wow the impact of entertainment

HONG KONG -- I'd traded in the Upper East Side for the Far East and lived in China for all of three months when I met Angela. A waiflike college student, she was volunteering at a gallery of Communist propaganda posters located in the bowels of a Shanghai apartment complex. As I peered at flattering and fantastical representations of Chairman Mao, she offered to explain their meaning. Small talk commenced, and I told her I was a New Yorker.

Her eyes lit up. "Like on Gossip Girl?"






Yahoo! BuzzWell, yes. When I explained that I attended Chapin, an all-girls private school mentioned in a few episodes, Angela peppered me with questions about the show, which chronicles the sex, shopping and drama-filled lives of a clique of snobby prep school students.



Full disclosure: I am a huge fan. So I was happy to oblige. Yes, we wore short plaid skirts. No, we didn't host alcohol-laced ragers in the school pool at midnight. (At least, I wasn't invited.) It was only weeks later that I wondered what the allure of the show was for a soft-spoken Chinese girl who rarely visits bars and spends much of her week studying. So I called her up.



"We Chinese people are very curious about something happening in New York, because we know that New York is something interesting and dynamic," said Angela, who is 21. "The girls and the boys are our age, and we like to see what they do."



Angela's not alone. Between 3 million and 5 million people watch each new episode of Gossip Girl, according to the China Market Research Group. The show isn't broadcast on China's strictly regulated networks, so fans watch illegally, streaming or downloading episodes from the Internet. And while an audience of a few million may be a pittance in a nation of 1.3 billion, there's evidence that the show is catching on.