- Actress back in the state media eye for a charity appearance – but she’s hard to spot in the picture
- Fan could make a comeback if she doesn’t put a step wrong, film studies professor says
Disgraced Chinese actress Fan Bingbing could be on the way back from exile after her tax evasion scandal, with state media reporting on her recent charity work.
After disappearing from official media for more than a year, Fan was finally given a mention, albeit not in a prominent position, for her appearance at the launch of a girls’ safety charity event hosted by Ifeng.com and Henan Traffic Radio on Friday.
She attended as a “public interest ambassador” and the news was carried by China Daily, the English-language newspaper run by the Communist Party’s Publicity Department, on its Chinese website on Monday.
Similar reports also appeared on Gmw.cn, the website of another party mouthpiece Guangming Daily, and was carried by People.com.cn, the website of the party’s most influential newspaper.
But one of two People.com.cn reports about the event did not include Fan on the list of attendees and the photo with it was too blurry to be able to identify the actress in the centre of the picture.
Li Daoxin, a Peking University film studies professor, said Fan could make a comeback as long as she did not break any law.
“But whether she can regain the popularity and success she had before [the scandal] depends on her acting ability,” Li said.
Fan, once the most popular actress in the country and a media darling, disappeared from the public view in June last year over allegations of tax evasion. Four months later, reports emerged that she had been fined 884 million yuan (US$125 million).
Her scenes in a patriotic movie were cut when it was aired on China Central Television and Air Strike , a movie in which she co-starred with Bruce Willis, was not released in Chinese theatres.
In the last year, she has made few public statements, limiting her social media posts to her charity work for children in Tibet and the announcement of her break-up with her actor boyfriend Li Chen.
Fan has tiptoed warily back onto the social scene. Her first public appearance was in April to attend an event for the ninth anniversary of iQiyi, a Chinese video-streaming platform.
She tested the water again in September when she was featured in an online post as a Louis Vuitton brand spokeswoman to promote a new line of bags.
Within an hour, fans and detractors alike flooded the post with comments.
“I think her comeback was unfair to other artists. She broke the law with tax evasion,” one internet user said.
LV deleted the post three hours later and replaced it with one featuring the other celebrities in the original post.
Fan boasts more than 62 million followers in her account on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform.
“She made some mistakes but at least she corrected it. Her charity work deserves some praise,” one fan said.
Another was not impressed and called it “whitewashing her wrong deeds”.
More Articles from SCMP
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia. For more SCMP stories, please download our mobile app, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Microsoft may earn an Affiliate Commission if you purchase something through recommended links in this article
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks you for your concern towards this blog, share your view about this post by clicking on comment. Have a nice day ahead.
Place your Advert for as low as $10 call 08061154825