Shadow play

So, is Chu his girlfriend, fiance or wife?

Nobody seems to have a definite answer. By most accounts, Lau has been linked with the former Malaysian beauty queen for some 24 years. This is in an industry where most marriages do not last long. So, why didn't they tie the knot officially, or if they did, announce it?

You may say, nowadays there are people who like to live together without walking down the aisle, obtaining the proper documents and going the whole 9 yards. But Lau and a few other entertainment big shots are a different breed. Unlike Brangelina, they do not admit they are dating, let alone living together or secretly married. They never appear on the red carpet with their "lady friends". When pressed about marital status, they invariably give a set of equivocal answers.

Lau's stock answer is: "Fans are my family."

The Chinese phrase for this practice is "hiding a young beauty in a golden house". The surface reason goes like this: These big stars have a large following, many of whom harbor fantasies about them as their subconscious love interest. If the idols start dating, the fans will naturally lose hope and, worse yet, may do something crazy. In the early days of Jackie Chan's career, a female fan flew from Japan to Hong Kong to seek him out, and upon learning he was romantically attached, attempted to kill herself. This startled the kungfu comedian to such as extent that he has never acknowledged his marriage to Taiwan actress Joan Lin, except in his English-language biography.

Lau has had his share of crazy stalkers. The most famous, no doubt, was Yang Lijuan, whose desire to meet Lau in private led to one of the biggest - and saddest - melodramas in star-fan relationships, complete with her father's suicide and her story becoming a cautionary tale about everything that's wrong with relentless "star-chasing".

Celebrities of this stature tend to have stalkers. It almost comes with the job description. But do they need to pander to the irrational wishes and fantasies of this coterie? Lau and Chan have fan bases that are generally older than screaming teenagers. Most of them can accept their pin-ups have a normal life.

I'm not suggesting remaining single is not normal. I mean, the extreme separation of public persona and private life is bordering on the ridiculous. It's the other extreme with Hollywood stars, who play out their mating rituals in the full glare of the media headlights.

One has to go back to the days of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich for examples of Hollywood stars who have so tightly guarded their private lives. But then, these screen goddesses had secret lives that did not conform to the social norms of the day. When the studio system was in vogue, a star rarely exposed his real image to the public, but rather used a manufactured one that was derived from and, in turn, enhanced the screen personality. Although Chinese stars like Lau and Chan do not have studio handlers hovering over them, they essentially operate with the studio-era mentality.