Celebrities entitled to enjoy rewards of success

The wedding of celebrity couple Yang Ying, better known by her stage name Angelababy, and Huang Xiaoming took place last week, with Chinese celebrities turning out in force to attend the free-publicity carnival. The occasion generated a lot attention, as intended, but not all of it was favorable. One criticism of the couple that created a particularly big buzz on social media was the xizi, a contemptuous term for actors, had stolen the limelight from Tu Youyou, who won China's first Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

The wedding was an extravaganza, not least because the couple milked it for all it was worth. From the bride's wedding ring to gifts for the guests, the wedding, which reportedly cost nearly 200 million yuan ($31 million) in total, was heavily sponsored by a variety of brands. Since they are not the first celebrity couple, and they are unlikely to be the last, to use their wedding for commercial promotions, some netizens have spoken in defense of the newlyweds claiming that no one has the right to point a finger at them, because it is up to a couple to decide how they want their wedding.

But while this claim might appear to be valid, it is in fact untenable. Showbiz stars, when practicing their right as ordinary citizens to tie the knot, should still take into consideration the power of their public image. Residents and visitors near the Shanghai Exhibition Center, which was the venue for the wedding, complained it disrupted the neighbor and caused a nuisance because of the traffic congestion and huge crowd of fans and bystanders that gathered. This should have been expected, and could have been avoided.