Editor’s note: In the age of the attention economy, social media has the power to change lives by propelling any ordinary Joe to celebrity status in an instant. But what happens when that 15 minutes of fame ends?
Sixth Tone is republishing five stories from “After the Spotlight Fades,” a 10-part series by The Paper that revisits people and places in China whose fortunes were transformed — sometimes only briefly — by viral fame.
Just before Chinese New Year, Bai Xianying set up his food stall selling savory pancakes in his old spot outside a textiles mall in Baoding, in the northern Hebei province. In the vein of his doppelgänger — the pop megastar Jay Chou — it was somewhat of a comeback gig.
Bai, a migrant worker who rocketed to fame in 2020 for his uncanny resemblance to the “King of Mandopop,” was a fixture of the city’s Liangmatai neighborhood for roughly a decade before leaving in 2024 to open a business in the metropolis of Tianjin, a two-hour drive east.
“Everything I have, I built from the ground up running this stall for about 10 years,” the 43-year-old says, explaining why he’d decided to set up his old stall for 10 days in January. “Who can just walk away from their roots?”
