Beijing Date: A Publicity Ploy?

Facts:

• FengMi's Beijing dining photos were released by Sina on February 12, 2011.

• During the broadcast of Gong, FSF spent most of his time in HengDian filming the Emperor's Harem with Ady An while YM stayed in Beijing to shoot Beijing Love Story with Li Chen and Chen SiCheng.

• According FSF's weibo and also confirmed by his agent, he flew back to Beijing on February 9 and stayed for maybe 2 or 3 days before returning to HengDian Studios. I think the purpose of this Beijing trip was to do a Valentine's Day photoshoot with YM. The paparazzi photos were most likely taken around this time.
• Gong began airing on January 31 and finished on February 20.

Publicity Ploy Argument:
YES

• HunanTV and Yu Zheng are known to use similar tactics to promote their dramas
• FengMi dined at a table next to a street window which allowed easy access for paparazzi to snap photos of them. Would celebrities who value their privacy be that negligent and openly dine like that?
• They just seem to know they were being stalked and photographed. The quality and angle of paparazzi photos were too good to be secretly taken.
• Both YM and FSF's staff seem "too close" with each other. Maybe their staff teamed up to fuel the romantic rumors and garner support/good public image for their roles in Gong and future collaborations. Peter Ho and Barbie Hsu acted very similar to FengMi off screen when they went to promote their drama Summer's Desire. Look at what happened to them now, Barbie Hsu is now married to another guy and Peter Ho is off doing his own thing. 
• A large majority of showbiz "insiders" sees the FengMi romance as a publicity stunt and argues FengMi are too openly affectionate with each other to indicate they are a "real couple." Most celebrity couples are low-key and try to hide their romance as much as possible.

NO

• The paparazzi photos were released when HunanTV already broadcasted more than half of the Gong episodes. If FengMi wanted to gain publicity for Gong, why would they wait to stage a publicity ploy so late into the broadcast and not earlier like right before the release?
• FengMi, at that point, were already popular. No need to go through all that trouble to gain more attention.
• Too early or no need for FengMi to garner attention for their later collaborations. Legend of the Military Seal was still in post production with no hint of being released yet. FSF has not signed on to star in Ming Yun either.
• I doubt FengMi were truly aware of their newfound fame in early February. So they probably just ate at a table assigned to them by the server without much consideration. I've seen a lot of paparazzi photos of celebrities dining next to the street windows too. Not a big deal.
• It's so not in FengMi's character to stage the publicity ploy. Both are well-known workholics in showbiz and worked their way up from nothing to gain recognition. FSF seemed particularly offended by the media allegation that he was only playing around with his acting career because he came from a rich family and eventually would have to quit to take over his famiy business. For FSF, these rumors pretty much belittled all the years of hard work he put in his acting career. Why would he wait more than 10 years to stage a publicity ploy with YM to get fame? Why didn't he stage a ploy when he was working with Ady An and Huo Si Yan to get famous? Both of these actresses were equally as famous or arguably even more famous than YM before CP3/Gong. 

Here are some comparison statistics someone put together:

YM - 12 movies + 30 TV series = 42 projects
FSF - 11 movies + 50 TV series = 61 projects
Hu Ge - in 5 movies + 15 TV series = 20 projects
Liu Yi Fei - 8 movies + 5 TV series = 13 projects

These statistics are pretty debatable since each tv drama varies in the number of episodes and importance of actor/actress' roles in the projects are hard to measure. Regardless, you still get a general picture.

Conclusion:

There is really too much speculation surrounding FengMi, including positive and negative press. Even regarding FengMi's off screen interactions on a film set, I've been reading conflicting observations. During the shooting of Symphony of Fate in Hangzhou, some onlookers/extras did not see much interactions between FengMi off screen. They both sat far from each other in the resting area and ignored each other while busying themselves with their own things. Some bystanders/extras, in stark contrast, reported that they saw FengMi played games together on their ipads and chatted/joked with each other happily in between their filming breaks. One bystander even observed FSF went to move his directors chair closer to YM when they were sitting too far apart.

In the entertainment industry, it is not uncommon for a good onscreen couple to act lovey-dovey off screen just to tease their fans or at the behest of their management companies to boast their public image. When the camera is rolling, everything becomes an "act." The entertainment industry is a shady place where people are often forced to do things against their principles. Based on my personal understanding of FengMi and their actions over the years before their rise to stardom, it's hard for me to fathom they are attention mongers. It's also certainly possible all the "cumulative evidence" we have to support FengMi romance, in fact, is only our own deliberate misinterpretation.  I don't think we will ever know the true nature of their relationship until one day they both publicly declare they have an official boyfriend/girlfriend. But as for now, we can make ourselves happy by choosing to believe in what we want to believe in.

What do you all think is the "real truth" behind FengMi's romantic rumors?


Mango_cake's comments:

I've wondered this too. Although, this seems to be the one and only time they got caught on a "date" together by the papparazzi, and it happened while Gong was still being broadcast (i.e. they had just started to become so famous), so perhaps they didn't think they needed to be so careful. YM has said before that there was a big change after she got popular in Gong--before she could still go shopping in the streets etc more-or-less anonymously, but now she will get recognized everywhere she goes. FSF was even less famous than YM before Gong. Actually my speculation is this was indeed a "just friends" type of date since it was quite early on (but I personally think they progressed to a relationship shortly after). So maybe they did know they were stalked by the papparazzi, but didn't think it'd be a big deal anyways.

I'm actually surprised there are not more papparazzi pics of them out there! From what they've said it sounds like they used to go have dinner together and ride in each other's cars a lot (but most of this probably took place during Gong and HFCQ filming, when they could still go about their lives in obscurity). So perhaps they did start being more careful after these photos leaked, since we haven't seen anything else since.