“Eating Melon” is internet slang for people who comment on big scandals. Similarly to how Westerners say “Bring the popcorn”, Chinese people say “I’m here to eat the melon”. It might come from the tradition of the front row audience of a play eating watermelon while watching the show.
And the bigger the scandal, the bigger the melon.
This year on November 2nd, the biggest melon ever was served on Weibo, involving a grand slam winner and a retired government official. Ring a bell?
Within 20 minutes, that melon and the person who served it were scraped clean off the Chinese internet. This didn’t kill off the melon-eaters’ curiosity; when they found out that they couldn’t mention any names related to the scandal, everyone was saying: I am here to eat that huge melon.
So next, very promptly, the words “Eating Melon” were censored.
Today’s melon was shared on Weibo alright. It involves Wang Leehom and his ex-wife, Lee Jinglei.
Wang Leehom is a US born singer and actor of Chinese descent. His already updated Wikipedia page can tell you more.
To me, the name reminds me of Ang Lee’s movie Lust, Caution. In it, Wang portrayed an underground student resistance movement leader.
Wang is also part of the star-studded cast in the CCP propaganda movie, “The Founding of a Party”.
Most recently, Wang played a patriotic Tsinghua University graduate who fought the Japanese during WW2 as a pilot, in the movie “Forever Young”.
He is much more famous for his music, which I have to confess I know nothing of.
On December 14th, Wang Leehom announced his separation and divorce from his wife, Lee Jinglei.
The internet started theorizing on the reason behind the divorce. For years, because of his look, people speculated that he was gay. Jackie loved him so much!
Then, on Friday night, December 17th, Lee Jinglei dropped this bomb of an essay on Instagram and Weibo, in the form of 4500 words detailing their relationship.
In it she accused him of persistent cheating and extramarital affairs, hooking up with prostitutes and even his own staff members, as well as ignoring their children and missing out on their birthdays and other important events. She accused Wang and his family of bullying her and being passive-aggressive for no less than a decade.
The details have been translated and can be read in English here.
I don’t want to spend too much time on documenting the details, because there is nothing unique or special about Wang.
The reason that this comes shocking to so many people is because for years, Wang has cultivated this public image of being an uptight star who didn’t get into any scandal.
However, I do want to highlight one page from the post of the wife: 
(Rough translation):
Modern women are different from previous generations, because previous generations did not have chance of education and had no choice of their roles in the family.
They could only be the wife and the mother. We are lucky that we have higher education, we have knowledge, degrees, and opportunities to see the world, and we can make a living, we can contribute to society.
Choosing to be a full time housewife is in essence a job without pay. There is a certain distribution of the responsibilities in a family, and the woman almost always takes the most important share. It is a job with no holidays, no break, and 24 hours of multi-tasking (e.g., being nanny, teacher, cleaning staff, driver, general manager, companion, personal assistant, etc.). The salary of this job should not only for the work but also for the lost opportunities of what you could have done for your career.
This is what all housewives should be paid for, and it should not counted as gifts or charity. Whoever gets this role should not be deprived of income or savings. Otherwise, the inequality of the relationship put women in a very weak position, and they lose their rights to speak up when the man has affairs or is violent.
I feel that our generation should seriously think about this topic.
The housewives I know around me have no money in their bank accounts. When they use their husbands money, they feel embarrassed. They need husbands' approval to spend. They do not dare to say that they want to take care of their own parents.
If a woman is to talk about money, society will label them as gold-diggers.
This is why for a woman who has centered her life around her family and done nothing wrong, it is very hard for her to know what to do when her husband demands a divorce for no reason.
Girls, you need to prepare yourself for the uncertainty of the future. I would've never thought that I would go through this, and right now you must think that divorce is unthinkable. But preparing for the rain before the rain can never go wrong.
According to Baidu Baike, Lee is 35, she has a graduate degree from Columbia University. She has been married with Wang for 8 years, with 3 children. According to her essay, she first met Wang when she was 16 and Wang was 26, at Wang’s concert and Wang asked for her phone number.
The day after the Instagram essay, December 18th, people spotted Wang in Beijing Airport and reported that Wang arrived in Tao Yuan airport of Taipei around 5pm.
Around midnight, Wang’s father, who is in the US, sent a picture of his own handwritten note to Taiwanese medias, accusing the ex-wife of blackmailing their son into marriage with her pregnancy. He claimed that she was manipulative and money hungry, and asked for hundreds of millions of Taiwanese dollars.
