Zhou Zuyi/Shanghai Daily news

The huge size of the audience watching the contestants in China's top-rating talent show amazes television and shownbiz insiders. Zhou Zuyi takes a look behind the scenes and talks to some of the fans.
To the solid beat of R&B music, attired in everyday clothes, China's newest public idols take center stage on national television, capturing the country's imagination with performances that are not fancy but highly individualistic.
It has already happened in other places all over the world such as the "American Idol" series but on this side of the Pacific, the wild enthusiasm among the nation's television audience for reality talent shows seems to have erupted in a more thrilling and intriguing way.
Millions of Chinese - young and old - have made it a nightly routine each Friday since May to tune in to the live weekly episode of Super Girl. The fact that it is broadcast on a provincial satellite station instead of the mammoth CCTV network has not prevented the program's appeal from growing exponentially in the past three months.
Candy Tang is a typical example of the buzz. "I used to think talent shows were contrived and nasty until one night in the middle of June when I caught up with Super Girl," says Tang, 25, a Shanghai-based office worker. "I even surprised myself."
But now the weekly show, which is much more than the singing competition it appears to be, has become an indispensable part of her life. Tang is a loyal supporter of Li Yuchun, 21, one of the six finalists who led the opinion poll in the previous rounds, and she has spent thousands of yuan as a dedicated fan of the Super Girl phenomenon.
Along with hundreds of fellow local fans cheering for Li, Tang has campaigned for her favorite contestant by raising money to "buy" text message votes for Li - each mobile number is allowed to send no more than 15 text message votes and the only way to shore up the biggest hype for a favorite contestant, the fans believe, is to buy as many mobile numbers as possible.
The mobile poll will be used to decide contestants' actual ranking in every single episode as well as the opinions of the on-the-spot judges.
And money is also splashed in many other ways. Tang has visited Changsha in Hunan Province, where the final seven rounds of the show are being held since mid-July, to watch a recent episode, all at her own expense. Tang, on behalf of Li's local fan club, also sent gifts to their teenage idol, including fancy costumes and, as a reminder of their generosity, a mobile phone.
"Yes, I am planning a second trip with a number of fellow Li supporters," says Tang.
But a few fan-atics can't have stirred up the rage for the contest all by themselves. The passion for Super Girl has spread out on a much wider scale. A fan from Hangzhou even spent several dozen thousand yuan on a whole-page advertisement to endorse his "idol" Zhang Liangying on a local newspaper on Thursday.
Independent research has revealed an average nationwide viewing rate of above 10 percent of households for recent Super Girl episodes, an astronomical figure given China's total population of 1.3 billion. The organizers anticipate the rate to soar to stratospheric heights when the final episode goes to air at the end of this month.
So what has enchanted the collective Chinese consciousness this summer?
In fact, this is the second year Super Girl has been televised. Although it did create something of a stir last year, the 2004 Super Girl cannot compete with the mania around the second edition. Many have argued that it is the new contestants who have made the difference.
The top two leaders in text message polling - Li and Zhou Bichang, 20, a Guangzhou-based college student - are far from the stereotyped image of Chinese pop divas. Each projects a sexually neutral image on camera, with simple, short hairstyles and androgynous looks.
On the other hand, Zhang, acknowledged as the best singer of the competition and boasting a much more feminine figure, is trailing in a distant third position in the poll.
"Li looks so cute - if only she could be my younger sister," says an intoxicated Tang. "Without her, Super Girl means nothing to me."
But to some more academic minds, individualistic contestants do not deserve the lion's share of the credit for the success of the show.
"The magic is in the accessibility of the show," says Hong Bing, a mass communications researcher at Fudan University. "The overnight sensations produced by the talent show are much more accessible than the traditional icons of pop culture, the ones who give no more than contrived smiles and well-rehearsed interviews. The Super Girls look more like your next-door neighbors. It's not that difficult to identify with them."
The "accessibility factor," along with the innocence of the contestants - the bulk of them are teenagers - has actually unleashed the passions of a new generation of fans who are older than the conventional followers of pop culture and this has further fuelled the free-for-all.
"Almost all Li's supporters are between 25 and 40, if not even older," says Wang Yan, another member in Li's fan club and also an office worker. "Unlike those shrieking little student girls who follow the Hong Kong stars, we have the money and will support our favorite in an adult way."
Super Girl supporters share a passion for instant messaging and online message boards. This instant and convenient mode of communication has given birth to many intuitive thoughts about the show as well as about the stars and this, in turn, has lured more people to pay attention to the program.
"The digital era is certainly propelling the success of Super Girl," says Hong. "It has come at just the right time."
And also in a right place. Chinese culture seldom takes self-expression as a virtue but catapulting the "girl next door" into the limelight and seeing her sing in front of the whole nation has let the genie out of the show business bottle.
"I read in the press that more than 100,000 people attended the Super Girl preliminary rounds in five cities," says Hong. "Regardless of how far it takes them, I think every single contestant will grow stronger and more confident after her Super Girl experience."