"Goddess Fan, marry me! I want to stew chicken soup for you all my life!" reads the imaginative marriage proposal from Zheng Siqin, on a billboard in a bus shelter in Wuhan, Hubei province.

The target of his romantic intention, actress Fan Bingbing, has previously said that though it is usual for actresses to marry into rich and famous families, she was looking for something different, as "I'm already rich and famous".

Zheng, from Guangdong, has been called "Chicken Soup Brother" by netizens who were touched by the simple gesture and made the man an overnight celebrity.

There are suspicions that the bus shelter advert was a PR scam by the billboard company, but insiders said Zheng won the right to advertise his love after participating in a buying competition.

In response to the news a mini industry for Fan Bingbing chicken soup jokes has sprung up. One of them says Zheng's chicken soup must be the most expensive ever made; meanwhile some women have been saying they will accept his offer of marriage if his broth is as good as he says it is.

Fan's assistant said the actress would like to "thank him for his kind love" and, when asked whether she would accept his proposal, humorously said, "Anything's possible".

From chicken soup to Four Weddings and a Funeral, the big news of the week in the world of Sino-Western gossip is the relationship between Hugh Grant and Chinese beauty Hong Tinglan, with a number of online news sources claiming she is pregnant.

Grant and Hong are said to have been dating since February and obviously things have gone serious if Hong - thought to be originally from Lijiang, Zhejiang province, but living in London - is in the family way.

Grant may be popularly known as an English gentleman, but he is notoriously guarded when it comes to relationships and being tied down. The 50-year-old lady's man has previously dated actress Elizabeth Hurley and socialite Jemima Khan, and very briefly, Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown - an "affair" for which he was fined for misdemeanor and lewd conduct.

Recent photos of Hong appear to show that she has a baby bump; while sightings of the couple have described them as "deep in discussion."

Another actor who prefers to keep his cards close to his chest, but appears not to be afraid of commitment, is Deng Chao, who recently announced his marriage to fellow thespian Sun Li - only 14 months after the event!

He claimed, somewhat unconvincingly, that he did not intend to keep the wedding a secret, but the pair was just too busy to announce it.

"Actually I planned to release the good news if I won the Best Supporting Actor award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. But I didn't get the award," Deng said.

Regular readers will recall that Hong Kong celebrities Charlene Choi and Ronald Cheng called a tearful press conference in March 2010 to announce they were divorcing, which was a surprise considering they had for four previous years been insisting they were not married, or even together.

China Daily