Wang Baoqiang's $500M Hit Earns Zero Votes at Hundred Flowers Awards, Sparking Backlash

Questions Mount Over Hundred Flowers Awards Voting Mechanism

(Compiled Reports) At the 38th Popular Cinema Hundred Flowers Awards, Wang Baoqiang earned a Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of "A Gui" in "Detective Chinatown 1900," a film that surpassed 3.6 billion yuan (approximately $500 million) at the box office. Yet in the live vote by 101 public jurors, he received zero votes. The topic quickly shot to the top of Weibo's trending list, with netizens questioning whether the Hundred Flowers Awards' selection process has become severely disconnected from popular taste, and voicing sympathy for Wang.

In his 26 years in the industry, this marked Wang Baoqiang's first nomination — only for him to shockingly come away with zero votes. (Source: Wang Baoqiang's Weibo)

In "Detective Chinatown 1900," Wang Baoqiang plays "A Gui," a Chinese-American Native hunter — a role entirely different from the flamboyant, over-the-top, streetwise comic style of "Tang Ren" that he played throughout the "Detective Chinatown" series. Instead, he conveyed the sorrow and complex inner world of an ordinary man through precise expressions and subtle gestures, in what has been widely recognized as a transformative breakthrough in his acting career. On the strength of the 3.612 billion yuan that "Detective Chinatown 1900" grossed in mainland China, Wang Baoqiang became the first lead actor born in the 1980s in Chinese film history to headline a film crossing the 3.6-billion-yuan mark.

Although "Detective Chinatown 1900" won both market and popular acclaim, at the 38th Popular Cinema Hundred Flowers Awards, which wrapped in August 2026, Wang Baoqiang's first-ever Best Actor nomination for the role of "A Gui" ended with him finishing last, eliminated with zero votes in the live, named ballot cast by the 101 public jurors.

For the Hundred Flowers Awards — which bills itself as reflecting "popular reputation" — such a stark disconnect between box office and acclaim sparked overwhelming skepticism online. "Zero votes is absurd, it feels like a slap in the face to the public," "Not everyone can pull off comedy; in my heart, Baoqiang and Shen Teng are the best actors," "Where does that leave popular reputation and box office?" netizens wrote.

In fact, this is not the first time the Hundred Flowers Awards has produced such an extreme result. Back at the 36th Hundred Flowers Awards in 2022, Shen Teng similarly received zero votes when he earned his first Best Actor nomination for "My Country, My Parents." Statistics show that four nationally beloved actors — Wang Baoqiang, Shen Teng, Ma Li and others — whose combined box office exceeds 80 billion yuan, managed only a single-digit total of votes in the Hundred Flowers Awards' final round, an especially glaring contrast.

Faced with the online outcry and controversy, Wang Baoqiang responded with remarkable grace and emotional maturity. He candidly said that after 26 years of making films, earning the first Best Actor nomination of his life was already rare and something for which he was deeply grateful, and he offered special thanks to the audiences who have supported him all along. Though he did not walk away with the trophy on stage, his humble and down-to-earth attitude once again won the hearts of countless fans.

Source: Chinese Daily — https://www.chinesedaily.com/article/detail-700759.html