Sunshine, the Chinese high school girl band branded “China’s ugliest perfomers” shoots to stardom, briefly.

Japanese, Korean, and Chinese pop music is full of highly-photogenic school girls (and occasionally pre-schoolers) who sing and gyrate for their fans’ pleasure.

Cynics might suggest that actual singing ability is less important than how they look, but a group of Chinese schoolgirls has proven that you don’t need to be blessed with natural (or surgically enhanced) good looks to grab the attention of millions.

▼ The video for their song “Liang Xio Wucai” (“Innocent Playmates”).

The group Sunshine is made up of five high school girls from the city of Bozhou, about 750 kilometres (466 miles) to the south of Beijing in Eastern China. The five of them sat next to each other in class and decided to record a music video to enter a local competition for the mobile phone prizes up for grabs.

They uploaded the video to the Chinese social media site Weibo, quickly garnering far more views than just their families and immediate friends.

▼ The video for “Tianmi Ju Xianshi” (“Sweet Present”).

The video went viral, although not for the reasons the girls might have hoped. The general consensus among Chinese netizens was… not entirely complimentary.

Their appearance seemed to leave more of an impression than their music, with one comment saying that they looked like country bumpkins from twenty years ago, or how they were the ugliest girl band China had ever seen. Which, given the fact that they just made the music video for fun, is rather over-egging it.

The girls took stage names (Abby, Cheryl, Cindy, Dora and Nancy) to spare their families media attention, and as their videos became more and more popular, with one live stream getting 700,000 views and over five million likes, media companies started to sit up and take notice.

Accepting the offer of a record deal from record company Xin Nian Music, the girls used the negative publicity to make themselves Internet sensations.

As Abby rightly told the South China Morning Post, “Actually, I don’t think I’m ugly. If you think we’re ugly, don’t look at us.”

And Cheryl backed her up, explaining further, “What makes us stand out from other girl groups is that we’re young and pure. We didn’t undergo any plastic surgery [to make us beautiful]. This is the authentic look of a high-school pupil in China.”

▼ “Menghuan Shaonu Dabianshen” (“Dreaming Girls Big Transformation”)
shows that they got a bit of a stylistic makeover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oCgnvZdt18

Unfortunately though, in the end Sunshine proved to be if not a one-hit wonder then certainly short-lived. Capricious netizens moved on and the band disappeared almost as soon as it had emerged. Three of the girls formed the similarly named 3unshine and released new singles while the other two girls went back to school to concentrate on passing their college exams.

Whatever the girls’ goals for the future, we hope that they can look back on their time as Sunshine as a positive experience, and that they can use it to persevere in the future. “No cosmetic surgery” groups in Korea have been gaining popularity, so maybe we haven’t seen the end of them just yet.

Source: South China Morning Post via Nextshark
Images: YOYOROCK -歡迎訂閱-