Creating an image - or trapped in one

This has been a year of extremes - extreme joys and extreme sorrow. It was a year many celebrities decided to tie the knot, or bear children, or emigrate overseas, at least in name; and it was a year amateur photographers made history without the aid of Photoshop.

Blueprint of a mammoth city

It could be a photographer's paradise - if it comes true as envisioned by local officials.

Shandong officials said they would invest 30 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) in a special city called the "landmark city of Chinese culture". It would be positioned as "China's adjunct capital of culture". And it had the backing of hundreds of celebrity scholars, let alone the official seal of approval.

There's a hitch: Culture cannot be planned or built from the ground up like a shopping mall. It is the way people live and love, the lifestyles of various demographics. It is the natural product of people whose lives encompass more than just survival.

The denunciation of the project by the public, or the vast majority of it, shows the chasm between bureaucrats who mistake hardware for software and the general public who wants a say in public projects of a massive scale.

The day the earth shook

There were many great images of the May 12 Sichuan earthquake. They were heartbreaking; they were heart-warming.

What was unexpected was a sudden outpouring of poetic expressions. Not since the "Vague Poetry" movement of the 1980s has the country seen such a passion for verse. Strangely, many of the best works were anonymous and appeared in the first days of the catastrophe. Faster than the print media could carry them, they spread from cell phone to cell phone, touching millions of hearts and opening floodgates of tears.

The poetic surge was abruptly halted when a professional writer from Shandong published two poems, one of which fantasized about installing television screens at tombs so that the quake victims could watch the Olympics broadcast from the other world. "Even as ghosts, we were happy," Wang Zhaoshan wrote, thereby putting words into the dead and engulfing the nation in a wave of disgust.

Yes, words still have the power - to inspire or to repulse.

Naughty pictures speak louder than words

Edison Chen (pictured left) and his coterie of Hong Kong starlets shocked the Chinese-speaking world when his collection of very private photos was released online by some maverick computer hacker. It set off a barrage of questions: Did Chen violate the unwritten moral code of an entertainer? Did his nemesis do a public favor by toppling a role model, or did he break any privacy laws? Did Chen have the right to take these photos, or more specifically, did he have the right to do the things in the photos but not photograph them, or did he exercise undue carelessness by taking his unencrypted computer to a repair shop?

In any event, Chen and his supporting cast in the scandal have seen their entertainment careers suspended. Gillian Cheung (right) suffered the worst fate: After a half-hearted apology to the public, she turned herself into the butt of a joke. Her scenes in the biopic Forever Enthralled were expunged because "the descendents of Mei Lanfang could not bear to see the person who portrays their mother on screen associated with a tarnished public image". She also popularized the saying "very foolish, very innocent" - she used it to describe her mental state when having these photos taken, but it more appropriately applied to the way she made her remarks in response to the scandal.

For those who watch stars with starry eyes, this was a rude awakening. Yes, they are human beings, too, and are prone to human folly. Sometimes, though, their behavior does not reflect the fact their livelihood depends on a squeaky clean image.

Till death do us part

Paparazzi jostled for a good position as the stars walked down the aisle. But not every story developed the same way.

On April 17, TV idol Tong Dawei (pictured below) distributed candy to guests, including tabloid reporters. Hong Kong actress-singer Kelly Chen married Alex Lau (right) on Oct 2 and posed for photos during the wedding. They were even nice to the paparazzi, too. Tony Leung and Carina Lau held a very high-profile wedding in a secluded hangout on July 21 - way out in Brunei. Only select guests were invited. But photos of the couple in Buddhist attire were available upon request. On the way back from the wedding, Li Yapeng, Faye Wong's hubby, beat up a persistent photographer at an airport.

Minor celebrities probably had to hire photographers for their happy occasion.

Crouching tiger, hidden farmer

Another amateur photographer who left an indelible mark on the year was Zhou Zhenglong (pictured right). The Shaanxi farmer took a series of photos in late 2007 but as soon as it was made known that he had spotted a South China tiger, widely believed to be extinct, people started to question the authenticity of his proof.

