The decadent life of Angelababy, the 'Chinese Kim Kardashian'

Angelababy is one of China's biggest stars and she has finally returned to the Asian entertainment scene after what seems to be a blacklist after allegedly violating Chinese entertainment laws.

Angelababy is a Chinese model and actress whom Vogue dubbed 'the Kim Kardashian of China' in 2015.

The young woman drew international attention when she married Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming in a wedding that cost no less than 31 million in US dollars. It was the most expensive wedding ever known in China.

She is cute, obscenely rich, and part of Hong Kong and China's jet set. What's the story of Angelababy?

Image: angelababyct / Instagram

Angelababy was born in Shanghai as Angela Yeung Wing on 28 February 1989. Her mother is from Shanghai and her father from Hong Kong with half-German and half-Chinese descent.

Angelababy grew up in style. Her father has a fashion business in Shanghai, and from a young age she was interested in clothes and modelling.

Image: angelababyct / Instagram

She moved to Hong Kong when she was thirteen. At the age of fourteen, she signed a contract with Style International Management. She then took on the stage name 'Angelababy'.

Image: angelababyct / Instagram

Soon after signing up as a model, Angelababy tried her hand at acting too. She got supporting roles in several films before she landed her first leading role in 2011 with the film “Love You You.”

Image: DMG Entertainment

Her performance in the romantic movie “First Time” (2012), with Mark Chao, won her the Most Anticipated Actress Award at the Chinese Film Media Awards.

Image: BDI Films

Angelababy became more widely known after she appeared in the reality show 'Hurry Up, Brother' in 2014.

In 2015, Angelababy made her debut in Hollywood with a minor role in 'Hitman: Agent 47'. A year later, she played a major supporting role in the sci-fi movie 'Independence Day: Resurgence.'

Image: 20th Century Studios

Angelababy married her boyfriend Huang Xiaoming in 2015. More than her modelling and acting, it was this decadent wedding that put Angelababy on the worldwide celebrity map.

Her husband Huang Xiaoming is a highly acclaimed actor in Chinese cinema and TV. He is 11 years older than Angelababy.

Image: Weibo

The couple had been dating for several years, but the romance did not become public until 2014. Huang surprised his girlfriend that year with a HK$2.3 million Lamborghini for her birthday.

Image: Weibo

Huang proposed to Angelababy with a Chaumet Josephine Aigrette Imperiale ring worth 8 million dollars, the Independent Singapore says. Her wedding ring was estimated at nearly 1.5 million dollars, and about Angelababy's satin Dior gown we know that it took five months to tailor it to her body.

The wedding was live-streamed and noted all around the world. For a stunning 31 million dollars, the couple hired and decorated the Shanghai Exposition Center, invited 2,000 guests including celebs like Li Bing Bing and Jack Ma, and gave all of them a goody bag with a cell phone. Their wedding cake had a diameter of 3 meters and took 4 weeks to prepare.

There's no doubt Angelababy and Huang Xiaoming are incredibly rich. The actress is an entrepreneur just like her father. She has invested in several businesses including a nail parlor, a café and a lifestyle store.

Angelababy has more than 100 million followers on social media. In fact, they declared her Weibo Queen and Weibo Goddess in 2014. She promotes brands like Adidas with footballer David Beckham and actress Kiko Mizuhara.

Image: angelababyct / Instagram

In 2016, Forbes proclaimed Angelababy as one of the top 30 Asian music, sports, and film celebrities under the age of 30.

Image: angelababyct / Instagram

Angelababy and Huang Xiaoming donated $2.5 million to a fund that helps university graduates start a business or seek employment. The actress also likes to invest in women’s lifestyle start-ups. She is the youngest person to have been included in the Hurun Philanthropy List.

In January 2017, the celebrity couple had a baby boy. They call him "Little Sponge." Angelababy sometimes shows images of her son on Weibo. In 2020 her followers were amazed at the impressive height of the actress's 3-year-old, TodayOnline Singapore reports.

Although she is a rising 'global talent' according to Vogue, Angelababy has raised many eyebrows in China and Hong Kong due to a number of controversies.

