美国记者如何看芙蓉姐姐Tag： 芙蓉姐姐 华盛顿时报 报道中国 In Chinese Cyberspace, A Blossoming PassionWashington Post Foreign ServiceTuesday, July 19, 2005; Page A15

BEIJING -- Suddenly this summer, Sister Lotus is all over China.Hotly debated on Chinese-language Web sites, her saucy photos get millions of hits. National magazines dote on her, and China's television crews are taping away. Late to catch on, Communist Party censors now officially frown on her. Some sociologists warn that Sister Lotus cannot be good for China's teenagers; others smile and predict her fame will be fleeting.But nobody, including Sister Lotus, appears to know what this is all about."I think it's crazy," she said in an interview.Sister Lotus, who turns 28 on Tuesday, is Shi Hengxia, and comes from a small town in Shaanxi province. Over the last few years, she tried and failed to gain admission to Peking University and then to Tsinghua University, China's most prestigious institutions of higher learning.Undaunted, and blessed with a deep reservoir of daring, she posted the story of her determination on both universities' Web sites. China has a recent tradition of personal sagas on the Web, including those from young women chronicling their sex lives in a way that could never get by a traditional publisher. But these were different -- sincere, maybe naive -- and they touched a nerve among students.Then a friend suggested that, since she was looking for a boyfriend, she might try posting an appeal for amorous bids as well. Pretty soon the sites were full of lovelorn prose from Sister Lotus, along with titillating -- but clad -- photos showing her in a variety of poses that must seem arty in Shaanxi."Lotus coming out of crystal-clear water" was the title of one such posting."I have no idea what was going on, but I got a lot of e-mails in response," Sister Lotus said over a bowl of tripe soup, stroking her long black hair and smiling vaguely at what she set in motion. "People wanted more pictures. Most of them liked me, but of course a few were critical."Throughout the spring, the phenomenon grew, metastasizing into off-campus Web sites as well. As they studied for year-end exams last month, millions of student-age Chinese were finding distraction by logging on to review Sister Lotus postings.The mainstream media, focusing on the North Korea nuclear crisis and official declarations from Chinese leaders, were slow to discover the boom. But by the beginning of July, Sister Lotus appeared to be looking out from the magazine racks at every newsstand in China.Inevitably, the journalists went to experts for their perspectives. Interviews and roundtables appeared, accompanied by photos showing Sister Lotus dancing in the park or thrusting her chest out to form an S with her body."In one sense, the phenomenon of Sister Lotus is the victory of common people," said Zhang Yiwu, a Peking University specialist in modern culture. "Also, it shows the influence of the modern medium, the Internet."Xia Xueluan, a sociologist and Peking University colleague, was less sanguine. "The lack of beliefs among young people leads them to fulfill their needs in a lower way," she said. "And of course, that is not a good thing."

But a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Li Yinhe, advised that the best thing was to wait for the storm to pass. Sister Lotus, she predicted, will be hot "for another three minutes."Students interviewed at the universities that turned Sister Lotus down took a similar attitude, saying they and almost everybody on campus were part of the craze but did not take it seriously.Zhou Min, 25, a PhD student at Tsinghua, said one of his classmates got so excited when he bumped into Sister Lotus in a hallway recently that he missed an evening seminar. A Peking University graduate student, Ye Shulan, 27, said it was all for fun. "I think you can just be entertained and laugh her off," he said.For some commentators, Sister Lotus has grabbed the imagination of young Chinese because she is affirming her individuality so blatantly in a society where children are generally taught to conform and avoid sticking out. Others expressed concern that, despite the economic boom, life in China must be lacking something if Sister Lotus can so grip the attention of young people.For reasons that, as is customary, they did not explain, Communist Party censors recently barred the broadcast of a Sister Lotus program prepared by China Central Television, the government-run network. They also made it clear to Web site operators that the fun had gone on long enough. By then, however, the phenomenon appeared to have taken on a life of its own."I will not be censored," Sister Lotus declared.She contacted the administrator of one Web site who agreed to record her dancing and explaining herself to critics. The segment was posted last week. Then the Hong Kong-based Phoenix satellite television network broadcast a live interview with her Friday, and aired it a second time later in the day.Sister Lotus, dressed in a see-through blouse and tight jeans with spangles on the thighs, said she had quit her job at a publishing house since the publicity exploded. Gesturing with applied grace, she announced that she was just about finished with a book in which she urges young Chinese to follow her example and not give up in the face of adversity.Career prospects look bright, she added. She has auditioned for a soap opera, and a television network whose name she would not reveal has been in touch about a job."I am preparing for a career as an anchorwoman," she said, smiling again.By Edward Cody

Shi Hengxia, known as Sister Lotus, said she has no idea why her Internet postings have drawn so much attention across China. (Photos By Chenmo Of Chenmo Studio)

