As I highlighted in a previous post about The Untamed soundtrack, my friend Wuulongcha is my go-to expert for all things C-drama related. She doesn’t post often, but when she does, they are informative deep dives that also help make the C-drama world more accessible to non-Chinese readers and the growing audience of international C-drama watchers.

Earlier this year, Wuulongcha got curious about what happened to Michelle Jiang Jia En (蒋佳恩), who made her debut in 2017 with the drama Chef Fang (花间提壶方大厨). She dug around and ended up writing this insightful post about some of the inner workings of the Chinese entertainment industry.

It’s a look at how talent agencies operate, the challenges that face the vast majority of newly signed artists, and specifically about one such business, Black Gold Talent Agency, also known as BG Talent — the former agency for actors Joseph Zeng Shun Xi and Neo Hou Ming Hao. She looks into Jiang’s contract and explains how it all works, and how much (or rather, how little!) young talents really make. It’s also a troubled tale of how the bullied becomes the bully.

Anyway, do check out her post and bookmark her site!