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    A Child of China’s Gilded Elite Strikes a Nerve Over Wealth and Privilege

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Child of China’s Gilded Elite Strikes a Nerve Over Wealth and PrivilegeThe youngest daughter of the founder of the telecommunications giant Huawei debuted a documentary, a magazine cover and a music video — and the response was savage.Annabel Yao, the daughter of a Chinese billionaire, received widespread criticism after releasing a music video.Credit…via YoutubeSteven Lee Myers and Jan. 19, 2021Updated 2:15 p.m. ETAnnabel Yao is a fresh-faced college graduate with big dreams. She wants to be an entertainer and is putting in the work to make it happen.She is also a member of China’s rarefied elite, the youngest daughter of the billionaire founder and chairman of the telecommunications giant Huawei who proclaimed her debut at a time when China seems to have turned on its many high-flying tycoons.So when Ms. Yao, 23, launched a highly polished publicity blitz last week — including a 17-minute “making of” documentary, a magazine cover and a music video — the response was savage.Ms. Yao’s tone — opining about her social status, her struggles, her up-by-the-bootstrap pluck — seemed to strike a nerve in a country that is still emerging from a public health crisis and an economy that has left millions out of work, even as the country itself broadly recovers.The blitz ignited outrage online about privilege and decorum, and fueled the sort of populist resentment about once-unthinkable wealth that the Communist Party tries to keep in check.She was ridiculed as self-indulgent, insincere and insensitive. At one point in the documentary about her professional journey, she asks why her older half sister seemed more likable to the public.To the masses on the Chinese internet, Ms. Yao seemed oblivious to the fact that her sibling, Meng Wanzhou, is the chief financial officer of their father’s company. She also happens to be under house arrest in Canada awaiting possible extradition to the United States, which many described as a greater hardship than the entertainment business.Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, and Ms. Yao’s sister is under house arrest in Canada. Credit…Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters“People work for the capitalists during the day and have to be forced to watch their ugly children at night,” one person wrote on Weibo, the social media site, where Ms. Yao posted her music video. The song, sung in a mix of Chinese and English, is called “Backfire.”There was a time not long ago when China’s newly rich — and their scions, known as fuerdai, or “second generation rich” — flaunted their wealth and status. In the go-go 1990s and 2000s, when the country opened up and let its economy blossom, the rest of society looked on in awe as these princelings posted videos of burning money or posing next to the family Lamborghini.In today’s China, though, the mood seems to be shifting. The pandemic has left the wealthiest even better off, in China as elsewhere, widening an already yawning gap between the haves and have-nots. The list of China’s wealthiest families added $1.5 trillion to their personal wealth over 2020, according to the Hurun Report, which tracks them.China’s increasingly powerful leader, Xi Jinping, has waged a campaign against corruption, jailing businessmen and officials who deviate from the Communist Party’s vision, which he has repeatedly urged everyone to embrace. Not even Jack Ma, China’s most famous and, until recently, richest entrepreneur, has been spared the government’s scorn.Discretion, not ostentation, has now become the norm when it comes to wealth. And judging from the public reaction, Ms. Yao’s media blitz was anything but discreet.China’s billionaire class, including Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba, has come under increased scrutiny. Credit…China Stringer Network, via Reuters“I think she’s a lightweight compared to her sister,” said Hung Huang, a cultural critic and publisher whose mother once worked as Mao Zedong’s translator and English tutor.With the documentary, Ms. Hung added, Ms. Yao wanted to fashion herself as a kind of Chinese Kardashian, embodying beauty and celebrity, entertainment and entrepreneurship as she launched a career that seemed at this point still vaguely designed.Singer? Dancer? Model? The documentary doesn’t really make it clear.“I don’t think she will influence society,” Ms. Hung said in a telephone interview. “I think she’s way more influenced by Chinese society, especially the internet world. She just confirmed what the Chinese public expects out of rich kids in China.”Ms. Yao is the youngest of three children of Ren Zhengfei, the hard-charging leader of Huawei, who has been compared to Steve Jobs for his role in building a company prized in China for its ability to compete with big multinational telecommunications companies like Cisco, Nokia and Ericsson.Ms. Meng and a half brother, Ren Ping, are the children of Mr. Ren’s first marriage. The son is the president of Huawei subsidiaries that own hotels and import food and wine.Huawei has become the focal point of a geopolitical battle between China and the United States as the Trump administration has sought to curtail the country’s technological advances. Ms. Meng, who was for years the public face of the company, was detained in Canada in 2018 on an arrest warrant from the United States, where she faces charges of financial fraud related to evading sanctions against Iran.Ms. Meng’s fate throughout what has turned into a long extradition process has soured views toward the United States. Chinese officials have portrayed her as an innocent victim of a highly politicized case to damage the company.Public sympathy for the Huawei dynasty, however, slipped badly after a company employee was jailed for 251 days; he had sued the company for a bonus