Hong Kong — Andy Lau, who last month joined social media for the first time in his 40-year-career was candid about his 2008 wedding.
Lau who is usually mum about details of his marriage and personal life shocked his 55 million Douyin followers when he shared on February 8 that he did not invite any guests to his wedding to Malaysian former model, 54-year-old Carol Chu.
“I was worried that I would leave out good friends from the banquet guest list,” said the 59-year-old actor-singer in his first live broadcast on the platform. “That would hurt the feelings of those whom I didn’t invite, so I decided to forgo the dinner and not have any guests.”
According to a report by The Star that quoted The Straits Times as saying, Lau decided on Douyin as his first foray into social media. It is dubbed as China’s version of TikTok. In less than a fortnight, Lau became one of its most popular stars, surpassing actress Zhang Ziyi and singers Eason Chan and JJ Lin.
Unfortunately, Lau violated some terms on Douyin with his posts. Based on Hong Kong’s HK01 news site, a recent video promoting his upcoming movie Endgame and its theme song was deemed to have violated the platform’s rules as there was a watermark and advertising links. The number of views was then throttled. His previous videos had up to 30 million views but the Endgame post had only a fraction of that.
Taiwan portal Mirror Media reports that Lau was handsomely paid NT$440 million (SGD21 million) to join Douyin, which is in fierce competition with another China video-sharing app, Kuaishou.
Douyin is reportedly now trying to get a reclusive star with zero social media presence on board. Chinese singer Faye Wong has allegedly been offered a whopping NT$560mil (SGD26 million).
Born on September 27, 1961, Andy Lau Tak Wah is a Hong Kong actor, singer-songwriter and film producer. He has been one of Hong Kong’s most commercially successful film actors since the mid-1980s, performing in more than 160 films while maintaining a successful singing career at the same time. In the 1990s, Lau was branded by the media as one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop and was named as “Fourth Tiger” among the Five Tiger Generals of TVB during the 1980s.