What’s new C-netizens? Apparently it’s the same old, same old, with newly premiered xianxia C-drama Sword and Fairy 4 (Chinese Paladin 4) getting the first major non billing order complaint since it was released. The netizen backlash is against supporting actress Mao Xiao Hui who is being criticized for her lacking visuals onscreen and made worse by the photoshopped promo posters and stills. C-netizens are calling it a bait-and-switch or being sold a lemon of a car. I think all stars look way better in photoshopped promos and hers are maybe just a smidge far apart in real versus idealized but I don’t think it’s worth the hullabaloo. She actually responded to the complaints in a Weibo post apologizing for “uglying” everyone’s eyes and being unable to lose more weight during the filming. Poor girl, as a supporting actress I think the complaint is even more unnecessary since she’s not carrying the drama as the lead.
What an unhealthy environment to wotk in. Why promote such unrealistic beauty standards. She doesn’t need to reduce weight.
How much influnce has a supporting actress on the promo stills of her? Why should she apologize for it?
or more accurate why should she a apologize that she doesn’t look like her photoshoped self, when she isn’t responsible for the pictures. uside-down world.
A crazy world we live in. You have to apologize for not looking like your photoshopped pictures. I mean it’s not even her fault and even if it is, she doesn’t have to apologize to someone behind his or her keypad who probably uses photo filter too. I guess it’s the price you pay for being a public figure.
Well, no one likes being lied to. You’ll also complain if a restaurant promises large juicy burgers in its ads yet the actual burgers are only the size of your palm. ANyway I’m more interested in Chinese Paladin 6 for now, the combo of JJY and CZY in CP4 just doesn’t cut it for me.
She looks fine and acts very well. Well some of us are seeing CP4 over CP6 . To each their own but no need to bash about beauty. I would take acting over looks!
If it looks good, does not necessary means it tastes good. Acting/skills over looks.
If that’s the case, then why bother to photoshop her photo to that extent in the first place?
People were expecting someone ethereal like Liu Yifei to act the role of Liu Mengli since she’s supposed to be the most beautiful charcter in the Chinese Paladin series. Granted, she’s a second female lead but has almost as much screentime as the leads, so I understand some fans of the game to be disgruntled. But I don’t think she’s ugly. Her gentle demeanour and aura does suit the role, but her acting needs improvement to be less stoic.
@Kiren
Yes I agree with you. Mao Xiao Hui is not the supporting lead as she is listed as one of the main leads, and her screen time is equivalent to Ju Jing Yi and Chen Ze Yuan.
Despite her being lesser known, you could almost see her as a main female lead with no less prominence than others. It’s not surprising if the production team wanna use the show to propel her stardom
I recall her studio/agency trying to do that ever since The Twin Flower Legend (2020)….I think they tried too hard to make her a replacement for Crystal Liu YiFei, resulting in higher expectations from audience
While it’s not fair to criticise her visuals and weight coz she is indeeed a pretty girl, the drama tried to portray JJY as merely pretty whereas Mao is an outstanding beauty. So you can imagine the viewers will be pretty judgemental.
That is wild – she looks so beautiful and natural to me!
For Xianxia and Wuxia genres, I usually will skip dramas in which visuals aren’t up to par. These two genres have certain fantasy elements and visuals are part of the critical ingredients to make fantasy work throughout all the books/web novels I read, including some classics by Louis Cha. If in a novel, a character is characterized as visually stunning, then fans certainly expect visuals of similar levels in the adaptation. It’s legit for them to bitch about that gap between their expectation and reality. That’s why I’m gradually losing interest in Chinese costume dramas even these are the genres that piqued my interest in C dramas in the beginning. It seems there were more nice looking C actors visually fitting costume dramas in the past than now. If C-ent can’t find nice looking actors who also can act for costume dramas, then why continuing to produce so many low-quality projects to irk drama fans? (I consider visuals also part of the quality of a drama in some specific genres, e.g., Xianxia in particular.) They should invest more on creating interesting stories and plots in other genres instead, which can have low bars on visuals but easier to find acting talent for the roles needed.
