What celebrity do you admire the most?
10.06.2025 00:02
zhang hao, just an average college student (not really) being chased by yueha to ranking first in a survival show in a country where no foreigner has never ranked first before, a nearly impossible feat, really goes to show that effort does pay off. zhang hao's storm-in-a-teacup life shows us that effort can overshadow literally everything — yes, even mnet's evil editing. his ranking never slipped either: 7-7-5-4-2-2-1 — he just keeps going up and up and up.
—— a knight to remember.
he's so incredibly unreal that it makes him real.
and that's not even the end of it. he's smart — extremely smart. i love smart people, but intelligence coupled with drive? a deadly combination, and he hits the mark every single time. hao consistently gets the highest grades in everything — straight a's all the way. i think it's a well known fact that he was got accepted into one of the top universities in china & the fifth globally for his subject (cnu ; geosciences) which he also ranked first place for, at the mere age of 16, which is two years younger than the age most people take the test, but what surprises me the most is that he trusted himself enough to take the plunge and go for the riskier option instead — a major in music, with an instrument he had no foundation in.
he never lets go of his morals and principles. just give this a listen. he knows what's important and sticks to it — zhang hao is an incredibly grounded person and i love him for that.
he became the standard.
the incredible thing is that he did all this while attending school/ college and still managed to excel at everything despite that. three years was all it took. heck, i'd like him to lend me his time management skills. i'm pretty sure procrastination is afraid of him. he's the epitome of efficiency — something i strive to be.
which brings me to my next point. he plays the violin. and the cello. and the piano. and the viola. four whole instruments. that is absolutely insane. one man orchestra, really. here i can barely play three… and i might be slightly biased here, as a violin-player myself, but the fact that he got a teaching licsence in six months — going from literally being told 'you're not cut out for this' to obtaining a teaching license vefore becoming a trainee and charging 2k (allegedly, because he was so popular) for every performance astounds me. there's predebut videos of him playing at weddings and stealing the show from the couples themselves, lmao. add this to the fact that he got first place in the national college entrance exam for arts. you cannot deny the fact that hao is persistent and gives his 100% towards everything he does. six months is an incredibly short period of time and the violin is an extremely difficult instrument to grasp. zhang hao deserves all the respect in the world for his sheer dedication towards the craft.
oh, and the man can dance. apparently, his mother sent him to dance lessons & forced him to workout in college because he was clumsy and kept tumbling down stairs, which i find extremely funny for no reason but well! just another skill to add to his already huge set of skills… at this point, tell me something he can't do and i'd be surprised. he also took vocal lessons and is a crazy good singer, which i'm sure everyone already knows.
we're not done yet. apart from this, zhang hao also used to model as a side hustle, and swimming is one of his hobbies. and can we just talk about how incredibly charismatic and humble he is? his personality has me floored. he's funny, down-to-earth and quite literally, perfect.
i'm not sure how many people know this, but zhang hao isn't korean — he's chinese. i found that surprising, given how well spoken he was during boys planet. his genuine appreciation, as a foreigner, towards korean culture blew me away. my guy was dedicated. throughout the entirety of boys planet, he used korean as his primary language despite the fact that it wasn't his first language & he mastered the language extremely quickly due to the sheer effort he put in while studying for the topik.
he is the celebrity i admire the most simply because he is zhang hao, wholly and completely zhang hao.
he's everything, and i mean everything.
"If I do something I dislike everyday, whats the difference between me and a living corpse" — zhang hao.
and despite my love for the aforementioned artists, if i really had to pick one idol to be "most like", it wouldn't be any of them. (sorry guys yk ily but…)
zhang hao, who did not settle for the standard. he went above and beyond it.
i think i've only mentioned this in passing before, but i've ulted zhang hao ever since zerobaseone became a group, and i know for a fact that if i'd watched boys planet, (i was studying instead of devoting time to my kpop obsession — how tragic), he'd have been my vote every single time.
i've been wanting to write this answer ever since i started following him, so here we are.
and perhaps that is exactly why i admire him so much.
i find zhang hao incredibly inspiring because he represents something i'm trying very hard to achieve — he's the best example of how beautiful life can be when you're not afraid of trying new things and when you pursue your passion.
zhang hao knew he was meant for something greater than just being an adverage middle class boy from some lonely place in china and he went and grabbed it by the horns — and, against all odds, he succeeded.
“i want to give courage to those who watch over me and continue to take one step at a time. it’s my dream to become a great artist in the distant future and say, ‘zhang hao, who was just an ordinary college student, achieved his dream. we can all do it!" — zhang hao.
to me, zhang hao is like the kind of guy you read about in wattpad books. or, perhaps more accurately, like the male lead of a high school webtoon or k-drama. and i think it's slightly unfair that he's the definition of a gary sue while the rest of us are struggling to get by. and he's got the looks to back it up too, may i add. he was everybody's campus crush in college to the point where people were taking videos of him like he was a celebrity. (i may or may not be slightly jealous.)
i'm a multistan, which means i follow a lot of idols. if you've been following me for a while, you probably already know about my beomgyu/ woosung/ eaj obsession. if you're not following me, fix that already <3.
zhang hao, who went from watching mama on the screen to holding an actual award in his own hands.
if i could be like anyone i wanted to, i'd choose to be like zhang hao.