YANG MI: I WOULD BE GLAD TO BE LOVED FOR MY MONEY, FOR I HAVE LOTS OF IT

To the non-Chinese speaking world, Yang Mi 杨幂 is not a familiar name.

From her photos, one will be forgiven for mistaking Yang Mi as an airhead who earned her fame and fortune by looks and luck. 

Not so.  Yang Mi is astonishingly accomplished. Her glamourous image belies her professional skills and business capabilities.

Starting out as a child actress, Yang Mi has starred in a string of hit shows that she has become a household name in China. Some of her acting roles include less popular but critically acclaimed shows.

Not only an outstanding actress, Yang Mi is also a successful producer and talent manager.  While in her 20s, she founded a talent agency, Jay Walk Studio 嘉行传媒 which has now become a multi-million dollar entertainment company.  Actors and actresses under her agency have gone on to become huge, famous top-line stars in their own right. Her company has produced several popular shows.

The 35-year-old is now very wealthy, not by windfall, but earned by shrewd decisions, risks taken, untold sacrifice and personal costs.

Last month (May 2022), Yang Mi said something which sparked social media reactions.  At the Chinese variety show, Mao Xue Wang 毛雪汪 (EP16), the host, probing her love-life, asked Yang Mi: Where does security in love come from?  She replied, from oneself.  She went on to add: "If the guy is good to me because of my wealth, I will be delighted with that, because I do have money."  [1]

毛不易: 恋爱中的安全感来自于哪？

杨幂:自身。 甚至就想说，如果他是因为我有钱跟我好的话，我可太开心了，因为我有钱。

What does she mean by that?  Is she bragging about her wealth?

Having accomplished much and become so fabulously rich by her age, Yang Mi is a woman in a league of her own whom few (men) can match.

I'm not surprised she would say such things and think in such a way.

If we put aside her seeming audacious tone, I think you will see that her reasoning is grounded on logic and realism.

People can be disappointing, untrustworthy and also heart-breaking. People and feelings are unreliable.

Money on the other hand, is tangible, sure and dependable. We know exactly what money can do and what money cannot do. Money can buy goods and services, and also loyalty and servitude.  Money cannot buy love, but it can buy lovers.

Men have been saying for decades that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. So why fault a woman for thinking to use her cash to make her man feel king?

I think Yang Mi’s candid words show her personal view that true love is a fairy tale: that one cannot reasonably expect a man to commit and stay just because of love – the guy needs more concrete reasons to stick around. 

Rather than aiming to find a man who would love her for who she is inside of her skin, she will be happy with (to settle for?) someone who is willing to be with her (to put up with her?) in return for a slice of her wealth and the good life that come with it. 

In her worldview, the reachable and realistic aim is for a transactional relationship.  So, if the guy loves her because of her money, she would be very glad, because she has lots of it.

Is there even such a thing as true, unconditional love? Or is true love a wished-for fantasy, non-existent in reality?

Well, I'd like to believe that true love exists - that one can love and commit to another, not caring whether the other is a prince or a pauper, in sickness and in health as the adage goes.

But perhaps true love is not so easy to find.  Many have given up the search.

If there is any truth in the suspicion that true love, though it exists, is elusive to most, even more so to extraordinarily capable and exceptionally successful women like Yang Mi, then one cannot fault such a woman for putting faith in her money, rather than in the heart of her man.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1JveWzD5RU

Ascending The Monument

The Challenge: Climb 311 steps to the top of the tower - or so I thought. 

Standing 62 metres / 203 feet tall, the 'Monument to the Great Fire of London' is a fluted Doric column located in Central London, built between 1671 to 1677.

311 steps? No biggee. I climb the slopes of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve regularly. I paid the entrance fee of £5.80 and proceeded.  (The date was Sunday, 1 May 2022.) 

Little did I know what I had signed myself up for. 

The stairwell was a narrow tube containing a spiral staircase, just wide enough for one other person to brush past you. 

Very soon, I began to feel like I was walking up an endless curl, churning indefinitely. 

How long more to the top? I began to wonder. Instinctively, I looked up: only to see stairs spiralling upwards with no endpoint in sight. Big mistake. Panic rattled the doorknob of my mind, trying to enter. I fought a desire to quit and turn back down. 

I pressed on, but it seemed like I was climbing a forever spiral, walking up ascending circles indefinitely. It was surreal. It felt like I was looping a spiral version of the Penrose stairs. Claustrophobia was now nipping at my heels. 

To escape claustrophobia, I eyed the walls, looking for a window to the sky. Instead, I saw elongated windows like slits in the cylinder walls, so narrow that it was hard to see the outside. Distorted windows that promised but obscured view of the outside, added a sense of desperation. 

I stopped to catch my breath. 

Dotting the spiral column were climbers like me making their way up, even as others were making their way down. The muted din of their chatter was a comforting white noise. I sought to breathe in the air of their enthusiasm. 

