Do we like Faye Wong?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean run on the harm test and a real act of giving, held back because she says so little that the record is thin.
Faye Wong was born in Beijing in 1969 and became the queen of Cantopop. The big moment for many Western fans was Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express (1994), where she played a character also called Faye, and the film's California Dreamin' scenes are still recreated today. She later worked with Scottish dream-pop band Cocteau Twins, and her cool, androgynous style is still copied.
The latest news is a pop-culture stoush, not a scandal. She closed the 2026 CMG Spring Festival Gala, her sixth appearance, with a lesser-known indie track instead of an old hit. Some viewers found it hard to get into, while others saw it as backing newer artists, and her fans stood firmly behind her.
Now the harm check. We searched for her words and acts on LGBTQ+ people, women, vaccines, climate and politics, and nothing harmful came up. No campaigning, no conspiracy theories, no grievance rants, and no sign she keeps company that pushes any of it. The flip side is that she gives almost no public commentary, so we can't point to much she has actively stood for either.
The one political-ish episode is from 2016. She attended a 14 February commemoration in India alongside members of the Tibetan government-in-exile, and Chinese state media criticised the celebrities involved. The Karmapa's office said the celebrities' presence was coincidental, and her representatives did not respond to requests for comment. Whether you read it as a quiet act of faith or a risky one is up to you, but it isn't harm.
On the good side, she pledged RMB 5 million (about US$760,000) toward relief after the 2016 Taiwan earthquake. That sits alongside her long-running support for a cleft-lip charity. Gossip sites also run plenty of relationship rumours about her, but they're tabloid territory and we left them out.