Passion and Fame
Glass meets Yao Chen, UN Honorary Patron, film idol and one of the most followed faces in the online world
You may not have heard of her yet, but it seems
that the world is watching Yao Chen. At the time of publication, she is
reportedly the third most followed person on the internet, surpassing
the likes of Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey and following closely behind
the modern-day phenomena Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Yao has caught
not only the attention of the world’s press but also, and importantly in
China, the imaginations of the fashion world’s most esteemed luxury
brands. In March 2011, Yao was invited to attend Chanel’s Autumn/Winter
2011 ready-to-wear show during Paris Fashion Week, her first
international fashion event. But it was an international visit of a very
different kind earlier this year that catalysed her explosive surge in
online ranking; her mission to visit and assist refugees in northern
Thailand, as UNHCR’s (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)
Honorary Patron for China. Today, Yao Chen has over eight million
followers hanging on her every word.
It would be an understatement to say that Yao Chen has come a long way. Once a 14-year-old girl from Fujian, striving to make it in Beijing, she has led a dazzlingly unconventional career compared to previous generations of Chinese film stars and has a CV that jumps from acting to charity, from fashion to microblogging and even includes an album. Born in 1979 to a middle-class family, Yao Chen studied Chinese folk dance at the Beijing Dance Academy. Her passion for acting wasn’t realised until she arrived at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy – the same school where legendary Chinese directors Chen Kaige and Wu Tianming learnt their craft. “I didn’t recognise the difficulty in real life of getting myself noticed. I’ve been fortunate along the way,” Yao admits freely.
Her acting career began with a TV debut in My Own Swordsman (2005) in which she played the daughter of a powerful martial artist. She followed this with a critically acclaimed 2008 series Undercover, playing the role of an iconic guerrilla leader. A Story of Lala’s Promotion (2009) marked her first stage play, and saw Yao playing a white-collar heroine working her way up in a large multinational corporation in Shanghai – representational of the struggle of many typical, middle-class young people trying to be noticed in China today. “My teachers at the Beijing Film Academy have been very generous to me. They saw the potential in me and encouraged me to seek more opportunities in acting,” she explains. More recently Yao has appeared in Feng Xiaogang’s If You Are the One 2 (2010), starring as the embittered divorcee ‘Mango’. (Feng is one of China’s breakthrough directors and his work has been described as representing “a new model of a Chinese national cinema that positions itself vis-à-vis Hollywood.”)
Her most recent appearances have been in Chen Yili’s Colour Me Love (2010) and Shang Jing’s My Own Swordsman (2011). Though Yao Chen is not yet widely known on an international scale, she finds herself in the curious position of having more people following her musings than are following the thoughts of the president of America.
Over the past few years, social media have redrawn the skyline of human communication. In China, where Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are prohibited, people turn instead to Weibo for social networking. Carried by Sina.com, the largest Chinese language infotainment web portal, Weibo is the equivalent of Twitter for information sharing among net users. Celebrities today have unprecedented and direct access to their fans through the medium of microblogging.
Among the many people who microblog on Weibo, Yao Chen sits at the top of the list with an exponentially expanding fan base. Yao admits that the relationship she has with her readers is one of intimacy and partial privacy. “To be very frank with you, I’m a half-blind internet user. My knowledge of the internet is limited. But I have a strong need to stay informed of what’s happening around me and in this world. Fame has brought me more convenience in creating an influence. Microblogging provides a platform for me to spread word out to a wider audience.”
Despite her lack of knowledge of the internet, Yao has developed an extraordinary relationship with her audience and her online figures recently jumped dramatically following her visit to Thailand’s Mae La refugee camp. The camp is home to nearly 29,000 registered refugees and an estimated 16,000 unregistered people. During her time in Thailand, Yao constantly shared updates of her visit with her millions of fans. “As an actress, I’m not very good at expressing myself in real life. Microblogging satisfies my desire for speaking up.” By reporting and posting photos directly from inside the camp, the largest of nine refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border, Yao has been able to raise awareness in China about refugees, something not usually associated with China – the world’s media instead choose to focus on the country’s economy rather than its growing humanitarian efforts.
“To me, visiting the refugee camp in Thailand was like experiencing a spiritual rite of baptism,” explains Yao, who also learnt elementary Thai from the school children she visited. “At that time I was going through some personal suffering of my own and was in many ways a refugee myself, mentally. To some extent, the refugees offered me far greater help than what I gave them.”
Yao’s involvement with UNHCR began two years ago. “I’m a huge Brad Pitt fan.” She admits with a smile, “That’s why I came to take notice of Angelina Jolie and of her cooperation with the UN. When destiny grants you greater power, there’s a responsibility too to help people in need,” she continues, “When I was learning basic Thai with the refugees in a class, I could strongly feel their yearning for a better life and eagerness to live like normal people.”
