I feel the same way about China tbh
Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV show?
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I dunno, I would think AT LEAST Jackie Chan is a household name due to the Rush Hour movies, and for anyone who grew up watching Hong Kong action flicks, they'd probably also know Jet Li at least, and Donnie Yen, Michelle Yeoh, and maybe Bolo Yeung and Sammo Hung too.
Don't forget Bruce Lee,
Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat,
Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung,
Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh,
Donnie Yen,
Wu Jing,
Michelle Yeoh, Simu Liu, Donnie Yen, Jason Tobin, Olivia Cheng, Dianne Doan,
Lucy Liu isn't famous in China but she is in the US.
Not Chinese but recognizable because of HBO's The Warrior: Andrew Koji, Hoon Lee, Joe Taslim
(I cheated, my parents are from Hong Kong.)
Not sure if I'm being whooshed here, but a large chunk of those people are not from China.
Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian
Bruce Lee is American, baby
A lot of the others are Hong Kong celebrities, from before Hong Kong was returned to China
(Probably should've specified Chinese as people from China, specifically the mainland)
Yeah, Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco and had a US passport, but he grew up in Hong Kong. Point is, Chinese diaspora exists and can be seen for those who want to look. Projecting a viewpoint that no one knows about China or Chinese people because you don't want to think they do, so you feel slighted, and can then rage against that; it just seems kind of hollow to me.
I was hoping to talk more about (Mainland) China being uniquely bad at exporting pop culture, especially when compared to the success of Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent, Taiwanese pop culture.
The fact that nearly all celebs you mentioned were famous from HK film seems to at least confirm that.
I was going off of
> Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV show?
and wanted to say that Chinese people exist to westerners. You're totally right that China specifically doesn't export well for whatever reason.
Big Fish & Begonia was a good film that got a wide release in the west. Flavors of Youth is on netflix. Ne Zha was too I think. In animation at least they do better than a lot of countries. Mojin: The Lost Legend is the only live action movie I can remember seeing off the top of my head though.
The only ones I can name are from Hong Kong before the handover, off the top of my head: Wong Kar-wei, Jackie Chan, John Woo, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung.
Authoritarian cultures aren’t known for freedom of expression so it makes sense there’s little cultural export. The same thing applies to Islamic countries, the iconoclastic bent kinda puts a damper on visual art.
The west deliberately blocks Chinese media.
In asia, China's culture is far more prevalent and gaining quickly.
What Chinese media is blocked in the west? First time I’m hearing of this
Japan and Korea, yes. China, not really.
Unless you want to include Hong Kong, but even then
Random Chinese culture routinely comes up on my IG reel.