Photo courtesy of Getty Images. Prolonged eye contact not advised.

A Chinese man has sued an actress for causing him “spiritual damage” by staring too intensely at him from his TV set. The actress in question, Zhao Wei, currently stars on the Chinese TV series Tiger Mom, in which her character deploys irresponsibly powerful glances, glares, and peeks in her efforts to aggressively raise her daughter.


The Associated Press cites the case as one of many apparently frivolous lawsuits currently clogging the Chinese courts, coming in the wake of new regulations that make it more difficult for cases to be rejected out of hand. We say “apparently frivolous,” because a Google Image Search for Zhao (who also sometimes uses the name Vicky Zhao) does display a fairly startling array of wide-eyed ocular attacks. (The above link should be considered NSFS—Not Safe For Spirits—and The A.V. Club denies all responsibility for philosophical, theosophical, or eschatological harm caused by clicking it.)

Although she currently works primarily as a TV actress, Zhao might be best known to Western audiences for her small cameo role in the cult-classic magical sports movie Shaolin Soccer (where, surprisingly, she did not stop a soccer ball by blasting it, Cyclops-style, with eye-fired beams of light.) She also had a role in John Woo’s historical epic Red Cliff, where she managed the equally amazing opthalmic feat of keeping her eyes open through the whole five-hour ordeal.