and was jailed for disclosing commercial secrets, though the charges were eventually dropped. It was a story that brought to the fore the concerns of a middle class increasingly facing economic hardship for the first time after decades of explosive economic growth.Ms. Yao, the daughter from Mr. Ren’s second marriage, unquestionably grew up in privilege, perhaps more than her older half-siblings. She traveled widely, living in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Britain, according to her own biographical descriptions. Her globe-trotting was such that she recently had to fend off the Chinese news media’s questions about her nationality, saying she was born in Kunming, a city in southern China and carries a Chinese passport.In an interview in 2019, her tycoon father described his admiration for her demanding schedule with studies and ballet lessons — as many as 15 hours a week in middle school. “They have high demands on themselves,” he said of his children.Ms. Yao, who graduated from Harvard seven months ago, studied computer science and danced with the Harvard Ballet Company. In the documentary, she said she “kept trying different things” after feeling lost following graduation before devoting herself to this career path. She has since signed with TH Entertainment, a promotion company based in Beijing.Her media blitz was timed with her 23rd birthday, which was last Thursday, and has already landed her a fashion shoot in the Chinese edition of Harper’s Bazaar, a cover of OK and an appearance in an advertisement for Great Wall Motors. Neither Ms. Yao nor TH Entertainment responded to requests for comment.Ms. Yao seemed to anticipate a backlash because of her background. “I have some questions about the word princess,” she says at one point in the documentary, which includes vignettes of dance and voice lessons, gym workouts and meetings about developing her brand. “People on the internet might call me a princess or something, but will it cause some negative emotions if I call myself a princess?”In the end, they called the documentary, “Exceptional Princess.”In a publicity poster for it, she sits with her arms folded and her lips slightly pursed in a pout. She wears black, thigh-high boots, digging a stiletto heel into an ornate crown at her feet.Claire Fu and Cao Li contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Fou Ts’ong, Famed Chinese Pianist, Dies of Covid-19 at 86

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFou Ts’ong, Pianist Whose Family Letters Inspired a Generation, Dies at 86Driven from China during Mao’s rule, Mr. Fou kept up a correspondence with his father that became a beloved book in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.Fou Ts’ong in 1960. He was one of the first pianists from China to win international renown.Credit…Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesDec. 31, 2020, 4:59 a.m. ETFou Ts’ong, a Chinese pianist known for his sensitive interpretations of Chopin, Debussy and Mozart, and whose letters from his father, a noted translator and writer, influenced a generation of Chinese readers, died on Monday at a hospital in London, where he had lived for many years. He was 86.The cause was the coronavirus, said Patsy Toh, a pianist, who had been married to Mr. Fou since 1975.In 1955, Mr. Fou became one of the first Chinese pianists to achieve global prominence when he took third place in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, also winning a special prize for his performance of Chopin’s mazurkas.Almost overnight, he became a national hero at home. To China’s nascent Communist-led government, Mr. Fou’s recognition in a well-known international competition was proof that the country could stand on its own artistically in the West. Chinese reporters flocked to interview Mr. Fou, while many others sought out his father, Fu Lei, a prominent translator of French literature, for advice on child-rearing.But the authorities’ good will did not last long.Two years later, Mao Zedong initiated the Anti-Rightist Campaign, during which hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals, including Mr. Fu, were persecuted. Many were tortured and banished to labor camps. Mr. Fou, then studying at the Warsaw Conservatory in Poland, was made to return to China to undergo “rectification” for several months.Not long after going back to Warsaw, Mr. Fou found himself in a quandary. Having witnessed the increasingly tumultuous political climate back home, he knew that if he returned to China upon graduation — as the government expected him to do — he would be expected to denounce his father, an unimaginable situation.So in December 1958, Mr. Fou fled then-Communist Poland for London, where he claimed political asylum.“About my leaving, I always felt full of regret and anguish,” he later recalled in an interview. So many intellectuals in China had suffered, he said, but he had escaped. “I felt uneasy, as if I owed something to all my friends,” he added.After his defection to London, Mr. Fou maintained a written correspondence with his father in Shanghai — a special privilege that was said to have been personally approved by Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier.Then, in 1966, Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of chaos that upended Chinese society. Militant Red Guards accused Mr. Fu, a prolific translator of writers like Balzac and Voltaire, of having “capitalistic” artistic taste, among other crimes. They humiliated and tortured the scholar and his wife for days until the couple, like many other Chinese, were driven to suicide. Mr. Fou, still in London, did not learn of his parents’ deaths until several months later.In 1981, after China’s post-Mao government posthumously restored the reputations of Mr. Fou’s parents, a volume of letters written by his father, primarily to Mr. Fou, was published in China. Full of advice, encouragement, life teachings and stern paternal love, the book, “Fu Lei’s Family Letters,” became an instant best seller in China.For many, the long disquisitions on music, art and life offered a welcome contrast to the Cultural Revolution years, which saw sons turn against fathers, students against teachers and neighbors against neighbors — all in the name of politics.