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Taylor Swift 1989 Chinese clothing line risks Tiananmen Square row

Singer announces plans to launch merchandise for upcoming 1989 live tour – a date censored by Chinese authorities since 4 June massacre


 

Taylor Swift on her 1989 world tour in Bossier City, Louisiana, in May 2015. Photograph: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for TAS

Taylor Swift may have inadvertently walked into a political maelstrom in China with merchandise soon to be on sale there displaying a potentially subversive message.

The singer is launching her own Taylor Swift-branded clothing line next month, on the platforms of local e-commerce giants JD.com and the Alibaba group, with t-shirts, dresses and sweatshirts featuring the politically charged date 1989.

The date – as well as being Swift’s year of birth – refers to her album and live tour of the same name, which she will perform in Shanghai in November.

But the date – and the initials TS – are particularly sensitive in China, as they signify the Tiananmen Square massace in 1989, when hundreds of students were killed in pro-democracy protests.

A promotional video featuring Swift posted to Weibo. Photograph: screengrab

A promotional video posted to China’s microblogging site Weibo by Heritage66Company, the Nashville-based branding company that is representing her in China, features Swift introducing the clothing line to her fans and greeting them in Chinese.

“Ni hao, it’s Taylor Swift. Be sure to check out my new authentic merchy [merchandise], now available in China,” she says.

The video also features a number of models, and Swift herself, wearing official merchandise emblazoned with 1989.


Taylor Swift 1989 merchandise to be sold in China. Photograph: screengrab

So sensitive is the date that censors have blacklisted any consecutive combinations of the numbers 6, 4 and 89 on Chinese social media sites. Chinese internet users have proved adept at using coded language to refer to the politically sensitive event, often referring to it as “May 35” instead of “June 4” to avoid the censors’ attention.

Swift’s US website features bracelets, bags and hairties emblazoned with “T.S. 1989”. For Chinese consumers, the initials could stand for Taylor Swift or Tiananmen Square. It’s not clear whether these items will be made available for Chinese fans.

So far Swift has managed to shake off China’s censors – JD.com already sells the1989 album on its online store.

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Taylor Swift is definitely in New Zealand, media in New Zealand determines

The possibility that Taylor Swift might be in New Zealand sent the news media and Swift fans on a ‘wild goose chase all over South Auckland’


 

Taylor Swift performing in Shanghai, China, in November. The singer is now in a slightly smaller and less populated country. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images

It’s a test of the butterfly effect, updated for 2015: can an innocuous and wryly worded tweet, sent from Los Angeles International Airport, spark a “wild goose chase” and breakdown within news media on the other side of the world?

The possibility that Taylor Swift might be bound for New Zealand was first flagged in a wry tweet from the American author Maggie Shipstead at LAX.

This corresponded with Swift’s conspicuous absence from the American Music Awards ceremony at the Microsoft Theatre in LA on Sunday, at which she wasnominated for six awards (and later won three).

New Zealand media and Taylor Swift fans and the individuals intersecting the two raced to follow up Shipstead’s tweet, prompting what Fairfax news website stuff.co.nz described as a “wild goose chase, all over South Auckland”.
Both stuff.co.nz and the New Zealand Herald quoted Auckland comedian Melanie Bracewell’s tweet that she “just saw Taylor Swift at the Auckland Airport” on Monday morning which, it later transpired, was a joke.

Stuff.co.nz amended their story.

A string of others followed suit.

A high school student posted to Facebook that Swift had been spotted at a shipping and marine supplier in an east Auckland suburb for some reason. The Herald’s entertainment writer Chris Schulz followed up with a phone call, which he reported on Tuesday:

The nice lady who answered the phone told us there was indeed a single film crew on location but “that isn’t unusual ... and they’re just finishing up for the day”. She also admitted she wouldn’t know what Taylor Swift looked like if she was standing in front of her.

“So, Taylor Swift, where in the world are you?” concluded Schulz’s story.

Despite being in her home town for the annual celebration of her success, the New Zealand Music Awards, known Swift associate Lorde unhelpfully did nothing to fuel or dispel the rumours on social media.

On Monday afternoon the Herald reported that “Taylor Swift probably isn’t in New Zealand”.

But soap actor Ido Drent then confirmed that he had been on the same flight from LA with Swift, his statement that she was “definitely here” replacing Bracewell’s joke tweet as the news media’s most promising lead.

Drent was “changing his son’s nappy on-board flight NZ3 when he claimed he stumbled across the Bad Blood popstar”, reported One News: “Yeah, had a good chat to her on the plane outside the lavatory.”

On Tuesday morning the Herald reported that “Taylor Swift is definitely in New Zealand,” verified by her label Universal Music.

Guardian Australia can confirm that Swift arrived at Auckland International airport on the NZ3 flight direct from Los Angeles on Saturday 21 November, as speculated, in a party of eight.

She did not have a return flight booked, but it seems reasonable to assume that she will fly to Sydney before her show there on Saturday.

Reliable sources say she is in New Zealand to shoot the video for her next single from 1989, thought to be Out of the Woods.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew Hornery put a rumour that she would be shooting in the Blue Mountains on Thursday to Universal and was told: “Look I can’t tell you anything. I’m not trying to throw you a curve ball ... and don’t quote me.”

3News reporter Hayden Donnell followed up with Shipstead to ask her “whether it was weird stumbling into the middle of a possibly fake news story in a small country at the bottom of the world”.

“She said it was definitely weird, but the story was real.”

The saga had shades of the Ryan Gosling hunt of 2012, when a possible sighting of The Notebook star on Auckland’s Ponsonby Road sparked a Tumblr page (“Hey Girl, I Love New Zealand”) and #NZGoslingHunt to trend nationally.

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