Girl group MMD Photo: Courtesy of the girl group
Grueling sessions
The X.D. company began auditioning for its 16 stars months ago, watching and hearing some 5,000 hopefuls perform. The selected girls come from all over the country and have been undertaking tough and extensive daily singing and dancing classes before heading back to their living quarters where two staff members have been assigned to look after them.
Classes start at 7 am every day but on three mornings a week they have 6 am exercise sessions. Manager Gu likes to see them go to bed at 9 pm but she doesn't enforce this - "the later they go to bed the worse they feel in the morning."
It's not just bedtimes or exercise sessions that govern these would-be stars' lives - just about every aspect of their daily lives is monitored and controlled. At the X.D. company, for example, the girls are ordered to close their personal Weibo accounts. The company will give them accounts later.
Even their food is part of the regime. "To keep slim and healthy, our performers must only eat the low-calorie and rather dull food we specially prepare," explained Gao Jing, the artist manager of the fanxing.kugou.com (a Guangzhou-based O2O artist performing website) which launched a girl group S.I.N.G in March. "Sometimes the girls secretly buy street snacks. We occasionally search them and warn them not to do this."
And, like other Asian girl group rules, falling in love is a definite no-no. Some of the girl group companies regularly check to see if the performers have boyfriends. Lunar's Yi said there were penalties for girls who had dated boys in secret but the company had not fired anyone for breaches like this.
Keiven (a pseudonym), the director of the MMD girl group launched by the Beijing-based Starway Entertainment Company, also admitted that falling in love is banned. "During the face-to-face interview we ask the girls whether they have boyfriends or not," he told the Global Times. "Sadly since the group was