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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Hot-Detail-2852 on 2024-06-15 02:04:24+00:00.
Hello! I'm a long-time lurker of this subreddit who made an account just to post this (because I didn't see anyone else posting it and it's been living rent-free in my head since February), so I'm sort of nervous, but I hope yall get just as much of a kick as I did out of this mess!
Just as a heads-up, most of my sources are in Chinese. This is inevitable, as the drama was just not smth that would impact the Western part of the (already-niche) fandom(s) very much, nor would Western fans really understand the significance of this happening during the Spring Festival Gala. That said, if there is an English source, I will explicitly mention so.
And obligatory formatting mention: Since this post deals with Chinese celebrities, the name format will be [family name] + [given name], unless there is an obviously Westernized name, which I'm sure will not be difficult to figure out.
First off, who is Bai Jingting?
Bai Jingting (English-language wikipedia, Baidu) is a Chinese actor. Currently thirty years old, he is most widely known for his youthful, schoolboy roles, although he has since moved onto more serious dramas as well as ancient-fantasy ones. In particular, his breakout roles include Yu Chuyan from The Whirlwind Girl, Gu Nanyi from The Rise of the Phoenixes, Sun Yiqiu from Ordinary Glory, and Xiao Heyun from Reset. However, he may be best known for being a regular cast member on Seasons 1-6 of a popular Chinese variety show, Who's the Murderer.
A ~~little~~ big background: Who's the Murderer
It would be a lie to say that Bai Jingting wasn't already popular before he joined Who's The Murderer (heretofore referred to as WTM; English wikipedia), a variety show where celebrities act as suspects in a murder case which another celebrity, posing as the detective, must solve. However, it's also not an exaggeration to say that WTM was the probable cause of most of his subsequent success.
(Didn't know where to put this since it broke the flow of the story everywhere I tried, but here is a playlist of the Engsubbed episodes of the show if you want to check it out for yourself! Bear in mind that HunanTV's English subs, particularly the earlier ones, are quite hit or miss lol.)
WTM is licensed by HunanTV (also called MangoTV; I will be using both terms interchangeably) from a Korean variety show called Crime Scene. I've never watched the K-version, so I can't tell you what that's about, but what set WTM apart from many Chinese variety shows of back then was its unique style (briefly summarized above) and relative freedom for the celebs to say things.
This was because it was solely an internet show (as in, it was only ever released on a website and not TV), so the editors didn't have to be as strict on the censorship. This led to some really funny moments and golden lines [I couldn't find any English subbed funny moments, sorry :( ] including sexual jokes, borderline cursing, some culture shocks, and general shenanigans. Add this to a great regular cast and guests (i.e. famous TV hosts He Jiong and Sa Beining, who know and get along with basically anyone; popular singer and comedian Da Zhang Wei; the star of this post Bai Jingting; and even pre-Magic-Man-fame Jackson Wang) and you've got the perfect formula for something that anyone of any age can enjoy.
But you can't talk about WTM without talking about Bai Jingting's role in it; after all, he was one of the original regulars. As a decently handsome and fairly intelligent young man with a relatable sense of humor, Bai Jingting gained a lot of fans through this show. In particular, fans loved his spontaneous, out-of-the-box guesses for the truth of the mysteries that somehow always tended to be correct, and they loved to ship him with Emma Wu, a Taiwanese singer and actor also known as Guigui, who was a perfect 'sunshine girl' to his 'grumpy boy'. (This ship later ended up dying, but you probably saw that coming.)
WTM just wrapped up its ninth season this year (2024) to great success, as expected. However, only true fans know (jk jk, that's a little gatekeepy) of the struggles the show, crew, and guests once faced. Between the 6th and 7th seasons, the original producer of the show (Xiaohezi) had a falling-out with MangoTV and left the channel along with many core members of the WTM crew. Aside from 'stealing*' the work of a former MangoTV colleague (推理开始了/lit. The Inference Starts) to make her own show (开始推理吧/The Truth, lit. Let's Start Inferring), she also made a new show called 登录圆鱼洲/The Oasis, which had a very similar game style to WTM, only without all the murder.
** I put 'stealing' in quotes because it was the phrasing that the Chinese fandom used. However, I have not watched The Inference Starts, so I don't know how it actually compares to The Truth. Granted, the names do sound quite similar, and the format of the show is also suspiciously similar to WTM, murders and all…*
Fans of WTM were furious with both shows, and honestly, some of it was for good reason; The Truth used pictures of MangoTV/WTM stars (even their families!) as murder victims, despite those people never appearing on The Truth at all (actually, they were known to have declined her offer of it), nor probably ever giving the crew consent to use their pictures like that. Pretty shitty and honestly kind of petty, yeah? On the less-lawsuit-worthy side, complaints about The Oasis were mostly due to its 'copying' of WTM's general format yet not executing it well… and that one of the regulars was — you've guessed it — Bai Jingting.
This was a pretty big deal for fans of WTM, as after it was revealed quite early in 2022 (or maybe late 2021, I can't remember) that Bai Jingting would not appear in WTM S7, fans assumed that he was busy with filming dramas and didn't want to be distracted by variety shows. As such, fans were understanding of the situation, and WTM S7 debuted to a lot of apprehension, featuring hastily-written plots (that were still extremely well-done imo), emergency friendship guest stars (including some who were recovering from injuries), and an extremely overworked new crew.
Keep in mind that WTM S7 aired about four months prior to The Oasis, and that fans were extremely touched by how put-together WTM S7 was for a show that had lost most of its core crew members. This, along with some parasocial relationship stuff, made the reveal that Bai Jingting was to star in The Oasis particularly shocking to loyal WTM fans, who felt as if he had betrayed the show, MangoTV, and even He Jiong (the backbone of MangoTV and WTM who'd helped him out quite a lot; this is another plot point for later) and the other overwhelmed guests who had pushed back or rushed other schedules just to support the show. Plus, as I'd briefly mentioned before, Xiaohezi had been exposed to have approached several other WTM stars who refused her offer and stayed with MangoTV, which made Bai Jingting's 'betrayal' even more unreasonable to the fandom.
Obviously, fans were divided; hardcore WTM fans held the opinion that he betrayed the show and his colleagues, and hardcore Bai Jingting's fans retorted that he was free to appear on whichever show he liked. In any case, many WTM fans ended up unstanning Bai Jingting, and he never did appear in another WTM episode again.
Subsequent works (the calm before the storm?)
Wow, that WTM section was so much longer than I'd expected, but you really do need a comprehensive understanding of what went on back in 2022 if you want to understand everything that happened and resurfaced in 2024. Anyway, moving on.
For context, Bai Jingting had never been a household name; he was mostly known for idol dramas (targeted towards younger women) and WTM. But after WTM, he starred in a series of fairly popular dramas: Reset, a thriller webdrama based off a popular webnovel; New Life Begins, an ancient romcom webdrama that apparently won several awards; and Destined, an ancient-fantasy drama costarring Song Yi, his girlfriend that he never officially announced that he was dating. Yes, there is a plot point here as well that I will circle back to.
In any case, it seemed like Bai Jingting was doing pretty well on his own, even without all the promotion and support from WTM, and his fans were happy. Even most WTM fans seemed to have let the issue go, opting for a 'let's do well on our own separate paths' kind of mentality.
The Big One: The 2024 Spring Festival Gala
Now, I mentioned that Bai Jingting was never a household name, right? It was fairly unlikely that anyone older than, say, 30-40 years old would know of or be a fan of him. In addition, he only had two dramas air during 2023, spending the rest of it on variety shows...
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