Introduction: Chinese fame on the rise

Whereas fans and critics recognise Jet Li for his explicit endeavour of relief work of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, Zhang Ziyi gains a bad name by the charity fraud she commits in this disaster. The calamity spawns a phenomenal upsurge in individual and corporate philanthropy in China ( Jeff reys 2011: 4). Countless famed figures and celebrities join the goodwill eff ort, including Zhang Ziyi who promised to donate one million yuan to the disaster-relief fund – but the donation was eventually forfeited. Dubbed ‘donation-gate’, Zhang's failed pledge resulted in public discontent, exploding on bilingual blogs and through online videos, accusing the actress of bringing ignominy to the philanthropic causes and to the Chinese nation (Alexandra099tianya 2010; Dogonfire2005 2010). The ruthless public responses coerce Zhang to off er an exclusive interview to a state-run English-language newspaper China Daily, employ a team of US-based lawyers, and devote to rehabilitated philanthropic att empt so as to clear her bad name (Zhou 2010a, 2010b). It is not difficult to find a range of videos pertaining to Zhang's abortive endowment posted from 2008 through 2010 on YouTube, one of the most high-volume and predominant video-sharing sites (Burgess and Green 2009: 5). The entries, in both English and Chinese languages, are either the copy-andpaste or edited versions of the discourses in other media conduits such as television and Internet sites. The clips att ract thousands of views and dozens of comments, imparting illegitimacy to the Chinese star on the global visual circuit. The presence of these user-generated texts also signifies that when an internationally known Chinese actress achieves certain notoriety like such, this is no longer simply a personal issue. Rather, it is an honour-or-shame issue of the ethnic Chinese, alongside the notion of the rising China in the global arena. In other words, the phenomenon entails the issue of ethnicity that cannot be forgott en but is ready to reappear at any moment in the fan discourse even long after the incident happened.