Sex-scandal star threatened with golden bullet

The path from notoriety to redemption is well trodden for scandal-hit stars in the West. A sober apology; a brief spell out of the limelight; then the comeback project, prompting hundreds of column inches and, with luck, greater success.

It doesn't work like that in Hong Kong - at least not for disgraced pop star Edison Chen.

Until last year, Chen was a singer, actor and heart-throb; at 27 he was one of the most recognisable faces in Asian showbusiness. Then the eruption of an extraordinary sex scandal, involving the publication of thousands of his explicit photos of some of the Hong Kong's best-known female stars, led to self-imposed exile in Canada, his birthplace. The response to his attempted return to the spotlight last week has been chilling: a gold bullet and a "final warning" to make no further appearances.

Chen had made a tentative attempt to resurrect his career, with two brief public appearances in Singapore - one at the launch of a burger chain. Then Hong Kong television station Cable TV said it had received a gold-coloured 9mm round and a typed letter, in English, warning Chen not to appear in public after April 4.

"We hope Edison Chen will take this warning seriously, otherwise his personal safety will be threatened," the letter went on.

Chen announced that he was quitting showbusiness after the scandal broke last year and fled to Canada, reportedly telling police that he believed his life was under threat. He has refused to return to the territory for next month's trial of a man accused of stealing the pictures from his laptop, instead giving evidence in Vancouver.

While he has given no public hint of who might want to kill him, or why, the idea may be less far-fetched than it sounds: lurid rumours have long flown about the involvement of Triads in the territory's entertainment industry.

The head of the company behind Chen's forthcoming movie The Sniper, which was delayed owing to last year's furore, said he would continue to publicise it and Chen has let it be known that he intended to return to Singapore to help with promotion. But a spokesman for Media Asia Distribution said it would seek the advice of both the Hong Kong and Singapore police.

The warnings are the latest twist in the biggest scandal to hit Chinese entertainment, which began when a couple of explicit photographs appeared on the web. At first, people believed they might be fake. Then, day by day, more and more appeared - showing more and more well known actors and singers in bed with Chen.

"It was the selective release of information that managed to drag out a simple event over many, many weeks. If the whole thing had been released on day one, it would have gone away," said Roland Soong, who wryly documented the phenomenon on his EastSouthWestNorth blog. "It was at the top of the headlines in the top three Hong Kong papers for 21 days in a row ... People stayed up all night waiting [for more] and discussion forums were frozen because there was so much traffic."

As the story spread to the mainland, censors battled to remove the pictures but failed to stem the appetite: one online discussion generated more than 25 million page views and 140,000 comments.

In his apology, Chen stressed that the photographs were private and consensual.

But the backlash was such that several of the women involved chose to end their careers, while others hoped that keeping a low profile might allow them to make a comeback.

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