Ordinary Gweilo

The funniest story of the moment has to be the one about appearance on the Interweb of some, er, candid photographs featuring several Hong Kong pop stars.  It’s even made it to The Guardian (Film star sex scandal causes internet storm in China), but here’s the SCMP:

The photos that appeared on the internet last week are purported to be of Edison Chen, Gillian Chung Yan-tung of girl duo Twins, actress Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi and former actress Bobo Chan Man-woon.

Would this be a good time to admit that I barely know who most of these people are?  Still less care about them.

Today’s newspapers report a press conference on Monday given by Gillian Chung Yan-tung in which she admits to being “naive and very silly in the past” (Twins star apologizes to her fans).  A pop star being naive and silly?  Well, well, well.

Fortunately the police have acted with commendable speed to deal with this serious crime, and have apparently traced the technician in a PC repair shop who found the photographs on a computer and then uploaded them.  Now they just have to figure out which serious crime he may have committed.

Some cynics apparently think that the police only acted so quickly because celebrities were involved.  No!  Of course the photos have now been seen by almost everyone in Hong Kong, so all that police activity may all have been in vain.  Still at least they tried to help.   

Meanwhile, the SCMP had an amusing angle on the story (Beware kids’ shattered fantasies, parents urged – subscription required):

“Edison Chen has been portraying himself as a bad boy like James Dean so young girls who fantasise about him might not be as shocked,” [Baptist University social work lecturer and culture critic Bottle Shiu Ka-chun] said.

“But for Chung’s fans, this is traumatic. Chung has been portrayed as an innocent young girl and the horrid images in these obscene photos may have killed some youngsters’ fantasy of her pure image.”

Hong Kong pop stars roll off the production line complete with images that need to be maintained by their PR people.  Some may recall the huge fuss caused by some earlier photographs of one (or was it both) of the Twins changing costumes backstage in Malaysia, in which a bra was apparently visible.  Shocking stuff.   Well, maybe not.  

Au Wai-kwong, team leader of the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po district youth outreaching social work team, said he had yet to receive any calls for help from youngsters distressed by the images. But he said teenagers had expressed concern about how the internet is used. “They are very confused by what police have been saying,” Mr Au said.

Are Hong Kong youngsters really so naive as to believe that the public image of these pop stars are anything more than the work of their management companies?  Possibly not. If Gillian Chung Yan-tung was “rumoured to be romantically linked to Chen” (as the SCMP put it) what do the fans imagine they were doing together?  This could explain why no-one was distressed by the images (but there is no news on how many people were distressed by the amount of coverage given to this non-story).