One of China’s most controversial celebrities tells TALK about the fickleness of fame, and the dramatic influence of the Chinese internet

Yang Erche Namu (Namu to her friends) is a magnet for controversy. Some hate her and others take her as their role model. Ask any young to middle-aged Chinese person and they’re likely to have a strong opinion about her, finding her either “ridiculous” or “hen lihai”, meaning “terrific; awesome”.

Yang is an ethnic Moso, a tribe from Yunnan's Lugu Lake, near the Sichuan border. Moso is one of the world’s few matriarchal societies, where women choose their lovers and run all matters of the household, and where there is no equivalent word for ‘father’. In Yang’s English book, Leaving Mother Lake, written in conjunction with Christine Mathieu, she tells of her life as a child in her primitive village by the lake, her mother’s attempts to give her away three times as a baby when she wouldn’t stop crying, and going to live alone with her uncle in the mountains herding yaks. At the age of 13 she ran away from home to join a singing troupe in Sichuan province, which started her on a path towards Shanghai and a career in singing and dancing.

“I wanted to help people in the same way. I wanted to show that I wasn’t taking money under the table. 
I was fair.”

Over the last decade, Yang has written more than 10 books, detailing her beliefs and romances, her stays in San Francisco and Geneva, and her career as a top model. The books have garnered her many followers, but her most recent fame has come from her role as a judge on the 2007 series of Super Boy, a hit reality TV program, much like the Idol franchise but with each alternate year’s series dedicated to ferreting out the next new male or female pop sensation. Flanked by male judges on either side, you could say Yang was China’s own Paula Abdul (and with a laugh and a measure of earnestness she tells us she’d love to take Abdul's place seated beside Simon Cowell on the next American Idol series). Her feisty presence on the show, however, mirrored Cowell more than Abdul, with her frequent critical comments directed at the young contestants, and heated altercations with the other judges, leading to her ban from appearing on Chinese television. Yang defends things she said on the show, saying there was nothing malicious or ill-intentioned in her comments.

“I was a singer before. I’d had no background in it, but a teacher chose me,” she says. “I wanted to help people in the same way. I wanted to show that I wasn’t taking money under the table. 
I was fair.”