Before her appointment to Thailand, Yao was sent in June 2010 to the Philippines to visit refugees dwelling in the city of Manila. She visited households originating from South Africa, Sudan, Somalia and Kuwait. Most of the refugees had been in the city for more than 20 years, and some had even married into local families. “Despair is greater in the Mae La refugee camp. The refugees live in remote mountain areas, as if abandoned in a forgotten corner in our world.” Since 2006, the government of Thailand has stopped confirming refugee identities.
With no certified status, refugees are not legally permitted to work. “While I was there, I met an 18-year-old boy who has a passion for architecture. He can’t legally obtain textbooks because his status is yet to be confirmed. Therefore, we purchased a series of books on architecture for him after the visit and had the books sent to his family.” Yao found that children in the refugee camp dream of bettering themselves and becoming architects or doctors when they grow up. “The refugees want security and a home of their own. Surviving is the only essential element in their life. That’s why these two professions are so popular among the children.”
This visit contrasts distinctly with her invitation to Paris Fashion week and her first exposure to the European press. “I don’t know about fashion, it’s not my expertise. If you want to talk about acting, I have enough confidence to discuss that with you. But my limited knowledge of fashion does not affect my passion for beauty. Everyone has their own sense of beauty. I’m a woman who likes beautiful things just like every other woman does. I just put on whatever clothes make me feel confident.” As we talk, it is not difficult to see why Yao Chen has attracted a fan base that equals the population of a major metropolis.
She is sincere, fearless to open up and very much engaged with the events of the modern world, a representative of contemporary Chinese women and of a whole new generation of informed young Chinese. Regardless of the ongoing internet restrictions and media censorship, the younger generations in China have found themselves a place on cyberspace to communicate and stay connected to the rest of the world. Yao Chen seems to have become the poster girl of this movement.
When asked of her often-ascribed title of modern-day heroine fighting inequality, she explains, “As an actress, I feel I’m responsible for bringing joy to people. I am planning to visit Pakistan later in the year. People tell me it’s too dangerous to enter the region, but I would really like to meet the refugees there. My agent and I are still working hard on the application.” Yao’s concern for the disadvantaged and for society as a whole seems to come genuinely from within.
Her movie star status, fashion credentials and international activities are all obvious clues to her formidable success but it is her humanity, and ultimately her accessibility, that seem to be the qualities cementing her as the icon for a new generation in a nation entering a new era. Time will tell how much of this bold, young actress we will be seeing in the future but her youth belies her wisdom and as she leaves us she imparts some last words of wisdom; “Even if life is unfair to us, we must let out a smile. With a bigger smile comes greater power.”
by Yolanda Chen
Taken from Glass: Secret
It would be an understatement to say that Yao Chen has come a long way. Once a 14-year-old girl from Fujian, striving to make it in Beijing, she has led a dazzlingly unconventional career compared to previous generations of Chinese film stars and has a CV that jumps from acting to charity, from fashion to microblogging and even includes an album. Born in 1979 to a middle-class family, Yao Chen studied Chinese folk dance at the Beijing Dance Academy. Her passion for acting wasn’t realised until she arrived at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy – the same school where legendary Chinese directors Chen Kaige and Wu Tianming learnt their craft. “I didn’t recognise the difficulty in real life of getting myself noticed. I’ve been fortunate along the way,” Yao admits freely.
Her acting career began with a TV debut in My Own Swordsman (2005) in which she played the daughter of a powerful martial artist. She followed this with a critically acclaimed 2008 series Undercover, playing the role of an iconic guerrilla leader. A Story of Lala’s Promotion (2009) marked her first stage play, and saw Yao playing a white-collar heroine working her way up in a large multinational corporation in Shanghai – representational of the struggle of many typical, middle-class young people trying to be noticed in China today. “My teachers at the Beijing Film Academy have been very generous to me. They saw the potential in me and encouraged me to seek more opportunities in acting,” she explains. More recently Yao has appeared in Feng Xiaogang’s If You Are the One 2 (2010), starring as the embittered divorcee ‘Mango’. (Feng is one of China’s breakthrough directors and his work has been described as representing “a new model of a Chinese national cinema that positions itself vis-à-vis Hollywood.”)
Her most recent appearances have been in Chen Yili’s Colour Me Love (2010) and Shang Jing’s My Own Swordsman (2011). Though Yao Chen is not yet widely known on an international scale, she finds herself in the curious position of having more people following her musings than are following the thoughts of the president of America.