I don’t like to judge actors solely on their appearance, but for xianxia, I do feel actors need a specific look. When they don’t look believable as “fairies” or “immortals” it does take away from the drama experience for me so I do understand what you’re saying here too. For this reason I had a hard time with The Last Immortal because Zhao Lusi and Wang Anyu both didn’t have fairy-like visuals. TTEOTM for example, worked for me because the leads all had the right visuals (to me at least) and even the fairy maids during the dream world looked the part.
@CC
Luo Yunxi is at best 170 cm and 40 kilos. They pile on those heavy robes, the huge shoulders and high headpieces to try and cover that. He wears massive platforms. It is obvious to anyone who isn’t watching with a stan eye. He is photoshopped to hell and back on posters.
So how does he fit an immortal and this girl does not? How is he not false advertising but she is?
@CC, I have to be frank and blunt that Leo Luo was the major reason for me to drop TTEOTM after a few eps. Surely his character was a physically and mentally abused victim and it’s normal to look thin from that perspective. But at the same time, he was also supposed to be a powerful and mesmerizing super being. Unfortunately his ghastly-looking physique freaked me out and I always felt unpleasant watching him on screen. Sorry and LOL.
I do agree Luo yunxi does look painfully thin but his face to me has an ethereal look about it. And even if he’s photoshopped, I have yet to see a photo where he looks like a different person. But I think with an actress in the post, she probably is too newbie to have any say about retouching anyway so it’s not her fault. The bigger stars I feel like can demand specific retouching (even frame by frame).
Why should SHE be the one to apologise? It’s not her fault that it’s become industry practice to overuse the filters and photoshop now so that people barely look human on promotional materials.
She looks pretty and natural to me in these stills even if she isn’t exactly the same as the poster but I can only imagine what this kind of criticism will do her self esteem, poor girl. I hope she doesn’t end up getting a bunch of PS and fillers to satisfy these ridiculous beauty standards 🙁
Chinese and their filter usage, despite netizen complaining they continue to abuse it (more so than other Asian entertainment industry).
She’s not the only one getting criticised for her looks, all of them are in both CP4 and CP6. The games comes with their own established fanbases which would have their own expectations of how the characters should look like and CP1 and 3 have Liu Yifei, Liu Shishi, Yang Mi and Tang Yan in them. The comparisons are brutal and Esther Yu’s bearing the bulk of the criticisms.
Ah so it’s like that
Yeah I really think Mao Xiao Hui needs to develop a much stronger mentality to survive in the idol drama world, as cruel as that may be. No one made her apologise, she went online and had a breakdown when she saw the comments. Looks are the most important thing in the idol drama world and it’s not just the c-netz, sometimes the most vicious attacks are instigated by rivals through the marketing accounts.
Was she the one person who PS the photos? That interest me. She is not a big star who has control over Promos for the drama. Was she forced to accept this responsibilities because her agency/producers are not keen to bear those responsibilities? in a win-win situation, she might be promised more roles in future for making these public apology??
Period costumes can be unflattering in regular built person…male and female… by Chinese standards. They expect to see a slim, wavy built with a size 22inch waist. Thus so many artistes go on strict diet to look the part. Their skin need to look like white cake and have tiny face. All these are so unrealistic…and unhealthy.
To be honest, it will not surprise me CCP Gov set out strict guidelines for such practise to stop. It does not fit in their policies.. They have tried for male artistes… process is slow.
Chinese aesthetics puzzles me… the bleach white skin, sharp chin jawline, unreal big eyes against a tiny face… Will not go into figure… It all looks like man made dolls…
She’s pretty nugu in C-ent. I don’t think she has fans and proxy photographers making an effort to follow the production team and take photos of her like Zhao Lusi and Yu Shuxin, so most likely these photos came from the production crew or her team.
I do hope people will stop over-photoshopping. The true faces will be revealed in the actual drama anyway and viewers will leave if they see that what they get is different than what was promised in those photoshopped stills. Dramaland has already proved many times that viewers prefer natural-looking tones than ghostly white filters.
I fully agree with you. I have a friend who only uses the filer App to take photo with her mobile…when she does it with me in the shot. My husband laughs and says,I look nothing like that… he prefer my natural look.
I’m going to preface this by saying that I do not think Mao Xiaohui is ugly at all. She’s actually quite pretty in all the photos I’ve seen of her elsewhere. However, Liu Mengli is supposed to be the most beautiful character in the game. When Tianhe sees her, he’s supposed to be in awe of her beauty. Unfortunately, I feel like partially because of the styling and maybe the weird filter that this drama uses, she doesn’t not come off that stunning. Not even a fan of Ju Jingyi, but I personally think she’s much prettier than Mao Xiaohui.
