All Hail the Queen of Weibo.docVIP

All Hail the Queen of Weibo 　　She may not be China’s most famous movie star, but she is indisputably the country’s top dog when it comes to microblogging. With over 17 million fans on Sina Weibo (a leading Chinese microblogging service), the 32-year-old actress is among the world’s top three microbloggers, just behind Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber on Twitter. She is Yao Chen (姚晨), more commonly known in China as the “Weibo Queen” (微博女王 W8ib5 n)w1ng). Yao Chen’s rise to online supremacy was no accident. Among the chief itches her Weibo scratches is the public’s ever-growing curiosity about celebrities’ private lives―something that Yao provides in spades, with posts that detail everything from a homemade New Year’s meal to pictures of her darling cat, even pictures of the mess in her living room. But the actress’ Weibo is more than a peek into her world―it’s a platform that she uses to comment on the latest news and call attention to issues ranging from earthquake orphans to farmers’ problems selling potatoes. Whatever she posts is always commented on and forwarded by hundreds if not thousands of fans. 　　Why is her Weibo so popular? To understand her appeal, we arranged an exclusive interview with Yao Chen, China’s number one microblogger. 　　A: There was no special reason. Two years ago, a friend of mine who worked at Sina opened a Weibo account for me. Back then, the service was in the last stages of internal testing and I was among the first few people who got to try it out. 　　A: I still keep the habit of reading comments from my fans, though not all of them. But this way, I can get feedback and see how they’re responding, since sometimes I’m worried I might have said something wrong or inappropriate. In that case, I’ll delete whatever readers object to immediately.(Recently, Yao Chen forwarded a post written by a Chinese mainland film director arguing with a Hong Kong resident about the improper behavior of mainland tourists in Hong Kong. She later deleted the c