Over the past few years, social media have redrawn the skyline of human communication. In China, where Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are prohibited, people turn instead to Weibo for social networking. Carried by Sina.com, the largest Chinese language infotainment web portal, Weibo is the equivalent of Twitter for information sharing among net users. Celebrities today have unprecedented and direct access to their fans through the medium of microblogging.
Among the many people who microblog on Weibo, Yao Chen sits at the top of the list with an exponentially expanding fan base. Yao admits that the relationship she has with her readers is one of intimacy and partial privacy. “To be very frank with you, I’m a half-blind internet user. My knowledge of the internet is limited. But I have a strong need to stay informed of what’s happening around me and in this world. Fame has brought me more convenience in creating an influence. Microblogging provides a platform for me to spread word out to a wider audience.”
Despite her lack of knowledge of the internet, Yao has developed an extraordinary relationship with her audience and her online figures recently jumped dramatically following her visit to Thailand’s Mae La refugee camp. The camp is home to nearly 29,000 registered refugees and an estimated 16,000 unregistered people. During her time in Thailand, Yao constantly shared updates of her visit with her millions of fans. “As an actress, I’m not very good at expressing myself in real life. Microblogging satisfies my desire for speaking up.” By reporting and posting photos directly from inside the camp, the largest of nine refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border, Yao has been able to raise awareness in China about refugees, something not usually associated with China – the world’s media instead choose to focus on the country’s economy rather than its growing humanitarian efforts.
“To me, visiting the refugee camp in Thailand was like experiencing a spiritual rite of baptism,” explains Yao, who also learnt elementary Thai from the school children she visited. “At that time I was going through some personal suffering of my own and was in many ways a refugee myself, mentally. To some extent, the refugees offered me far greater help than what I gave them.”
Yao’s involvement with UNHCR began two years ago. “I’m a huge Brad Pitt fan.” She admits with a smile, “That’s why I came to take notice of Angelina Jolie and of her cooperation with the UN. When destiny grants you greater power, there’s a responsibility too to help people in need,” she continues, “When I was learning basic Thai with the refugees in a class, I could strongly feel their yearning for a better life and eagerness to live like normal people.”
Before her appointment to Thailand, Yao was sent in June 2010 to the Philippines to visit refugees dwelling in the city of Manila. She visited households originating from South Africa, Sudan, Somalia and Kuwait. Most of the refugees had been in the city for more than 20 years, and some had even married into local families. “Despair is greater in the Mae La refugee camp. The refugees live in remote mountain areas, as if abandoned in a forgotten corner in our world.” Since 2006, the government of Thailand has stopped confirming refugee identities.
With no certified status, refugees are not legally permitted to work. “While I was there, I met an 18-year-old boy who has a passion for architecture. He can’t legally obtain textbooks because his status is yet to be confirmed. Therefore, we purchased a series of books on architecture for him after the visit and had the books sent to his family.” Yao found that children in the refugee camp dream of bettering themselves and becoming architects or doctors when they grow up. “The refugees want security and a home of their own. Surviving is the only essential element in their life. That’s why these two professions are so popular among the children.”
This visit contrasts distinctly with her invitation to Paris Fashion week and her first exposure to the European press. “I don’t know about fashion, it’s not my expertise. If you want to talk about acting, I have enough confidence to discuss that with you. But my limited knowledge of fashion does not affect my passion for beauty. Everyone has their own sense of beauty. I’m a woman who likes beautiful things just like every other woman does. I just put on whatever clothes make me feel confident.” As we talk, it is not difficult to see why Yao Chen has attracted a fan base that equals the population of a major metropolis.
She is sincere, fearless to open up and very much engaged with the events of the modern world, a representative of contemporary Chinese women and of a whole new generation of informed young Chinese. Regardless of the ongoing internet restrictions and media censorship, the younger generations in China have found themselves a place on cyberspace to communicate and stay connected to the rest of the world. Yao Chen seems to have become the poster girl of this movement.
When asked of her often-ascribed title of modern-day heroine fighting inequality, she explains, “As an actress, I feel I’m responsible for bringing joy to people. I am planning to visit Pakistan later in the year. People tell me it’s too dangerous to enter the region, but I would really like to meet the refugees there. My agent and I are still working hard on the application.” Yao’s concern for the disadvantaged and for society as a whole seems to come genuinely from within.
Her movie star status, fashion credentials and international activities are all obvious clues to her formidable success but it is her humanity, and ultimately her accessibility, that seem to be the qualities cementing her as the icon for a new generation in a nation entering a new era. Time will tell how much of this bold, young actress we will be seeing in the future but her youth belies her wisdom and as she leaves us she imparts some last words of wisdom; “Even if life is unfair to us, we must let out a smile. With a bigger smile comes greater power.”
by Yolanda Chen
Taken from Glass: Secret
Posted: 2 August 2012
