Weibo Fever #1

I probably should have started blogging about this topic awhile back ago, but didn’t really think of it until now….

There is a phenomenon that has been taking the Asian entertainment industry by storm this year – a social networking platform called Weibo (微博). It is basically the Asian version of Twitter (since Twitter is not available in China and other Asian countries). The cool thing about Weibo is that many celebrities / artists from Asia (Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, etc. etc.) are on it and they post things such as pictures, video clips, etc. – it’s basically a platform for artists to express their thoughts and interact with their fans (and others who “follow” them) directly, without the distortion and bias from the general Media.

I joined the Weibo craze about 2 months ago and I love it!! Many of the artists I am familiar with have joined Weibo and I am able to keep further up to date on the “happenings” in the Hong Kong (and Taiwan) entertainment world by “following” the posts of the celebrities I choose. I am currently “following” 131 artists – and of course, the list continues to grow as more and more artists join Weibo.

Every day, as I go through and “catch up” on the Weibo posts from that day, I also “transfer” (I guess it’s called “re-tweet” in Twitter talk…lol) some posts that I find interesting onto this blog, usually adding my own “comments” to the post as well (check out the side bar if you are interested).

But I’ve got to say that the “coolest” thing by far has been receiving responses to my comments from the artists themselves! I find this quite exciting because 1) it’s not every day that us ordinary citizens get to interact with the celebrities directly and 2) when a celebrity responds to a comment that we post (in response to their original posting), it shows that they actually took the time to read the comments and acknowledge them. Given how busy most of these artists are and how little time they have, it definitely makes “followers” (well, basically me) feel good to be “acknowledged.” So far, I’ve gotten responses from the likes of Lawrence Cheng, Christine Ng, Monica Chan, Anne Heung, and Karen Tong.

Ok, now that the introduction is out of the way, time to go on to the main reason for this post….

Lyricist Andrew Lam (林敏聰) posted a picture on his Weibo several days ago that I found very interesting (though I don’t think he was the first to post it because I think I saw it before on someone else’s Weibo). Anyway, the picture features a bunch of “yearbook photos” of a few artists from TVB’s famed Acting Classes in the 1980s. I found this picture very interesting because it shows how some of the male artists looked like back in the day....

Amazingly (but not surprisingly), I am able to recognize almost all of the artists in the picture – mostly because I’ve been following HK entertainment and TVB series since the 80s and have seen these artists in numerous series….so it’s not that difficult in that sense.

So without further adieu, here is the picture along with my “answers” on who is who….the only person I’m not 100% sure about is #2 – I’m only about 90% sure that the person I listed is correct.

How many are you able to recognize?

Picture credit: t.sina.com.cn/andrewlam

Starting from upper left corner:

#4:   呂良偉 (Ray Lui)
#3:   鄭丹瑞 (Lawrence Cheng)
#2:   林利      (Lam Lei)
#1:   徐錦江 (Chui Kam Kong)
#11: 廖啟智 (Liu Kai Chi)
#10: 劉青雲 (Sean Lau)
#9:   吳啟華 (Lawrence Ng)
#8:   陶大宇 (Michael Tao)
#7:   李子雄 (Waise Lee)
#6:   吳鎮宇 (Francis Ng)
#5:   駱應鈞 (Felix Lok)
#?:   周星馳 (Stephen Chow)
#15: 歐陽震華 (Bobby Au Yeung)
#14: 關禮傑 (Eddie Kwan)
#13: 張兆輝 (Eddie Cheung)
#12: 廖偉雄 (Liu Wai Hung)