The Aamir Of China

Inside the cult of the Bollywood superstar in the middle kingdom

- Ananth Krishnan in Beijing

When Jing Jing, a 30-year old manager working in a state-owned Chinese company, heard Aamir Khan was about to land in Beijing, she stopped everything she was doing. Jing frantically looked up flight schedules, called a cab, and dashed to Beijing airport in the middle of a work day. “It turned out the crew meeting him were late,” she recalls, “so I actually spoke to him face to face for a few minutes. I will never forget that day for the rest of my life.”

That was the summer of 2015, and Aamir was about to make his first visit to China to promote the release of PK. He was, at the time, not a household name in China, but had begun to acquire a dedicated following among a small but passionate crowd of young Chinese who follow Indian cinema. For the generation of Jing’s parents, Raj Kapoor and Indian films from the ’50s and ’60s were huge hits, but for their children, it was the stars of Hollywood, Hong Kong and South Korea—not India—that caught their imagination as China began to open up to the world. The release of PK was to be a modest event—little was spent on promoting the film—and, given the hitherto niche following for Indian movies, somewhat of a trial balloon. Could Aamir become, for China, the next Raj Kapoor?

Once the Chinese craze for Indian films faded with Raj Kapoor in the ’70s, few Indian films made a mark, let alone secured a release in China, which reserves its 30-odd annual quota of foreign films for Hollywood blockbusters. That changed with 3 Idiots, which became a cult hit, resonating with China’s stressed-out students. It was that film that captivated Jing and millions of her generation, who had begun to follow Aamir’s work passionately. It was that film that prompted her to start China’s first Aamir Khan Fan Club. Today, her modest club has 500 active members and more than 100,000 fans.