BEIJING, March 11 (UPI) -- Chinese director Zhang Yimou and actress Gong Li are under fire in China for skipping the country's annual parliament meeting in Beijing.
The two were among five Chinese celebrities who bailed on the gathering of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Daily Variety reported Saturday.
"Celebrity members of the CPPCC have courted public criticism for their conspicuous and repeated absence from the top political advisory body's annual full sessions," the official news agency Xinhua said.
The director of "House of Flying Daggers" and "Hero" and his former partner, Gong, who most recently starred in "Memoirs of a Geisha," missed the meeting in the Great Hall of the People because they were working.
