supergirl Li Yuchun

media - The discovery of the tomboy

The recent discovery of the new icon for Chinese women, the supergirl Li Yuchun, says more about the media - both domestic as foreign - than about the women in China.
The emergence of strong, independent thinking and outspoken women is nothing new in China. Getting them on Chinese TV and in Time was, showing that those media were pretty late is finding out what was already going on in society for a long time.
After Time, editorial desks everywhere in the world ordered their China correspondents to round up some boring professors to make sense out of all this.
The Guardian gets the prize for the largest number of academics explaining the obvious. They are getting better and better in it.

"Women are very explosive today," said Chen Shangjun, professor of humanities and literature at Fudan University. "People have abandoned the traditional beauty figure, and the positioning of female characters - extroverted, non-tender and outgoing women - is new for mainland China and different from the state-run beauty contests."

Update: Even Wang Jianshuo went in Shanghai to the supergirl concert. Here is his report.