Chinese actor Wang Xing was recently deceived into going to Thailand and then kidnapped to a scam park in Myanmar, sparking public attention. After being rescued, Wang Xing revealed that he was deceived by a well-known entertainment company in Thailand, using Thailand as a transit point to go to a third country for filming. Chinese actress Shao Yifan disclosed that Wang Xing is not a star, but actually just a “grassroots actor,” and he was deceived because he had no work and was in desperate need of money.
Shao Yifan, who appeared in popular dramas such as “Blooming Flowers” and “Wind Blows in the Summer,” posted on Weibo on January 6 that she had worked with Wang Xing, the male actor who went missing in Thailand, on the drama “Rationalists.” She described him as “not a male star, just a grassroots actor in Shanghai,” earning less than 210 yuan a day.
Shao Yifan revealed that before Wang Xing went missing last December, a group of people had already been deceived, and “those actors who went together discovered the loophole and came back on their own.” She also revealed that the actor coordinator who deceived Wang Xing had a social account named “Sixteen,” but now he claims that the scammer was not him, and his WeChat account had been hacked for a month.
Wang Xing has appeared in dramas such as “Fox Spirit Matchmaker,” “The Story of the Rose,” “The Criminal Psychologist 2,” and “The Female Mentalist.” Shao Yifan, who knows Wang Xing well, said, “Wang Xing was eager to work and may have had doubts but still went for it.” She believes the reason Wang Xing was willing to take risks is because he needed money: “Some netizens see actors and think they earn 208, but in reality, most actors don’t even make 208 yuan a day on average.”
The term “208” originated from a previous report by Chinese media about the now-banned actress Zheng Shuang, who earned 160 million yuan for her role in “A Chinese Ghost Story,” with a daily salary of 2.08 million yuan during her 77-day filming period.
Shao Yifan stated, “Wang Xing has worked a lot, has good business abilities, so if he wasn’t really desperate for work and money, he wouldn’t have let his guard down and fallen for the scam.”
On January 5, Wang Xing’s girlfriend sought help through Weibo, stating that he received a job offer from an actor recruitment group, added the actor coordinator on WeChat, successfully auditioned, and decided to go to Thailand for work. In the early hours of January 3, Wang Xing flew from Shanghai, China to Bangkok, Thailand, and went missing around noon at the Thailand-Myanmar border after being driven by the coordinator’s arranged vehicle.
According to the Chinese media “Red Star News,” Wang Xing was successfully rescued in Myanmar on January 7. In an online document being compiled by the relatives of the 487 trapped individuals in a Myanmar assistance group, information about Wang Xing’s rescue prompted 174 family members to fill out the document, which was eventually named “Joint Rescue of 174 ‘Stars’ Trapped in Myanmar.”
After returning to Bangkok on January 8, Wang Xing revealed in an interview with Thai media that he was deceived into coming to Thailand for performance work but upon arrival, was shaved bald and forced to practice typing in a building with 50 Chinese people, suspected to be involved in telecommunication fraud activities. The Mekong Sub-District Police Station in Thailand released a recent photo of Wang Xing, showing him with a shaven head, wearing a white tracksuit with large red patches on his legs. While his physical condition seemed fine, his mental state appeared fatigued, and more details of this kidnapping case are expected to be revealed in the future.