Web fan club treats 'Brother Hu' and 'Wen Baobao' like rock stars

They're young, casual and think patriotism is cool.

Welcome to the Assorted Rice Club and the Eight Treasures Rice Club - two of the hottest online fan clubs on the mainland. There, China's cyber-savvy youth are raising President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao to the heights of rock-star fame, and heaping a whole lot of love on them.

Mr Hu's supporters call themselves 'assorted rice' ('assorted' appears in Mr Hu's name and 'rice' sounds like the English word 'fan'), and Mr Wen's followers are known as 'eight treasures rice' ('treasure' is part of Mr Wen's name).

Combined, they're known as 'assorted eight treasure rice' - currently the mainland cyber-world's most formidable political cheerleading force, which exercises no restraint in displaying its affection for its idols.

'Brother Hu', 'Brother Tao' and 'Taotao' are what cyber-fans call the president, and Mr Wen was given the cutesy nickname Wen Baobao, which means 'darling' or 'honey'.

An assorted eight treasures rice thread on Tianya - one of the most popular bulletin boards on the mainland - has drawn 800,000 hits since it started up two months ago, and more than 10,000 postings.

Fans enthused, marvelled and fussed about anything and everything the leaders said and did, ranging from a recent speech to an unflappable hairstyle, and tossed around superlatives like 'awesome', 'charming' and 'two thumbs up'.