徐静蕾：梦想如何照进现实

In a Chinese society that prizes modesty, Xu Jinglei, a successful actress, director and blogger, is not shy about trumpeting her victories″or her natural talents.

'I'm pretty…smart…curious…a fast learner,' she says matter-of-factly, sitting in her bare office near Beijing's Chaoyang Park, decorated only with a few posters advertising her latest movie. Then, she adds with a laugh, 'Chinese are not used to bragging about themselves. But I'm 36. I don't want to pretend otherwise.'

Ms. Xu has every reason to be proud of her accomplishments since she first came into the public eye as a 20-year-old acting student playing a policewoman who falls in love with a gangster in a popular TV drama series.

But this Beijing native is far from vain. She has a way of connecting with ordinary people by coming across as being as normal as they are. Her blog, which has attracted more than 286 million page views since late 2005, is full of mundane details of her daily life, such as her insomnia, her cats, her diet (She has a healthy appetite for an actress.) and photos that show her with little make-up and wearing casual clothes. Her writing style, while loose, has an endearing quality of candidness, as if to say, 'Look, here's my life, and it's no different from yours. And I love it!'

She knows how to capitalize on that perception and her influence commercially while not trying to glorify it. She started a monthly digital magazine called Kaila, meaning 'opened' or 'started,' in April 2007 when she was the top blogger in China. The magazine, focusing on youth lifestyle, has average monthly page views of 10 million, and she's started selling jewelry under the Kaila brand since April.

Ms. Xu says she founded the magazine to fulfill a childhood dream, as well as to cultivate relationships with advertisers that might also be interested in her film projects. Her magazine and production companies now employ about two dozen people, mostly in their 20s.

A couple of advertisers in her magazine, such as Lenovo computers, appeared in her latest movie, 'Go Lala Go!' It's a drama about a young woman, Lala, and her office romances that has a flavor of 'Sex and the City' and 'Cashmere Mafia.' Because of product placements, which include Mazda cars and Lipton tea, investors in the movie got back two thirds of their 20 million yuan ($2.9 million) investment even before its release. The movie went on to become a blockbuster, by Chinese standards, taking in more than 100 million yuan at the box office, and making Ms. Xu the most commercially successful female director in China.

She took some criticism from the media for the product placements in the movie, which she co-wrote and directed and in which she played the leading role (although she wasn't an investor). One online commentator wrote caustically that 'the audience didn't buy a ticket to watch commercials.' The article was picked up by the website of the People's Daily and several major online portals. But she's not apologetic. She says it's a commercial reality that everybody in China's film industry has to face. Investing in films is a risky business in China, she says, because there aren't as many cinemas as in the U.S., audience sizes remain relatively small and copyright isn't effectively protected. 'I'm a creative person who keeps investors in mind,' she says. 'Whatever I do, first it has to be interesting to me. But it also has to be commercially viable. Otherwise, I won't do it.'

Ever the pragmatist, Ms. Xu is keenly aware of risks in the content business in China.

In her blog, she seldom touches upon politics or sensitive social issues, unlike China's most influential blogger, Han Han, who is a social critic and was once rumored to be her boyfriend. (He appeared on the cover of her magazine in May.) The launch of Mr. Han's own magazine has been postponed for more than six months for reasons unclear. Ms. Xu was also rumored to have dated the satirical novelist Wang Shuo.

She laid out five rules for her blog in 2008″never use people's real names; no critical comments of others; share happiness, not worries; no talk about politics and current affairs (so that her family won't have to worry about her). But if there's something she really needs to get out of her system, the fifth rule says, 'For the benefit of both body and heart, it's best to spill it out and bear the consequence.'

Now she updates her blog rarely, sometimes not even once a month, which was the case in May. But Sina.com still lists her as the second most popular blogger after Mr. Han, and when she writes, mostly to promote her film and magazine, the posts command heavy online traffic. Her two-paragraph blog on April 16 got nearly 373,000 hits and over 4,400 comments. What it says is very simple: it was her birthday and everybody please go to see 'Go Lala Go!'

But underneath her commercialism and pragmatism, she has her principles. Ms. Xu refuses to run ads on her blog even though it's the most influential medium among the three she's involved in. 'That would make it too commercial,' she says. She writes for fun. Besides, unlike her magazine and films, there's no cost involved (except herself) so there's no need to make money out of it, she says.

As for the blog de mode, sina.com's Twitter-like service, Ms. Xu isn't interested. She's too busy with movie projects. 'I won't do things because of expectations of others,' she says. 'I do things because I want to do them. That's the only reason I can do things well.'