Barbie Hsu, a Taiwanese actress, tv host and pop star who catapulted to Pan-Asian recognition in 2001 because the star of the Cinderella-style teenage drama “Meteor Backyard,” died on Feb. 2 in Tokyo. She was 48.
Her loss of life was introduced to TVBS Information in Taiwan by her sister Dee Hsu, who mentioned the trigger was issues of the flu. The household had been vacationing in Japan.
In “Meteor Backyard,” an adaptation of the Japanese manga “Boys Over Flowers,” Ms. Hsu performed Dong Shan Cai, a naïve but headstrong pupil from a poor household who’s terrorized by a gaggle of 4 good-looking boys who name themselves F4 after she enrolls within the elite personal faculty they attend. She reluctantly enters excessive society when F4’s chief, Dao Ming Si (performed by Jerry Yan), falls for her.
Along with her expressive eyes and elfin options, Ms. Hsu was a pure for the position, and she or he exploded in recognition throughout swaths of Asia, the place she was identified by the nickname Large S.
Followers have been significantly drawn to her character’s relatable and resilient nature. “I’m like a blade of grass,” she mentioned in a single episode. “Irrespective of what number of instances you narrow me down, I’ll develop again and stay once more.”
The 4 male stars used the collection’ affect to advertise their boy band, additionally known as F4 — for “Flower 4” — making “Meteor Backyard” an early instance of the style generally known as idol drama, formulaic however addictive love tales that includes pop stars. Ms. Hsu’s character grew to become the style’s basic protagonist.
As Mei Ting Li, a professor of media research on the Chinese language College of Hong Kong who makes a speciality of fandom and in style tradition, wrote in an electronic mail, the present “grew to become the archetype of Chinese language-language TV drama that allowed the cross-media superstar enterprise.”
The collection’ recognition led to later exhibits tailored from the identical supply materials, together with a 2018 Chinese language drama of the identical identify and the vastly profitable “Boys Over Flowers” (2009).
Its recognition unfold so far as the Philippines, the place it grew to become one of many nation’s highest-rated exhibits, inspiring a quasi-religious fervor amongst younger those that grew to become generally known as “Meteor fever.” Filipino males adopted the floppy hair and costume of their favourite characters, and the celebrities have been mobbed after they visited the nation.
Throughout one go to, in 2003, the media conglomerate ABS-CBN, which aired “Meteor Backyard,” used decoy actors in wigs to distract the paparazzi, and a few 100 policemen have been deployed to handle unruly crowds.
Hsi-yuan Hsu was born on Oct. 6, 1976, in Taipei, Taiwan, to Huang Chun-Mei and Hsu Chien. The family was tumultuous: Her mom separated from her father over his playing. Barbie’s mom supported her and her two sisters by working as an actual property dealer.
In 1994, Ms. Hsu and her youthful sister, Dee, enrolled within the Hwa Kang Arts Faculty in Taipei, the place they befriended a gaggle of classmates nicknamed the Seven Fairies, together with the actresses and singers Mavis Fan, Tempo Wu and Aya Liu.
Whereas at Hwa Kang, the Hsu sisters started performing as a pop duo generally known as S.O.S., or Sisters of Shu; their 1995 bubblegum pop music “Ten Minutes of Love” grew to become a breakout hit. They later modified their identify to A.S.O.S., for All Sisters of Shu, and co-hosted selection exhibits like “Guess,” from 1996 to 2000, and “100% Leisure,” from 1998 to 2005.
Ms. Hsu leveraged her “Meteor Backyard” fame to advertise two best-selling magnificence guides, revealed in 2004 and 2007, that inspired readers to attempt crimson wine facials to stop ageing and Rogaine to thicken their eyebrows.
In 2008, she branched out into Chinese language-language cinema by taking part in a girl kidnapped by a gang of Interpol brokers in “Linked,” a remake of the 2004 Hollywood thriller “Mobile.” In 2010, she performed a sadistic younger girl who murdered her fiancé and his dad and mom on her marriage ceremony evening within the martial arts movie “Reign of Assassins,” starring Michelle Yeoh.
Ms. Hsu withdrew from performing in 2011, however her tumultuous relationship with the Chinese language businessman Wang Xiaofei, whom she married in 2010, saved her within the highlight; they divorced in 2021. Her survivors embody a son, Hsi-Lin, and a daughter, Hsi-Yueh, in addition to her second husband, Koo Jun-yup, a South Korean singer generally known as DJ Koo, whom she married in 2022.
Ms. Hsu skilled a bunch of well being points, together with coronary heart illness and epilepsy, in addition to a near-fatal seizure through the delivery of her son. Her loss of life despatched ripples of grief throughout Asia and trended on Weibo, the Chinese language social media platform. The South China Morning Put up reported that a lot of her bereaved followers turned to the Chinese language synthetic intelligence start-up DeepSeek to assemble farewell letters mimicking her writing model.
Many of those letters famous her signature phrase: “Stay superbly.”