The next morning, Lee Jinglei swiftly wrote another 3000 word essay to refute the father’s allegation. English coverage of this exchange can be found here.
She eloquently demanded Wang to issue a public apology to her by 3pm, Sunday Dec 19th, or she will sue both father and son for defamation.
At the end of her post, she added a screenshot of a Whatsapp message from Wang: 
.
Sunday, people waited for the 3pm melon.
The melon did not arrive at 3pm, but around 11pm Taipei time, Wang issued his denial on Weibo. The melon got bigger.
Can you imagine the reaction from a country of 1.4 billion people? How many millions of enthusiastic melon eaters were out there, waiting to pounce on the drama as soon as it came out?
The big statue in the middle is named “Wang Leehom”. Other figures are celebrities that had recent scandals. I only know two of them.
The left figure in the first row from the bottom is Kris Wu, a singer and actor, who was disgraced this summer with a criminal charge of rape. He was immensely popular among young people, and is now on the hiring blacklist for mainland studios. Internet rumor says that his army of millions of fans were planning to break him out of prison. Had that actually happened, what a melon it would be!
The right figure in the second row is Jackie Chan, who is famed for saying “the only mistake he made was one which many men in the world commit”, which resulted in a daughter out of wedlock.
Lately, the CCP just realized that Chinese women don’t want to have children, for whatever reason.
They stopped the one child policy, asked people to have two children, but the birth rate was still falling through the roof.
This year, having three children became a requirement for female party members and government employees. Many people noticed that Wang and Lee have three kids:
(Rough translation)
An American married a Taiwanese girl, divorced her after she gave births to three kids. All Chinese women are now scared to have three kids, and this has a severe impact on our three children policy. It must be the plot of CIA and Biden.
In Chinese pronunciation, every character has 4 tones. Someone noticed that the three characters in Wang’s name has a 2-4-2 tone sequence, similarly to other disgraced celebrities’ Chinese names. For example, Kris Wu and Show Lo.
And sure enough, the dear supreme leader and his wife share this pattern in their names too. What does it mean?
Shortly after Lee’s letter, four companies that hired Wang terminated their contracts with him.
Perhaps to Wang Leehom, the most critical audience is the state media. Global Times, an influential state controlled media, quickly published a commentary on Wang on Weibo, quoting Lee Jinglei’s long essay: 
.
(Rough Translation)
The collapse of the public image of Wang Leehom is absolutely not accidental: Good quality idols collapsed! The entertainment business keeps producing big melons, too many for the people to eat. Flowers, applause, high income, all become the drug that some use to indulge themselves. The collapse of the public image of Wang Leehom is absolutely not accidental, and not an isolated incidence. Idols have to understand, the premise of being a good artist is to be a good person. If the own body is not uptight, the true face will be uncovered one day. The higher they stand, the heavier they fall.
This spells trouble for Wang Leehom, because it means he can’t make money in mainland China any more.
This is happening already, according to Chinese media. The on-going TV show on CCTV, “Decisive Victory”, has already changed the rendition of its ending theme song. The song used to be sung by Mr. Wang and a female singer. In the most recent episode aired on Saturday night, Wang’s voice disappeared; only the female voice could be heard.
Obviously, Wang is not worthy of being part of the show any more due to his tarnished public image.
Actually, there are two.
On Saturday, Taiwan was holding four referendums.
The referendums were proposed by Kuomintang party. And Kuomintang lost all four of them. This old picture was posted on social media to explain why: 
(Ma Ying-jeou, a former president of Taiwan and chairman of Kuomintang party, is shaking hands with Wang Leehom)
This Taiwanese netizen sums it up:
.
(rough translation)
This morning when we were going out, I heard my parents discussing the referendums. In the end, my dad started talking about the timing of Wang's scandal. He said that there must be someone behind Lee Jinglei, and how she wrote so well, she must be connected to someone big. He is so imaginative, I could not help to LOL.
Then my dad said that Lee had known Wang for so long and she chose to marry him. Why would she wait so long to expose him? etc. Even my mom, who is as blue as my dad, couldn't take him seriously. I am laughing my ass off.
In Taiwan, you are blue if you are pro-Kuomintang party.
But it isn’t just Taiwanese politics. On Sunday, there was an election for the local legal corp in HK.
It is the first election since 2016 and is called the “patriot only” election. Because the opposition to Beijing are all in exile or jail, the battle is about the turn out rate.
As you can see in this chart of the turn out rate — it is very low compared to past elections. 
People are quick to blame Wang Leehom.
This is a weekend of big melons. Bon appétit, everyone!