Why we love to catch a falling star

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily) Updated: 2014-04-04 07:16

[Photo/Sina Weibo]

Early Monday morning came the denouement. I'd rather call it Episode 3 as who knows how it's going to end. Chinese couch potatoes are accustomed to 30-episode slow-moving tearjerkers, not a three-act dramatic arc. Wen issued a statement on his weibo, apologizing profusely for his sin and asking for forgiveness adding that it was unforgivable. He did not mention the girlfriend. His wife, Ma Yili, who is eight years his senior, echoed his apology by hinting that they have already moved on.

This is so anticlimactic. Why isn't the first wife angry? Obviously she had long known about her husband's infidelity and they had reached some kind of reconciliation. That left moral purists in an awkward position. Who are they going to champion now that the victim has essentially sided with the sinner. The focus has shifted to the girlfriend who has not come out with a public stance yet. Is she now the victim due to his prompt repentance? (She had posted a cryptic sentence on March 23, saying "One should pursue but not force it because what one wins by pursuing is priceless while what one wins by forcing it is cheap.")

Wen is rumored to be the highest-paid television actor in China, commanding three times the salary of the Korean heartthrob who has taken China by storm. He may not possess the best looks or the best acting chops, but he has built a solid career on a combination of good roles and a matching persona of a boy-man and the boy next door that is more endearing than enchanting. In other words, he is someone who can be trusted as a husband and father or a kid growing into one.

Truth is, we don't know anything about what happened between the three of them. We just project from the roles they play and the public appearances they make that they are the kind of people we take them to be. That is at once the benefit and the disadvantage of an acting career. Their facade could be exactly who they are, or the opposite of who they are, or anything in between.

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