Meet China’s Latest Internet Celebrity: The “Vagrant Shanghai Professor
It has been nine years when you consider that “Brother Sharp,” a homeless man from Ningbo, has become an internet hit in China for his fashionable and good-looking appearance. Now, some other homeless guy, this time from Shanghai, has come to be a web sensation for his poise, information, and modesty.
It all commenced approximately three weeks in the past. At the same time, a web video of a homeless man who eloquently discusses literature and philosophy went viral on Chinese social media, receiving tens of millions of views inside a period of merely three days. The guy changed into nicknamed the “Vagrant Shanghai Professor.” Soon, more statistics about the man’s identification began making their rounds on the net. The “Vagrant Professor” is known as Shen Wei Hundreds of photographs and movies of Chen began flooding the net, all showing the identical image: Shen surrounded by using humans, holding their telephones in his face. Shen has become a real social media phenomenon, even receiving attention outdoor of China, with both BBC and Washington Post reporting about this guy’s surprising upward thrust to fame.
For Shen, his online movie star fame has come at a rate. When the crowds have become too large, the Shanghai police needed to intrude and escort him out of his shelter. While the police had been looking to deliver Shen to safety, human beings nevertheless took his image and attempted to touch him. One lady even held up a cardboard sign pronouncing: “Vagrant Professor, I need to marry you.” Over the beyond a week, Shen hasn’t been seen out in public. Some latest photographs of Chen display that he had a noticeable makeover when attending a class reunion that changed into specially organized for him via his former classmates. Fifty two-12 months-old who become born and raised in Shanghai. Shen reportedly once labored as a civil servant on the Shanghai’s Xuhui District Audit Bureau, earlier than he took unwell go away and began roaming the streets anonymously for greater than two decades.
Persistent rumors commenced circulating the internet, suggesting that Shen as soon as graduated from the distinguished Fudan University in Shanghai and that he had become a vagrant after his wife and daughter had died in a car crash. Despite Shen himself repeatedly denying these claims, the rumors saved performing in articles and on social media. Whether he likes it or now not, Shen’s quiet days of analyzing books and gathering garbage are over. Within some days after the original video of Shen went viral, hundreds of human beings began trying to find him near Shanghai’s Gaoke West Road, the area wherein he typically remains, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ‘Vagrant Professor’ and take a selfie with him.
