C-actress Mao Xiao Hui Apologizes to Viewers After Complaints on Her Visuals in Sword and Fairy 4 Being Totally Lacking Compared to Photoshopped Promos

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• 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.