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Spokesperson of the Left-Over Women (Sheng Nu)
In her song "Happy Road" ("Xingfu de lu") on the album Heard (Tingshuo), the Taiwanese singer-actor-writer Rene Liu sings:
I will walk down this road of love by myself
If I am lonely, please don't just cry for me
Please give me your good wishes
The roads are unknown
And nobody has a map
But I know where I am now
I walk on this road of love
And one day I will find my happiness
Every expression on my face can be read
They are full of my stories
I will find my happiness
Let's wait til that day and cheer for me1
This is a typical Rene Liu song, which creates an image of a confident and strong "left-over" women figure that also highlights Liu's celebrity status as a mature and optimistic single woman. Her articulation of single womanhood in her songs, writing, and films demonstrates strategies and a successful process of public identity and celebrity construction in the Chinese context. Via her pop songs and celebrity image Rene Liu reveals the circumstances of her own life, and her emotional status as an older single woman, and builds connections between her own experiences and feelings and those of her fans, many of whom are contemporary Chinese professional women living in metropolitan cities. During this process of connection, Liu fulfils her social function as a celebrity in a contemporary society. She achieves this by serving as an identity exemplar with whom her fans (mainly single urban women) can identify, whom they can follow and imitate in their own struggles for public acceptance and tolerance. This process of unification also reveals how Rene Liu and her production team have ingeniously noticed and used the link between Liu's individual temperament and private life, and the focus of the public's attention and concern, which is a perfect selling point for Liu's public persona and celebrity creations. There is a general consensus that celebrities are effective in finding certain market niches to promote themselves and distinguish themselves to consumers, and Rene Liu demonstrates that celebrities can position themselves very effectually in a crowded market by engaging with a prevalent social concern of a particular historical moment and a particular demographic...