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| William Chan’s Popularity Reignited — and So Are His Memories with Angelababy |
It seems the Love’s Ambition wave hasn’t just boosted William Chan’s career — it’s reopened the vault of early 2000s Hong Kong nostalgia.
On 10 October 2025, Weibo lit up with the hashtag #陈伟霆 早期baby严选的权威性, roughly translating to “William Chan’s authority in Angelababy’s early selection”. A playful, oddly poetic way of saying: Angelababy really had good taste back then.
Fans were quick to interpret the tag as a cheeky compliment to Angelababy’s “eye for quality” when she dated William during her teenage years.
Others found the phrase weirdly formal — one user quipped, “He’s not a product sample. He’s been good-looking for years, not just because the hashtag says so.”
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.webp "Netizens Revisit William Chan and Angelababy’s Youthful Love Story After 20 Years") |
Long before the glitz and megastar fame, there was a rainy Hong Kong evening in 2005 — 18-year-old Angelababy with smudged mascara, and 20-year-old William Chan counting coins to buy fish balls.
That humble scene, now immortalised in fan edits, has become a symbol of “pure-era love” — love before fame, before headlines.
The pair met while co-hosting Viva! Club Disney, a children’s variety show.
Their four-year relationship reportedly ended peacefully in 2009, marked by matching tattoos — twin cross symbols on their ankles that fans still analyse in detail on old clips and photos.
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Back then, William defended Angelababy when tabloids mocked her gravure shoots, calling her “the kindest girl I’ve ever met.”
Fast-forward a few years, Angelababy went on to marry Huang Xiaoming in 2015, welcomed a son in 2017, and divorced in 2022.
William Chan, meanwhile, hustled his way through TVB cameos, eventually becoming one of the most recognisable faces in Chinese dramas — his latest hit Love’s Ambition cementing his comeback as a household name.
What’s fascinating is how fans have reframed that teenage romance as a kind of emotional prequel — the “original William Chan arc.”
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The hashtag “严选” (meaning “carefully selected”) became an inside joke to describe early-era relationships that still feel sincere decades later.
Some even made memes out of it — photos of lemon tea and fish balls captioned “Limited Edition: Transparent-Era Love Set.”
Others stitched together clips from a 2023 New Year’s show, where William performed “Wild Wolf Disco” on Beijing TV while Angelababy danced to “Neon Sweetheart” on another network.
“If they’d met again in 2023,” one comment read, “would the story have ended differently?”
The nostalgia trip also reignited curiosity about William’s current love life.
He was rumoured to be dating supermodel He Sui back in 2021, with whispers of a breakup in 2023 due to family differences over marriage.
Yet, fans spotted them together again in Japan last October — her arm around him, both in matching masks.
While neither confirmed anything, online detectives were convinced by William’s tattoos and He Sui’s familiar ring. Whether it’s a reunion or a friendship, the fandom’s clearly invested.
Two decades on, “William Chan’s early selection” has turned from a meme into a quiet love letter to the past — a reminder of when affection wasn’t monetised, and when being seen together at a convenience store felt more romantic than any red carpet.
As one viral post summed it up: “We don’t miss who they were — we miss the kind of love that didn’t need hashtags.”