Are you My Hero?

Shanghaiist isn’t really a TV buff; we only noticed this “super boy” kind of program when we saw someone we knew on TV. So we Googled a bit and found out this program called 莱卡-加油！好男儿 or Lycra: Jia You! Hao Nan Er, which literally translates in into Add Oil! Good Guys. (Lycra is the sponsor and, no, the guys don't all wear spandex. "Jia you!" or "Add oil!" is an expression often used at Chinese sporting events. It's kind of hard to explain, but a friend of ours had this to say: "We say this to encourage athletes so they will be like cars that have just filled up with oil." And that is actually about right.) To clear up any confusion, the producers of the show went with a much easier English name: My Hero.

The show, broadcast live on Dragon TV until August, is like a male beauty contest that began on May 21. We read the rules of the competition, and it seems they aim to select charming men with both ability and moral integrity, to make them the new image of the young generation. We suppose it helps if the guy is hot, too, although that clearly was not the case for Super Voice Girls.

The main competition is taking place in five major cities, including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing and Shenyang. Meanwhile, sub-competitions are set up in 10 other cities, including Beijing, Wulumuqi, Nanjing and Qingdao. The overall champion wins an RMB 300,000 award for business development and, yep, a brand new car! There are other awards such as Best Teamwork Spirit, Best Body and Best Ability. In addition, if participants can get into the top 15, the person who nominated them can also win awards including a round trip to Europe, Southeast Asia and Hainan -- but we think the nomination process ended a while ago. You can still vote though: find out your favorite guy's contestant number and send it in an SMS to 822810 (China Mobile), 90020 (China Unicom), 9700018 (Xiaolingtong). You can also call 16839867 (land line) or 12590896667 (mobile phone) to cast your vote.

From what little we saw of this show, Shanghaiist (who happens to be a Chinese girl) isn't sure we'd want many of these contestants to be the poster boy for China's next generation of young men -- for one, most of them have really bad hair (and the way they dress makes us wonder if they thought they were competing to be the young generation's ideal symbol of a ladyboy). Most of their five-minute performance consist of a display of some kind of talent and a Q&A section (the "talent" is usually singing and dancing, or maybe something like doing the bench press). From what we observed, the Q&A section was pretty shallow, too -- most questions are superficial such as “Why do you think you are a good man?” or “What will you do if someone says your girlfriend is not pretty?” Thankfully, the show makes up for this by being absolutely hysterical (unwittingly, likely, but funny nonetheless).

Thanks to the wonderful internet, you can watch clips from My Hero on your computer via YouTube-like Chinese websites TVix.cn and TooDou.com. The video at the top of this post is of Chongqing contestant Xiang Ding, whose talents include adding even more hairspray to his hair and painting fruit. The links above have some other classic clips. Feel free to share the ones you like best in the comments below.

And if that is not enough My Hero for you, check out the show's photo album. Lots of potential wallpaper candidates in there.

My Hero airs Saturday nights from 7-9 pm on Dragon TV. Repeats air throughout the week.