Angelababy was the center of a big scandal in 2012. A beauty clinic in Beijing claimed that she had had plastic surgery. The actress sued the clinic and a long legal battle followed.

Image: angelababyct / Instagram

The actress even had her face publicly examined by a doctor to prove that it had not been altered. The physician reported to the BBC that “Baby’s entire head and facial bones do not have any signs of incisions.”

Image: angelababyct / Instagram

Angelababy is the face of Christian Dior in China. When they appointed her, many fans of the designer complained. They said the 'Chinese Kim Kardashian' was not classy enough to represent the French label.

In August 2019, while protests in Hong Kong against their government's extradition bill and Chinese meddling in the island accelerated, Angelababy made a controversial statement. She expressed her love for China and its flag on Weibo.

Image: Weibo

Although the actress has roots in both Hong Kong and China, she is married to a Chinese man and owns stocks in the mainland Chinese market. Her loyalty to China was a disappointment for many Hong Kong fans.

In the past few years, rumors circulated that the actress and her husband were separating and that Huang was cheating on Angelababy. They have denied the gossip as being "too fake."

(Image: with rapper 50Cent on IG @HuangXiaoming_official)

Huang Xiaoming travels a lot for his job, which feeds the rumors about possible secret romances. In February 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he got really fed up with it. He wrote on his social media: "From the end of last year to the present, I have been busily filming in Chengdu with our crew. When news of the epidemic broke, I holed up in isolation at a Chengdu hotel. I never expected this (malicious gossip) to take so much of the public’s time and resources. I feel helpless and very apologetic. Hope netizens will not give credence to this and spread any more falsehood."

Image: Lionsgate

And then there was the controversy about the couple's supposedly 'meager' donation to the Chinese efforts to fight COVID-19. In January 2020, the Siyuan Poverty Alleviation Fund wrote on Weibo that Angelababy and Xiaoming had donated 200,000 yuan (about 30,000 USD) to buy masks for medical staff in Wuhan. Reactions to the post were not the praise they expected, however.

"They could spend 200 million yuan for their wedding," one commentator said according to the New Straits Times. "Yet, when the country is facing a crisis, they donated only 200,000 yuan." In response to the upheaval, Angelababy and Huang Xiaoming later donated an additional 800,000 yuan for the rescue efforts.

With a net worth of $50 million, she is one of the wealthiest entertainers in China and Hong Kong. Huang Xiaoming, for his part, had an estimated $80 million. The two were a real power couple.

Despite their power couple status, Angelababy and Huang Xiaoming called it quits on January 28, 2022, reports Sina. The ex-couple remain as co-parents to their only son.

Surprisingly, Angelababy was cancelled by Chinese media in November 2023 and banned from the Chinese social media platforms Weibo and Douyin, reports Allkpop.

According to The Straits Times, the Chinese government made the decision in response to Angelababy's widely reported attendance at K-pop star Lisa of Blackpink's Crazy Horse Paris carabet show in September 2023. The two stars have been banned on Chinese social media, along with other celebrities caught in attendance.

Angelababy's attendance at the show was highly controversial in Chinese media, as Chinese media has strict rules regarding the 'indecency' of celebrities "watching or participating in any show related to nudity or obscenity", reports Koreaboo.

With her attendance at Lisa's carabet show, Angelababy was deemed to have violated this rule and was thus cancelled. This resulted in her erasure from other Chinese media, such as being digitally edited out of the reality show 'Keep Running' in October 2023, 8days reports.

After being cancelled for a year, it seems that Angelababy has been allowed back into Chinese entertainment. 8days reports that she made an appearance during the 42nd Hong Kong Film Awards, marking her first official Chinese media appearance since.

This could be a positive development for Angelababy's career, potentially reinstating her in the public eye. Despite Yahoo reporting that the star was unbanned from Weibo in February 2024, Angelababy did not make any public appearances in Chinese media until two months later, in April, at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

Angelababy's career seems to be going on the right track... for now. Although it is not certain whether she will be able to make a career comeback, we wish her all the best in her return to Chinese entertainment!