“If you imagine the environment we grew up with, it was very rigid,” said Xibai Xu, a political analyst who first read the letters in middle school in Beijing. He added, “So when you read ‘Fu Lei’s Family Letters,’ you realized how a decent human life could be — a life that is very delicate and artistic, with real human emotions and not just ideology.”Besides influencing a generation of Chinese, Mr. Fu’s words resonated long after his death with the person for whom they were originally intended.“My father had a saying that ‘First you must be a person, then an artist, and then a musician, and only then can you be a pianist,’” Mr. Fou once recalled in an interview. “Even now, I believe in this order — that it should be this way and that I am this way.”Mr. Fou performing in New York City in 2006.Credit…Nan Melville for The New York TimesFou Ts’ong was born on March 10, 1934, in Shanghai. His father, in addition to being a translator, was an art critic and a curator. His mother, Zhu Meifu, was a secretary to her husband.Under the strict supervision of their father, Mr. Fou and his brother, Fu Min, were educated in the classical Chinese tradition, and they grew up surrounded by both Western and Chinese cultural influences. As a child, Mr. Fou studied art, philosophy and music, frequently making use of his father’s phonograph and extensive record collection.A lover of classical music from a young age, Mr. Fou began taking piano lessons when he was 7. He later studied under a number of teachers, including Mario Paci, the Italian conductor of the Shanghai Philharmonic.But the chaos of wartime China prevented the young pianist from receiving a systematic musical education. In 1948, Mr. Fou, then in his teens, moved with his family to the southwestern province of Yunnan, where he went through what he described as a rebellious period. It was only after returning to Shanghai several years later that he began to dedicate himself in earnest to the piano.In 1952, Mr. Fou made his first stage appearance, playing Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The concert caught the attention of officials in Beijing, who selected the young pianist to compete and tour in Eastern Europe, Mr. Fou’s first trip abroad.Soon, Mr. Fou moved to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory on a scholarship. To prepare for the fifth Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, he practiced so diligently that he hurt his fingers and was nearly cut from the first round of competition.After the deaths of his parents in 1966, Mr. Fou stayed abroad, rising to become a renowned concert pianist on the international circuit. Though he was best known for his interpretations of Chopin, he also received acclaim for his performances of works by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Debussy. In a review of a 1987 recital in New York, the critic Bernard Holland wrote in The New York Times of Mr. Fou’s “sensitive ear for color” and “elusive gift of melody.”“We should hear Mr. Fou more often,” Mr. Holland wrote. “He is an artist who uses his considerable pianistic gifts in pursuit of musical goals and not for show.”In 1979, after Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Fou was granted permission to return to China for the first time in more than two decades, reuniting with his brother to hold a memorial service for their parents.On subsequent visits, Mr. Fou gave performances and lectures; he became known to many Chinese as the “Piano Poet” for his lyrical musical interpretations. Later versions of “Fu Lei’s Family Letters” were updated to include some of Mr. Fou’s letters to his father.Mr. Fou’s death came at a time of resurgent nationalism in China. On Chinese social media, some ultranationalist commentators called him a traitor to the country for having defected decades ago, echoing similar accusations that Mr. Fou faced in the 1950s not long after settling in London.“What would I tell them? There was nothing to say,” Mr. Fou once said of such critics in an interview. “It’s not that I was longing for the West.”“I was choosing freedom,” he added. “It was not an easy situation. There was no other choice.”Many other Chinese honored his memory, including well-known pianists like Li Yundi as well as Lang Lang, who called Mr. Fou “a clear stream in the world of classical music and a beacon of light in our spirit.”Mr. Fou in Chengdu, China, in 2007. The pianist Lang Lang called him “a clear stream in the world of classical music.”Credit…VCG/VCG, via Getty Images“Fou Ts’ong’s legacy was to show people and musicians the importance of integrity, character and music beyond technique,” said Jindong Cai, a conductor and the director of the U.S.-China Music Institute at Bard College Conservatory of Music.Mr. Fou’s first marriage, to Zamira Menuhin, daughter of the prominent violinist Yehudi Menuhin, ended in divorce, as did a brief marriage to Hijong Hyun. In addition to Ms. Toh, Mr. Fou is survived by a son from his first marriage, Lin Xiao; a son from his marriage to Ms. Toh, Lin Yun; and his brother, Mr. Fu.Mr. Fou remained passionately devoted to music in his later years, playing piano for hours every day even as his fingers grew frail. It was a love that he invoked often in interviews, alongside nuggets of wisdom from his father.“When I was very young, I wrote to my father from Poland that I was sad and lonely,” he once recalled. “He wrote back: ‘You could never be lonely. Don’t you think you are living with the greatest souls of the history of mankind all the time?’”“Now that’s how I feel, always,” Mr. Fou said.Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More