Chinese School - Be a fan to have a new social life

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CITYLIFE / Hip & New






Be a fan to have a new social life


(Xinhua News Agency)
Updated: 2007-07-23 10:29





"2007 Happy Boy singing competition" champion candidates Su Xing (L) and
Chen Chusheng (R) receive fans' cheers after a fierce elimination
game in Changsha, capital city of central China's Hunan province, on
Friday evening, July 13, 2007. [Photo: ent.sina.com.cn]?


Popular TV singing contests, such as "Super Girl" and "Happy Boy," seem
to have brought Chinese young people something above sheer
entertainment-they have created them a new type of social life.

Peng Yu, a teenage girl from southwestern Sichuan province, is a huge fan
of Su Xing, who participated in the "2007 Happy Boy" contest launched by
a domestic television station.

Together with 400 some boys and girls from the same province, they formed
a fan club titled "the Sichuan Backup Unit for Su Xing."

Here is Peng Yu's schedule for this summer vacation, a typical one as a
fan.

During week days, Peng Yu is online round-the-clock communicating with
her allies in forums or in ICQ chatting groups. On weekends she goes
downtown to meet them to do promotion activities for their idol.

"Every week I make ten new friends or more, and we have really good time
together," she said.

Peng Yu and her friends should be happy as their icon Su Xing, a
23-year-old R&B lover and returned student from Australia, took the
second prize in the final on Friday evening.

Although the competition has concluded, the fan club members' friendship
will continue.

Jiang Linjuan, who works for a company in south China's Guangzhou city,
is a fan of Chris Li, the winner of 2005 "Super Girl" contest. Recently
she went to a party held by Chris Li's fans in the city.

"There were seven or eight people of us, from teenagers to 40-year-olds
and of varied professions," Jiang recalled. "We spent the time together
in a restaurant eating and chatting like old friends."

"Nowadays young people are mostly from single-child families. Being the
fans of someone brings these lonely children together," Hu Guangwei,
deputy director of the Institute of Sociology, Sichuan Academy of Social
Sciences, was quoted as saying.

Xia Xueluan, a professor at the Department of Sociology, Peking
University, shares the opinion.

"Today's young people lack the sense of belonging," he said. "The fan
clubs provide them with a sort of attachment to each other."

The TV talent shows are weekly elimination games in which the
competitors' performances are measured partly by the votes they received
online and through cell phone SMS short messages. It takes several months
from the general selection to the final.























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