On Chinese Google, an unexpected star recently temporarily exceeded the popularity of two extremely popular figures, Jesus Christ and Mao Zedong. And he did it without walking on water or starting a revolution that would alter the entire politics of a country. He simply put on a hair bow, a sports bra, and a woman’s blouse and performed comedy. Xiao Shenyang or "Little Shenyang,” age 29, blew Chinese audiences away in last year’s Lunar New Year gala show with his gender bending performance making him one of the most popular Chinese figures.

Little Shenyang is representative of how China’s post-‘80s generation population that have experienced the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown are influencing censorship. The PRC has categorized comedy with colors of its choice, so it can better facilitate censorship: Anything “black” no good, sometimes “yellow” okay. Brown and white weren’t choices on the color palette that day.

“Black” content is anything politically controversial, so basically anything political, and “yellow” content is anything with dirty jokes or sexual humor. Little Shenyang has somehow received the okay while performing comedy in cross-dress.

Check out the full profile in Newsweek for more on Little Shenyang's unlikely rise to stardom.

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