"Olympics girl" now highest grossing Chinese child celebrity Lin Miaoke, the nine-year-old girl who lip-synced at the Beijing Olympics last year, is currently appearing on TV advertisements promoting a plasma television set. An advertiser revealed that the girl was paid a seven-figure sum to endorse the product; a humongous sum exceeding top Chinese celebrities like Fan Bingbing, Zhao Wei and Zhou Xun who averagely receive around S$1million for endorsements. The figure is also challenging Zhang Ziyi's RMB$10million price. According to the Beijing advertiser, the plasma TV company chose Lin to endorse their products because her healthy image and social influence are in line with the products. Moreover, the plasma TV mainly targets children and youths with its unique eyesight protection capability; as such Lin is thus a convincing and realistic endorsee. The girl admitted on her blog that upon wrapping up her scenes in Dream of the Red Chamber, she received the invitation by the Sichuan company and agreed to the endorsement without hesitation. The entire process from the invitation to wrapping up the commercial shoot, only took three days. When a Chinese reporter called up Lin's father to check if his daughter has truly received a seven-figure endorsement fee, he laughed, "How is that possible? It must be a rumour on the Internet. My daughter's endorsement fee is not that high." However, the man refused to reveal the actual figure that was received. The public relations officer of the brand told reporters, "Lin Miaoke's receipt for the endorsement is our client's trade secret. We cannot reveal it to the public."
