He was the first artist featured on the Chinese postage stamp.
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On the 2017 Forbes List, Lu Han and actor Yang Yang were named the second and the fifth most influential celebrities in China, ranking higher than Jackie Chan and other world-famous stars.
Many people in China are surprised at how powerful these young celebrities became in China, said Tianyue Huang, a student from China who is taking English language courses in Los Angeles. "They're very simple. They can't compose or produce songs. And their singing and acting skills are not outstanding either."
Super-fans take it for granted that being devoted to an idol means promoting and publicizing the person, both commercially and professionally.
"Fans are definitely the base for their success. Skills and strengths are not always the most important thing in the entertainment industry," said Yoki Zhao, a super-fan of the boy band TFBoys and also a graduate student at USC.
In Chinese fandom, a fan's effort to show respect and publicize a celebrity is called "fan support" ("Yingyuan"). It includes traditional ways of supporting, like buying albums and concert and movie tickets.
More often, competitions occur among different fan communities online, with super-fans attempting to raise their idol's rankings on music charts and on lists of trending topics on social media. Rather than voting once or twice for their idols to be included on these charts, Chinese fans encourage each other to complete what they call "voting assignments," which involve voting several times a day.
"It is to showcase our value, especially to the advertisers and investors," Fangzhou Hu, another big fan of Wang Yuan in Shanghai, said.
A recent ad campaign by the smartphone company OPPO illustrates her point. The company invited eight young stars to endorse their new cellphone, and it created an individual social media ad for each celebrity. The number of forwards and comments following each ad were compared and analyzed to show which one brought more attention to the OPPO brand.
However, it is the purchasing power of fans rather than their social media influence that is most crucial to the idols' commercial value to advertisers. Early in September 2014, Lu Han's first digital album Reloaded I broke sales records with 350,000 in sales in the first hour of its release.
According to Nilsson Consulting, many fans of Lu Han purchased more than 100 copies of the albums at a time.
This is not an isolated phenomenon. TFBoys' fans are also big on boosting commercial product sales for their beloved band. In 2016, Wang Yuan, a member of the band, was featured in Bazaar magazine. About 160,000 magazines were sold in eight seconds. Zhao, the TFBoys fan, said someone she knew bought 1,108 magazines. It is easy to understand why, she said, adding: "The more and faster goods got sold out, the higher popularity an idol showcases."
"It's not a waste of money," Zhao explained. "The magazines are going to be donated to public facilities such as city libraries and coffee shops, where people can see the influence of Wang Yuan." Other fans can also go to the places, take photos, and post the magazines online, which generate another row of online publicity. "It's a systematic plan," she said proudly.
Being a "Mammy" of My Idols
Sherry Yan and Jie Meng, fans of the boy band TFBoys, talk about how fandom works in China. (If your video does not display, click here.)
Support by Land, Sea and Air
Fan blogs ("Yingyuan Zhan") on major Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo and Baidu, are usually organizers for these "fan support" events.
There are various types of these blogs, each with a different focus such as producing images, directing online discussions and organizing offline support activities like birthday celebrations. When it comes to an idol group, there will often be individual fan blogs that only promote one specific member of the group.
Yoki Zhao operated an image-based fan blog with another friend last year. During that period, her "job" was to follow and shoot all the events related to Wang Yuan, including performances, reality show tapings and airport snapshots, and update on her fan blog every day.
Photo of Wang Yuan shot by Yoki Zhao. (Photo courtesy of Yoki Zhao)
In February 2016, TFBoys was shooting a TV series in Xiamen, a city in southern China that is about 580 miles away from where Zhao lives. Still, she flew there three times, stayed for a month in total and took thousands of behind-the-scenes pictures of Wang Yuan.
Flying after the celebrities is so common for fan bloggers that they became familiar with the booking and seating systems of each major airline in China.To get closer and better shots of their idols, fans usually purchase first-class tickets.
An idol's personal identity information is a "public secret" inside a fandom, Zhao said. Fans can track their idols' flights. As long as they get the latest itinerary, many fans will act immediately and purchase tickets on the same flights. "Not to mention domestic flights, even if they're going to Denmark, Los Angeles, we will also follow them."
What is being invested is not only money, but also enormous amounts of time and energy. Zhao said as long as the fans are following idols, it's nearly a "24-hour operation."
"They start to work in the early morning, and we need to be at the scene as early as 5 a.m." The shoot lasts for the whole day until around 2 to 3 a.m. "Usually only then do we get time to eat."
Zhao was a college student. This gave her a flexible schedule to travel, especially when it comes to the summer and winter breaks. But she said a friend of her worked during the week and follow the idols on weekends and their vacations.
