What does Kenny G fear more than chapped lips from his saxophone reed? The answer: Chinese President Xi Jinping, who, unfortunately for the soft jazz superstar, happens to be in the middle of a crackdown on artists who don't meet the Communist Party's exacting ideological and aesthetic standards.
By his own estimation, Kenny G is "super popular" in China. His songs are played as musical wallpaper in hundreds of shopping malls across the mainland, and his sold-out tours attract curiously devoted fans. (I personally witnessed a woman hyperventilate outside one early 2000s appearance in Shanghai.)
The musician, however, ran afoul of Chinese authorities on Wednesday when he tweeted images of himself visiting protesters in Hong Kong, who have shut down busy portions of the city for almost a month now. (In one now-deleted image — preserved all over the Internet — a grinning Mr. G holds up two fingers in a peace sign in front of a pro-democracy poster.) Chinese authorities view the protests as a threat to Communist Party rule and Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong, and the tweets touched a nerve. When asked about them, a government spokesperson suggested in not so many words that the U.S. musician stick to blowing his actual horn.