China rockin' to "Super Girl": a victory of the grass-roots over the elite culture
(Seattle Times)Updated: 2005-08-30 09:08
For nearly three hours, Chinese stopped — and voted. No, it wasn't a political revolution, but a mass thumbs up to a 21-year-old from Sichuan who belts out the song "Zombie" from the Irish rock band Cranberries as part of her act.
(Zhou Bichang, Li Yuchun and Zhang Liangying performed last week during the finals of the "Super Girl" singing contest in China's Hunan province. Li won the "American Idol"-style contest, with 400 million television viewers watching the grand finale.)
China's "Super Girl" is an "American Idol"-style TV show whose grand finale of dancing and singing drew 400 million viewers here Friday night, more than the combined populations of the United States and Britain.
In China, "Super Girl" created a stir from bamboo-forest villages to the crab shacks of Shanghai and is seen as a new phenomenon. Nothing this large and spontaneous has ever pushed its way unapproved into China's mainstream media before. Some 8 million, mostly younger, Chinese paid the equivalent of 2 cents to send a "text message of support" (the word "vote" is avoided) via cellphone for one of the three Super Girl finalists.
Li Yuchun, a music student whose tomboy looks and confidence onstage are the talk of Chinese chat rooms, won with 3.5 million votes. The three finalists, all in their early 20s, became instant celebrities in a nation that really hasn't made much room for the pop-star concept, except when they come from Hong Kong or Taiwan.
"Super Girl" owes its popularity to its authenticity, to indirectly giving voice to individual Chinese through a vote, and to its unscripted creation of a happy feeling, said a dozen young Chinese interviewed in Beijing Friday.
The program did not, for example, emerge from the Beijing studios of official Chinese programming, but from a provincial station in the gritty heartland of Hunan that has a satellite uplink.
The contest is officially the "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest." Any female, young or old, talented or not, can participate — not just the beauty-queen types from central casting.

中国随“超女”而舞动：草根文化赢得一场对精英文化的胜利。

（西雅图时报）更新时间：2005-08-30 09：08

在差不多三个钟头的时间段里，中国人撂下手中的活——去表决。不，这不是在搞一场政治变革，而是一位21岁的四川姑娘在接受平民百姓的认可。作为她表演的一部分，这位姑娘一展歌喉，唱响了一首源于爱尔兰小红莓摇滚乐团的歌曲——《行尸走肉》。

（上周在中国湖南省举行的“超级女声”演唱大赛的决赛中，周笔畅、李宇春和张靓颖登台献艺。李在这场“美国偶像”式的竞赛中胜出，四亿电视观众收看了总决赛。）

中国的“超级女声”电视选秀节目是“美国偶像”节目的翻版。周五晚上的歌舞总决赛吸引了四亿中国人的眼球，观众总人数超过了美、英两国人口之和。

在中国，从竹林环绕的村庄到上海的螃蟹棚屋，“超女”引起了轰动，给大众带来了耳目一新的感受。“超女”的参与面如此之广，自发度如此之高，她又如此强势地擅自闯入主流媒体，这在中国是史无前例的。大约八百万中国观众——多数是年轻人——发送手机短信，向三位总决赛冠军人选中的一位表示“支持”（没有人使用“投票”这个词），每条短信的费用仅相当于两美分。

李宇春是一名音乐学院的学生，她酷似男孩的外貌和自信十足的舞台风格，使她成为中国人在聊天室热议的对象，她也最终以三百五十万的得票摘得桂冠。年龄都在二十出头的“超女”前三甲，顷刻间成为举国关注的名人，而此前，在中国这个国度里，流行歌星是登不了大雅之堂的——除非你是港台歌星。

周五，十几位中国青年在北京接受采访时说，“超女”节目真实可信，她透过观众投票的方式间接地把话语权交给了中国老百姓个人，在不经意间营造了一种欢乐的氛围，这是“超女”之所以深入人心的原因。

“超女”并非在诸如北京官方节目制作室此类的背景下孕育而生的；在湖南省境内腹地的沙土地上，一家拥有卫星上传链路的省级电视台推出了这个节目，“超女”从此走进了大众的视野。

大赛的正式名称是“蒙牛酸酸乳超级女声大赛”。所有女性，不论老少，也不论有无才华，均可报名参加——而不仅限于中央选派的选美皇后之类的参赛者。