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2005/07/18/PH2005071801562.jpg

Here I start with the blog post titled "K post" at Miss and Hit. The idea is simple, but as usual the vivacity of the Chinese language is difficult to capture in translation. Anyway, all I need to borrow here is the idea even as I pay tribute to the original post.The idea is that many of us are avid blog readers, and when we read something interesting, we quote them in our own blogs. Fair enough. What are the 'hot' issues at the moment in Hong Kong? Internet hit songs such as "He dates me to Disneyland" and "He dates me to Hui Lau Shan"; Google Earth and Google Moon; MS Virtual Earth; Yahoo! Widgets and so on. This makes for a kara-oke post ("K post"): everybody sings the same popular song of the day.For the blogger, it serves the purpose of documenting for the reading public and oneself that one is contemporaneous with the 'hot' issues at the moment. Cool! Very cool, indeed! Unfortunately, for the avid blog readers, this can be a turn-off experience. By the tenth time that you have seen the lyrics of "He dates me to Disneyland" in blogs, you are ready to throw up in hands in despair at the diminishing return of the blog reading experience. Waaaaaaaaa!As a blogger, I do not write about every subject under the sun. For one thing, I am an individual who has only a finite number of hours per day. More importantly, as an avid blog reader, I am clearly aware of the fact that you don't need me to repeat the same old stuff about the 'hot' issues. What was I going to tell you about the RMB re-valuation or the London police shooting a Brazilian? I know nothing more. I serve my readers and myself best by keeping my mouth shut if I have nothing new or interesting to say on something.A case in point is this: the case of Sister Lotus (芙蓉姐姐). If you read Chinese, you must have read far too much about her already. If you read only English, you can go to Edward Cody's In Chinese Cyberspace, A Blossoming Passion at the Washington Post. I have no interest in re-iterating all that.

Isn't this strange? She is popular and renowned, but nobody seems to really like, appreciate or respect her. Actually, there is a genuinely interesting and important story in the case of Sister Lotus, but it is not about her at all. Somewhere out there, there are a couple of anonymous and faceless people who enabled Sister Lotus to become such a public figure. On her own, Sister Lotus could never have achieved these heights. The gatekeepers at the key BBS's were the ones who promoted Sister Lotus, and they had the ability to feature her repeatedly at the home pages of their tremendously popular BBS's (with millions of visitors per day). I have to wonder if these anonymous people deliberately chose an unlikely figure precisely to test if they have the power to sway popular preferences. So now that they have proven to themselves that the power is there, what next? How will they use that power? How will they derive financial value from that power?

This comes as no shock to Americans. A story on this day is in the Los Angeles Times

When executives at Sony BMG in the United States needed to drum up support in 2002 for Jennifer Lopez's album This is Me ... Then, they called the program director of a San Diego radio station and offered her a 32-inch plasma TV in exchange for adding the artist's songs to her play list. Sony BMG Music Entertainment knew such payola, or "pay-for-play,'' was illegal. Nonetheless, the company asked the programmer to provide a fictitious contest winner's name and Social Security number to cover up her involvement. The station executive got her TV, and J-Lo got her spins.The alleged exchange was disclosed in a treasure trove of e-mails, Blackberry messages and other documents made public by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. That electronic paper trail led the second-largest music company to a US$10 million (HK$78 million) settlement. Spitzer said Sony BMG executives offered "outright bribes'' to radio programmers to make sure the company's artists got heard. Among the goodies Sony BMG gave employees of stations owned by Infinity Broadcasting, Clear Channel Communications and others: airline tickets, cash, vacation packages, PlayStation video game systems, DVD players and laptop computers. In one e-mail that Spitzer released, a station manager who allegedly accepted gifts joked to Sony BMG executives: "I'm a whore this week. What can I say?''Radio airplay is considered the most powerful promotional tool for record companies. Payola has plagued the music industry since the 1930s, with disc jockeys accepting cash, drugs and prostitutes in exchange for airplay....Spitzer took his sharpest aim at radio stations, saying they "are the ones most fundamentally who are violating the public trust.''

In the United States, radio was and still is the principal target of corrupt practice in the music industry and the subject of anti-payola legislation and prosecution. In the case of China, as illustrated by the case of Sister Lotus, the Internet is now the place in which the public opinions and tastes for entertainment can be shaped with ease. The subject of public trust does not even come into this because those BBS gatekeepers have the discretionary power to feature whatever subjects that they wish. So what will we have to put up with the next time?In this post, I hope that I have contributed something to your understanding of the Sister Lotus phenomenon. More importantly, I hope I have alerted you to the implications about media manipulation behind the scene. In other words, I hope that you didn't think that this was just another "K post".

http://www.bdl.net.cn/

不过是哗众取悦的一个不甘居下的女子而已。