Lucélia Santos shakes her head and laughs as though, even today, she’s still trying to comprehend the sheer numbers. But when the Brazilian actress landed in Beijing back in 1985, it was because more than 300 million people had voted for her in the annual China TV Golden Eagle Awards.
What’s more, the series Santos had starred in — Escrava Isaura (Isaura: Slave Girl) — had become a cultural sensation in the country at a time when watching TV was still very much a communal experience, with more than 450 million viewers tuning in each week.
“I was, to be honest, shocked by such a response,” Santos says. “It’s something that I knew I would cherish for the rest of my life but in terms of all the emotion, I just couldn’t really digest it at the time. It wasn’t until I was making a transit out of Hong Kong that I could stop and think about it, and let my emotions settle down.”
Santos has been back in China this past week as part of a healthy Brazilian contingent attending both the Shanghai International Film Festival and the Shanghai International Film & TV Market. There have been screenings of Brazilian classics — Oscar-nominated Central Station (1998) and Hour of the Star (1985) among them — in a Focus Brazil section, a celebration of the two nations designating 2026 the “China-Brazil Year of Culture,” commemorating over 75 years of diplomatic relations.
There’s been a big push for Brazilian content as the South American country tries to open pathways into global markets.
Slave Girl featured Santos in the titular role and followed her everyday struggles in the Brazilian Empire of the 1800s. It ran to more than 100 episodes and, by its end, had screened in an estimated 80 countries.
At a time when China was still less than a decade into its reform, the show first aired on Beijing Television in 1984, but thanks to its immediate popularity it soon reached a nationwide audience on China Central Television.
“I think people can recognize the contrast between the people who are oppressed and those who oppress,” says Santos. “Generally speaking, people of different backgrounds, of cultures and nationality, they certainly share this. From this leading character [in Slave Girl] and from her experiences, people recognized the sufferings between those who have power and those who don’t, and I think that resonated well with audiences from across the world.”
When Santos first arrived in China, the Golden Eagle Awards had only been held three times — and never before had an award been handed to a foreign actress. But such was Santos’ popularity that organizers created one especially for her.
“Before I came to China, I had almost zero knowledge of this country,” she says. “The two countries were different then in so many ways. Back then, I remember it was a quite a horizontal or flat country without so many skyscrapers and all these high-rises. In terms of the clothes that people are wearing, it was all quite unified. The color was pretty much blue everywhere and that speaks to all the differences we had back then visually and also aesthetically and culturally.”
Santos later used her popularity in China to help develop cultural and trade links between the two countries, and in 2004 was handed the Jewel of China medal for her work. She says that, even today, fellow Brazilians find it hard to comprehend how popular she was — and is — on the other side of the world. Still, Santos finds it easy to return to her normal life.
“I’m a simple soul and that means my lifestyle is straightforward,” says Santos. “It is really hard for me to be swept away by fantasies of being a superstar. My father was a worker and I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon. I remember the importance of work, and it’s really hard for me to be mesmerized by this notion of being a superstar. I’m always down to earth so it’s actually quite easy for me to return to my normal lifestyle. I still do the household chores in my family so, you know, life is kept simple.”