Chinese actress Fan Bingbing cries real tears after filming an emotional scene for the film East Wind Rain in Shanghai in 2009. All photos by Rian Dundon.

My 9 Months on the Road With Fan Bingbing, China’s Biggest Movie Star

A decade before her disappearance, the Angelina Jolie of China hired me as her tutor. I got a crash course in China’s dizzying celebrity-industrial complex.

The night I got a job as a fake English tutor to the very real Chinese actress Fan…