The 5 ‘Handsome Girls’ Trying to Be China’s Biggest Boy Band - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-acrush-pop-music-gender-boy-band.html
It has been a hard and fast ascent for Ms. Lu and her bandmates in Acrush — five young women who want nothing more than to show the world they can become their country’s biggest boy band.
Acrush, which stands for “Adonis crush,” after the Greek god, is the creation of Zhejiang Huati Culture Media Company, one of China’s pop-music factories and a supergroup incubator aiming to saturate the market with ensemble acts that can rack up Weibo fans and flood Tencent video streams.
Since China’s unofficial ban last year on popular South Korean cultural imports, Chinese promoters have tried to satisfy pop music fans with homegrown talent. There are slick boy bands and foxy girl groups, but Acrush aims for a growing segment of Chinese youth culture: androgynous urban trendsetters who reject traditional gender norms.