http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2009-11/488485.html

Beauty behind Obama creates a buzz online

 

    * Source: Global Times

    * [10:24 November 30 2009]

 

By Zhang Lei

 

A female graduate student who attended President Barack Obama’s town hall meeting in Shanghai is now the talk of the Internet due to her movie star looks.

 

The girl, who was later identified as Wang Zifei, a graduate student at Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University, downplayed talk about her beauty on a blog post on sina.com.cn Tuesday.

 

She said she tried to avoid the gossip.

 

“I was natural before the camera because I was well-trained on stage when I was little, and it was reasonable I sat straight to maintain my image on such a serious occasion,” she wrote.

 

Rumors started after a series of photos circulated online with the girl taking off her coat and others showing her sitting elegantly during the speech.

 

Attracted by her amazing beauty, some searched for her using the now popular “human flesh engine” and speculated she was Shanghai’s image ambassador, or a relative of a popular actress.

 

The girl, who wore a bright red coat, which she removed at one point, could be mistaken for a movie star. She wore her hair in a bun, had bright eyes and sat elegantly in her black outfit and stockings. She looked at Obama directly in the eyes when she shook his hands.

 

Some said she couldn’t be a student due to her professional appearance.

 

“The girl cannot be an ordinary person due to her good manner, you can never say if she was using the opportunity to get famous,” said Lü Zheng, a playwright.

 

Hu Yong, associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University, told the Global Times it was no longer new that certain people are made popular by “human flesh engine” in China, only that Obama made the matter special.

 

“The general public may not know about Obama’s China visit, but a pretty girl enabled them,” he said.

 

He also said netizens were naturally attracted to a pretty girl behind Obama, because there was hardly any other outlet for them to express their concerns on the president’s visit. “The media followed this because they are not capable of discussing serious stuff,” he added.

 

Meanwhile, netizens observed that several students who asked questions during the meeting were actually teachers and cadres from the Youth League Committee based at several local universities, a claim which could not be verified yesterday.

 

“Netizens showed concern about the selection of students who attended the meeting and whether the topics were varied and extensive,” Hu said.