While the west is abuzz with Oscar talk, Hollywood star Timothée Chalamet has been winning over fans in China for a very different reason: he’s been selling tofu at a street stand in Chengdu…
Yep. Tofu. The stunt was part of a promotional tour for his new film Marty Supreme in which he plays an ambitious table tennis player chasing championship glory. It’s already picked up nine Oscar nominations.
Instead of sticking to premieres and press junkets, Chalamet spent much of the trip checking out the local culture. His tour kicked off in Chengdu where he wandered the streets in a jacket bearing the movie’s Chinese title, sampled hotpot and drank tea the traditional way.
At a stall selling fermented tofu (霉豆腐) – a southern Chinese delicacy – Chalamet jokingly shouted the famous vendor lines in Chinese and used a table-tennis paddle to slice the tofu, sending Chinese social media into fits of laughter and the hashtag #甜茶卖霉豆腐# (Sweet Tea [a Chinese nickname for Chalamet] sells fermented tofu) hurtling into Weibo’s hot search list.
The actor also joined locals for a game of table tennis in a park – a game, which by his own admission, didn’t go to plan. In a country where ping-pong is serious business, Chalamet didn’t fare well. Even elderly players got the better of him.
The trip continued in Beijing, where Chalamet bought a poster of Olympic table-tennis star Sun Yingsha and praised her as an ‘amazing champion.’ He also played a friendly match with world champion Ma Long, who later gifted him a signed paddle.
Timothée Chalamet in China: Why it worked
The charm of the tour lies in its informality: a Hollywood star happily eating street food, mispronouncing Chinese and losing at ping-pong. The photo-ops, red carpets, and autograph signing were relegated to second position. What fans took from the stunts was a promotion that looked less like your well-groomed Hollywood movie push and more like a charming cultural crash landing.
