Fanquan means 'fan circle'. The first character, 饭, sounds like the English 'fan' (the usual Chinese word for fans is 粉丝, fensi), and quan means circle. It names the organised fan communities around celebrities, with their own leaders, chart-voting drives, donation campaigns and rivalries. On 27 August 2021 the Cyberspace Administration of China announced measures against what it called disorder in fan-circle culture, which reshaped how idols are promoted. A piece on the idol-to-actor pipeline covers it.