Actually, netizens could not find traces of retouching in the photos. Their suspicion came from the fact that the local government was atypically prompt in endorsing these photos. A prolonged debate broke out online, with one side defending the authenticity and the other trashing it, both staking their "heads".

Then, someone stumbled on the origin of the tiger, from an old calendar. Eventually, investigators concluded that Zhou put a blown-up poster with the image of a tiger in the woods and imprinted paw marks in the neighborhood.

But like all good stories, this one has a surprise ending. After pleading guilty and receiving a suspended prison sentence, Zhou retracted his admission, saying he had deliberately signed his name incorrectly in the court documents and stuck by his original story.

The magic master of ceremonies

You didn't have to be a professional photographer to capture great images of this pageantry. It so sparkled that it totally redeemed Zhang Yimou, the mastermind behind the ceremony, whose name had been sullied by a slew of big-budget epic movies that were box-office gold but word-of-mouth poison.

Zhang reinvented himself by forsaking his old habit of trumpeting bright colors and folk symbols and by embracing more highbrow elements of Chinese culture, such as brush painting, Confucius and Taoist mantra. It was a celebration of the brainy, as well as the showy, part of Chinese civilization.

Unfortunately, the cameramen, or the director, of the broadcaster was not up to his/her job. The telecast, as seen by all the Chinese, was so fraught with loopholes that Zhang himself gave out the NBC edition as souvenirs.

He should have been calling the shots in the control room as well.

The men with really smelly feet

The Beijing Olympics created numerous moments of pride and joy, but the performance of China's national men's football team was not among them. It was the exception to the rule, the clown in the circus, the villain people love to hate.

As a matter of fact, there was such wide revulsion that it sparked one of the biggest fireworks of sarcasm with literally hundreds and thousands of jokes created and shared online.

One joke imitates the intro of a science program on TV: All life in the river died; residents downstream were infected with a strange disease; plants along the banks mutated in form. Was it remnants of a chemical? Was it a bio-chemical attack? Please tune in tonight for a special program "The national team dipped their feet in the river."

Who said we Chinese don't have a sense of humor?

Milk contaminates images of stars

Now, if only the national soccer team's feet had something to do with it. But no, it was melamine, which sickened hundreds of thousands of babies.

A bunch of celebrity entertainers found themselves in a unique position. They had all appeared in ads for Sanlu, the company at the center of the storm. Some consumers said the entertainers had a responsibility since they received enormous amount of money for their endorsement but the entertainers cried foul. How could they have known the products they so happily touted on screen were poisonous?

Of all the people who had advertised for all the problem milk products, only Ding Junhui (pictured above left), the snooker player, promised to shell out the money he made from Mengniu for the treatment of sick babies.

If only photographers had been around when Deng Jie (right), Xue Jianing et al cried "It's not my fault!" Juxtapose the images with those of sick babies, and you'll have the truth behind celebrity endorsement: money.

Screen goddess' Singapore sling

Public criticism of Gong Li (pictured right) arose not simply because of her decision to become a Singaporean citizen, but it was heightened because she was photographed during the swearing-in ceremony. Chinese netizens were not happy she had renounced her Chinese citizenship, and Singaporeans were unhappy because they thought she did it for the sake of convenience. At least some believed so.

If only she had disguised herself as Qiu Ju, the farmer's wife who relentlessly pursued justice but who did not look anything at all like the glamorous actress who portrayed her.

Poor men's fun

CCTV, the only national TV network, regularly doles out lavish shows touting all kinds of achievements, but it hardly represents the taste of ordinary people. Hence the emergence of "knock-off" shows such as the layman who produced his own version of lectures and a family who put on a snippet of the Dream of Red Mansion drama series - in their living room.

Known as "shanzhai", it is the poor man's version of an existing product, be it a cell phone or a variety show. It is crude; it does not respect intellectual property rights; it mocks authorities and role models. But people love it. Why? Because it is participatory.