When it comes to Chinese celebrities, the higher your star rises, the more you go under scrutiny. Recently, Chinese actress Zhao Liying, riding high on the success of her latest drama series, ‘Legend of Shen Li,’ found herself facing criticism due to a series of typos.
The actress was busy promoting her newest drama, but netizens spotted errors in her social media posts. She used the wrong character ‘再’ (zài) instead of the correct ‘在’ (zài) when she talked about watching the show. She wrote the word ‘感’ (gǎn) but missed a stroke from the character. In another instance, she wrote ‘灵届’ instead of ‘灵界’ (líng jiè) to refer to the spirit realm. While seemingly trivial, these mistakes sparked discussions online, with some labelling her ‘illiterate.’
This led to discussions about Zhao Liying’s background. The 36-year-old actress hails from a rural area in Langfang, Hebei Province, where she graduated from vocational school. Her journey to stardom began from humble beginnings when Zhao Liying participated in a talent show at the age of 19. Nowadays, she’s an A-list actress. Amidst the backlash, there are voices of support for Zhao Liying. Some netizens question the intent behind the criticisms. ‘Why is there so much malicious criticism?’ they said, calling the attacks on her ‘low-level and despicable.’
While it’s not clear if the typos were written by Zhao Liying herself or someone managing her account, they’re really just typos, yet it’s not the first time a celebrity blunder has been blown out of proportion. Previously, stars like Wang Yibo whose inability to answer a question during an interview or Zhao Lusi mistaking an era in Chinese history had them labeled as “illiterate” as well.
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Anon
I personally think that mistakes of such a simple nature and in their first language of instruction are quite unacceptable for anyone who has graduated from secondary school. What more to say, she who is many years in the acting industry and has been reading voluminous scripts almost on a daily basis. It’s like saying a high school graduate in the US cannot differentiate between “rate” and “rat”. One mistake is a typo. So many mistakes is no longer just typo. If the mistakes were by an assistant, obviously, she should have switched that person out long time ago. All celebrities understand very well the power and pitfalls of the social media.
Yibo’s ignorance of some historical period is not at the same level. Most people don’t remember everything they had learnt in school especially when they had little interest in academic studies.
avarachika
Interesting. Those English words comparison you made, made me see this whole situation differently. I speak two languages with English as my primary. I do get some Engrish as I grew up learning not just one but two languages and still…I can differentiate between “rate” and “rat”.