A man a few steps below me on the opposite saw my hesitation. He caught my eye and said affirmatively, "You can do it!" His timely encouragement billowed my sails. Spurred, I determined to finish the climb. I had come this far. The only choice was to reach the top. I took a deep breath and then pounded up the remaining steps for the final assault. 

Yes, I did reach the top - winded, dizzy and somewhat daunted. 

I staggered to the parapet to wave to my husband and son who were on the ground looking out for me. 

I felt no joy at topping the tower, but dread that I had to go back into the darn tube to get back to the ground.

To get myself down, I decided to count the 311 steps aloud to myself as I descended. I figured that doing a countdown would give me the mental assurance that the curl will end eventually. That was how I made it through the narrow tube back to the ground without panicking. 

Who knew that the challenge was not about finishing a climb of 311 steps. The real challenge was to complete the journey of travelling up a high, mentally uncomfortable vertical tunnel. It was not a test of physical fitness but of mental fortitude. 

When climbing 10 storeys of a building, you would walk up straight flights of stairs, going one way and then the opposite way, usually wide enough for three people to walk abreast. Not to mention, there will be exit doors at every floor. That is not the case when ascending a 60 metre spiral staircase inside a narrow tube.

Did I enjoy the experience? Nope, it was scary. 

Would I do it again? Absolutely not!

Why the Accused Person Cannot be Named in Some Cases — a Lawyer Explains

Gag orders are for the benefit of victims and witnesses only

It is cardinal that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty. Yet, media reports on crimes regularly name the person accused of the crime, thereby exposing the person to shame even before conviction.  There is no lack of examples where accused persons, who were subsequently proven innocent, nonetheless had their good names dragged through the mud by media coverage in the run-up to being vindicated by acquittal.

In fact, whenever a person is accused of a criminal offence, the principle of Open Justice upholds the public’s right to know why and how.  Open Justice requires the trial of a person accused of a crime to be conducted in the public eye. There is an open invitation to the public to scrutinise the process by which the judge decides the guilt or innocence of the accused person. 

In other words, Open Justice means: "Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done." 

Transparency of the legal process promotes public confidence in the outcome of the trial.  With confidence in the administration of justice, aggrieved parties have no reason to take the law into their own hands.  Open Justice promotes trust that the legal system will right the wrongs - that culprits will be brought their just deserts and that justice will be served.

Open Justice is so fundamental that unless the accused person is a minor at the time of the offence, or when gag orders are made, media is free to name accused persons.

For accused persons below 18 years at the time of the offence, statutory provisions ban the publication of their names as well as information that may lead to their identification.  It is an automatic ban.  There is no need to apply to court for gag orders to seal the identifying particulars of such young accused persons.

Gag orders preventing the public from knowing certain pertinent facts of an alleged crime, in fact contradicts the imperatives of Open Justice.  The contradiction is permitted for one reason only - that it is in the interest and for the benefit of victims and witnesses to do so. 

Gag orders on the identity of victims and witnesses serve the important function of protecting and shielding them from the distress of public exposure, thereby enabling them to give their testimony to the Court candidly and without embarrassment or reprisal. For victims of sexual offences, gag orders also minimise further trauma to such victims and prevent re‑victimisation.

Gag orders anonymising the names of victims and witnesses of sexual offences are the norm.  Less common are gag orders on the identity of the person accused of the sexual offence. Sometimes, media reports state the reason the accused persons cannot be named is due to gag orders protecting the victims’ identity.

But sometimes, the media reports do not give the reason for the Court’s decision to hide the identity of the accused person.  The absence of explanation for withholding the accused person’s identity, may give rise to cynicism.  It may appear as if such accused persons have been given the “benefit” of anonymity and spared from the glare of the public eye.  

Were those gag orders made to shield the accused person from shame? To protect the reputation of the organisation the accused person belongs to? The answer is No.

The law is clear: the sole purpose of gag orders is for the benefit of victims and witnesses, never for the accused person nor any other persons or interests. 

No less than our Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon has categorically stated: gag orders "are imposed solely for the protection of victims or witnesses and never for the benefit of accused persons.  This means that the only basis for extending the scope of a gag order to include an accused person's identity is that the disclosure of his identity would likely lead to the identification of the victims or witnesses". (Ref: Chua Yi Jin Colin v PP [2021] SGHC 290)

This means that the only reason to seal the identity of the accused person and any other particulars of the case, is because the Court takes the view that exposing those particulars would expose the identity of the victims and witnesses.

Crimes and the carriage of justice are everybody’s business. Whenever a person is accused of a crime, the public has the right to know all the relevant details about the case.  Information facilitates the public’s effort to understand the context of the alleged crime, why and how it happened. With proper understanding, the public is enabled to follow the course of justice and to appreciate the eventual outcome of the trial.

But if the Court decides that the exposure of certain information is detrimental to the victims and witnesses, then the public’s right to know will be deferred for the sake of the victims and witnesses. 

By Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss, a lawyer practising in Singapore for more than 30 years.

23 February 2022