Many of the super fans are well-paid professionals working in finance and media industries, according to Zhao and Ruonan Li, another fan of Wang Junkai. "Students account for a large part of the fans," Li said, "but those who play a dominant role in fan communities are high-paid, well-educated people. Just the same as the society."
Zhao said some of the fans she knew graduated from top universities in the world, such as Oxford and London School of Economics. "Having a Ph.D. degree is not rare among fans," she added.
Because of her devotion, her fan blog attracted 30,000 followers in less than one year. Zhao invested around $7,000 to buy facilities. "The last thing we will count is how much we've spent on it." Although, Zhao said, they often joke that each month they spend the equivalent of a luxury bag on their idols.
Perhaps the largest annual fandom festival is the birthday of the popular stars. Each year, fan communities compete with each other on the scale, investment and creativity of birthday fan celebrations, which they view as a favorable publicity opportunity.
One of the most famous birthday supports was for Wang Junkai's birthday in 2017, which was widely reported by Chinese media. The grand celebrations included a lifetime VIP ticket for a luxury cruise for the star; a hot-air ballooning event in Cappadocia, Turkey, that was covered by major news agencies in Turkey; and advertisements in over 70 cities all over the world.
Super fans of TFBoys scan Weibo posts about the band constantly.
"We build their career"
For these young Chinese celebrities, fans "are not just their fans, they are their business partners," Craig, the USC professor, said.
Jie Meng, another fan of TFBoys from China, suggested a similar idea. "The American fans just love them (their idols). For us, we build their career," Meng said.
Meng remembers when TFBoys, whom she calls her "sons," started to become famous in 2014. "Many rumors came out against them," including a rumor that one of the members, who was 15 years old, had a girlfriend. At that time, some influential fan groups on Weibo and Baidu first came out to clarify and issue statements on behalf of the celebrities. It was after that that the official talent agency of the band published a statement denying the rumors.
For a long period of time, fans working as legal professionals in China organized on Weibo and offered legal advice for the band and their company, until the members began to work with better public relations groups.
Fans also help with networking in the entertainment industry. This means fans will devote to creating and maintaining networks between the stars and directors, producers, journalists and other professionals in the industry.
Photos of the Canon workshops posted by fans on Weibo. /By courtesy of @SecondToNone)
For example, during the 2017 Chinese New Year, a fan group called "ROYal-Knights" customized gifts including USB disks, imported snacks and cosmetics and sent to the media in the name of Wang Yuan. On a Weibo post, the group wrote: "We appreciate every encouragement and understanding from our media friends, which gives the boy (Wang Yuan) more power to go forward."
Some fans even utilized their own social networks to obtain resources and commercial cooperation for the celebrities, even though celebrities themselves and their companies are not involved in the process.
According to Zhao, a fan of Wang Yuan negotiated a sponsorship with Canon Inc. that the company will provide free camera facilities for fans to shoot photos of public events of Wang Yuan. The company also sponsor workshops which invited famous photographers in China to give lessons to fans on shooting photos and Photoshop.
Recently, fan groups of several Chinese young celebrities also cooperated with an online shopping forum on Alibaba, urging fans to promote the forum on their social media. In exchange, Alibaba helped to advance trends of their idols on Weibo.
"It was us that brought them to such a high level," said Jie Meng.
A Yearning for Social Connections
A combination of two contradictory feelings occur at the same time on these Chinese fans. On the one hand, they feel an extreme intimacy with idols, caring about their lives, growth and success as if they were their loved ones. Many of the them call their idols "my husband" or "my son," terms which Meng and other fans of TFBoys repeated during their interviews.
On the other hand, fans want idols to keep their distance. They don't expect any personal interaction or reward for their devotion and sacrifice. "As long as they live well and make money, it doesn't matter if I can meet them or not," Meng said.
Henry Jenkins, professor of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, sees several social and economic patterns in current China that could contribute to the phenomenon.
First, the large amount of money fans invest in their idols is a reflection of "the extreme disparity of wealthin China."
Another possible factor, according to Jenkins, is an emotional need Chinese youths use to fill out the loneness and isolation coming from the one child policy.
"There's a kind of a loneness and isolation for this generation of these Chinese youth," Jenkins explained. They need to "fill out the social-emotional bonds with people."
Growing up in the era of social media, at the same time, made this generation expect more access to their favorite celebrities, Jenkins said. The popularity of Weibo and live streaming in China enables them to closely tie their emotions to a star's life.
For example, when a fan is celebrating a birthday with a celebrity, they feel a sense of family connection to the person and other people in that fan community.
"For people who have inherited wealth, who have a desire for social connection ... fandoms are growing out of that need, for strong bonds that replace the siblings that Chinese youth don't have."
