Avoid Mrs Fallows; instead, read Mr Fallows:
When we trudged off the plane and through the baggage area, I was amazed to see a full press gaggle, complete with TV cameras and civilian onlookers, whose members began asking questions, shooting off flash pictures, and screaming in delight when the people in my row came into view. Apparently they were famous, and not by a little! Half of Changsha — well, in a city with a multi-million population, I’ll just say a lot of people from Changsha — had turned out in hopes of getting a little glimpse of the same people I’d spent the previous two hours jammed-up next to.
I remember the feeling of being completely inert to celebrity in China. Actually, one of my purposes in coming here was to gain that sort of reductionist perspective.