In China, It’s the Party That Keeps the Boy

Band Going


   

From left, Wang Yuan, Wang Junkai and Yiyang Qianxi of the Chinese boy band TFBoys
performing at an awards ceremony in Beijing last year.Credit...Imagechina, via Associated Press
By Karoline Kan

 May 6, 2017

阅读简体中文版

BEIJING — The most shared post on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, is not a
video of frolicking pandas or President Xi Jinping meeting world leaders, but a teenage boy’s
birthday message:

“I’m 15 today. Thanks for being with me all these years.”

Since that was posted in September 2014, it has been shared more than 335 million times, the
most shared Weibo post ever, according to Guinness World Records.

The poster was Wang Junkai, leader of TFBoys, a wildly successful boy band in China. Since
their debut in 2013, when the boys were just 12 and 13, they have won major Chinese music
industry awards and amassed more than 20 million Weibo followers. Sales of band merchandise
average more than $17 million per month, according to Chinese news reports.

So what explains their appeal?

“I like them because they express such positive values,” said Jia Su, a 24-year-old advertising
worker in Beijing. She has followed the group since she was a university student and now
manages the Weibo account of a fan club for TFBoys. “They are nice, kind, hardworking. That’s
what the Japanese and Korean boy bands don’t have.”

Unlike many teenage pop stars in Japan, South Korea and elsewhere, the members of TFBoys
display no signs of youthful rebellion. They decidedly do not walk on the wild side. They sing of
studying hard and serving the nation. The group’s music is cheerful with upbeat lyrics, and the
boys’ appearance tends toward neat outfits and sweet smiles.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The group is no accident, having been formed by a company, Time Fengjun Entertainment, using
three boys — Mr. Wang, Wang Yuan (no relation) and Yiyang Qianxi — plucked from its
trainee program.

The video for one of their most popular songs, “Manual of Youth,” shows the boys dancing with
comic book superheroes in a classroom aglow with pastel colors as they sing: “The sun of this
world can only shine on me brightly because of confidence. The center of this stage only flashes
for me.”