We’ve been breeding Internet celebrities in this country for a long time. Remember JenniCam and the Star Wars Kid? Andy Milonakis got his own damn show.
But that’s the wicked capitalist West. What about China? Do the Chinese long for the global infamy that the Web can deliver?
Apparently yes. Shi Hengxia, a 28-year-old peasant woman from Shaanxi, is known online as Sister Furong. I guess these pictures must be the equivalent of a Britney Spears nip slip in Chinese terms.
Now the Chinese government has clamped down. How sad. Are Sister Furong’s dreams to be thwarted?
Chen Weiming, chairman of Beijing-based film production company Zongbo Media, which has hired her to star in a series of short films shot on digital video, had this to say:
“Chinese youth are looking for different new ways to express their freedom.”
One-handed Web surfing?
UPDATE: Actually, she posted her pictures to the electronic bulletin boards at China’s top two universities: Peking and Tsinghua. It seems like the BBS at Tsinghua and Peking, along with that of Nanjing University, have been restricted to users with an IP address inside the university only. Previously, these BBSs hosted active public forums and attracted visitors from inside and outside the university. The webmaster of Tsinghua’s SMTH BBS has redirected traffic from smth.org to a new board called NewSMTH.