When a character is described as the most beautiful woman in the story and it’s a popular IP, you better believe you’re going to get roasted by people if you accept it and don’t live up to their expectations. This is like Michelle Chen accepting the role of Xiao Longnv. Ironically, Mao Xiaohui is also playing the role of Xiao Longnv. Hopefully she doesn’t get backlash there too when it airs (if it ever airs).
P.S. would like to add, I also don’t think she needs to apologize. but really not surprised by the reaction. These are the same people that think Bai Lu, Yu Shuxin, and Zhao Lusi are considered “girl next door” types.
Blame the overzealous photoshoppimg of her promo stills. Onscreen her lipstick looks pale and lacking. Or too much face powder. She’s not drop dead gorgeous but I don’t see why she should apologise unl3ss she’s playing the most beautiful woman of her generation or something like that. And even that I feel she needn’t apologise. If her acting is fine then it is fine.
She shouldn’t apologise, she looks fine, pretty girl. Production over-edits the stills, not her fault but if you look online, everyone is getting attacked, not just her. She is going to need thicker skin in this business. It’s unfortunate but true.
They are nuts… she’s really pretty. Her visuals are more classic rather than the AI plastic baby faces that are trending right now.
Is that unreasonable for idol Xianxia fans to expect actors visually up to par with what is claimed in the story? She didn’t have to apologize for what she’s born with. But the casting director is someone to blame and the actress should have a good self assessment of herself visually and acting-wise to know what projects to not take. You take jobs beyond your caliber at workplace and then you’ll most likely invite insult not compliment.
PS. I wrote a longer paragraph to make the point but it’s been blocked since this blog was posted. So frustrating.
BTW, the main leads of CP4 are both visually pretty and the acting has been decent for the first few eps. I don’t see anything cringy or over the top so far. It’s watchable although CGI isn’t good. I’ll drop it though, cos as I said, I’m losing interest in Xianxia unless storylines are freshly unique. Both CP4 and CP6 are recycling same old same old tropes.
I do think they need to ease off on this heavy photoshop of the posters (and even their social media photos actually) This is not even the worse I’ve seen. Actors/actresses way more famous have been so much worse.
Just a random thought since I am watching Marry my Husband 07…do you guys think Park Min Young’s current skinny figure would have suit the Xianxia female leads built?
Nope! She’s now too thin to be considered pretty IMO. She actually looked sick in MMH.
Maybe it’s a little bit too thin now, I hope her health is fine. But she is pretty clothes. Layers of hanfu plus camera that adds weight and you do need to be very thin. It’s unfortunate but true.
I recently bought my first hanfu to wear… I am rather rounder with my age… the hanfu actually looks womanly on me. I liked it. I guess it works on older woman who curvy figure too. But it must be the high waist design… then it looks not bad.
but on younger female, it is better for the female to be thin…as camera will add weight on screen too.
*pretty close. Stupid autocorrect.
I think too skinny too :(. I felt like she looked amazing in What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim and My Private Life. She was already looking too skinny in Love in Contract. I hope all the controversies pass soon and she can go back to being her normal healthy self.
Me too…I like to see her in a healthy weight soon.
Ju Jingyi always criticised more than her. But they don’t understand she didn’t studied in acting. She mainly singer still sometimes act one/two dramas.Ju Jingyi’s agency not good.Zhao Lusi, Yang Zi, Li Yitong overacted in some of their dramas earlier of their career. Now, they’re all improved! Ju Jingyi also can improve like them but what her agency did? Always provided poor scripts and same makeup from the blooms at ruyi pavilion. She was acted so good when her career started but because of her agency her potential doomed. I feel like she was unwillingly took script of sword and fairy 4 because she is not getting good script and her agency also not helping her anymore! When i check her dramas i noticed she didn’t act any modern drama yet only one acted that was time-travel drama! She also doesn’t work with good actor as usual from who she can learn something and her fans are alwaya want to see her as a top billing! All the way, i feel like she is one of the talented artist whose career not upgrading because of any good supports. Her resources also not good. Liu Mengli actress pretty but she also same victim like Ju Jingyi.