What is fan support? Cheering groups, idol culture and Taiwan's project directory

If you want to attend an event, make support goods or organize your first project, start with the fan-support culture and event practice map. This page explains the terminology, roles and cultural background.

In Chinese idol culture, 應援 means supporting an idol through concrete actions: chanting or holding banners at a concert, crowdfunding metro lightbox advertising, or arranging a birthday café. The practices may be familiar even to people who have not encountered the term. This introduction also provides a directory of Joe’s research and resources.

What does 應援 mean?

Support actions include slogans, signs, posters, merchandise purchases, crowdfunded advertising and birthday events. The word comes from Japanese 応援 (ōen), an everyday word for cheering or giving support. As Japanese and Korean popular culture spread in Taiwan, the Chinese fandom usage became more specifically associated with organized fan activity.

Two meanings of 應援團

• At a sports ground, it is an organized cheering group. Japanese university cheering clubs and Taiwanese professional baseball groups coordinate chants, drums, songs and cheerleaders so the stands cheer together.
• In idol fandoms, it is a fan group that raises money, designs goods and coordinates venues and suppliers. Such groups organize many birthday projects and metro advertisements.

The shared feature is organized encouragement.

How is it different from simply being a fan?

Liking an idol, following an account or buying an album is usually described as following a star. Turning that enthusiasm into an output—goods, events, ads or fundraising—is the more organized, production-oriented activity described as fan support here.

Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese approaches

Joe distinguishes three broad approaches. Korean idol support is the largest branch represented by much of the online discussion.

• Korean support has developed a particularly complete system of colours, official lightsticks, subway and bus advertisements and birthday cafés.
• Japanese support places more emphasis on live-event chants, timing and glow-stick movements; birthday events are often called 生誕祭.
• Taiwanese support developed later and frequently adapts Korean practices to local venues and rules, including metro panels, bus advertising and photo booth frames.

Origins and development

Japan: from university baseball to idol concerts

Organized Japanese cheering first appeared in inter-university sport. At the Waseda–Keio baseball match in autumn 1905, Waseda’s cheering club waved a WU flag and used a coordinated chant cheering Waseda. It is regarded in the cited account as the first systematic university cheering chant in Japan (Waseda Weekly history).

As Japan’s idol industry took shape in the 1970s, sports-ground cheering practices moved into concerts, with glow sticks and synchronized chants (Jiemian on support goods and fan identity). Japanese support still emphasizes the rhythm of the live performance. 生誕祭 originally referred to commemorating the birth of a deceased distinguished person; fandom adopted it for an idol’s birthday with a tone of respect.

Korea: colours, lightsticks, birthday cafés and fansites

The source describes cheering culture spreading from Japan to South Korea in the 1990s and growing with its idol industry (Jiemian). When first-generation group H.O.T debuted in 1996, fans initially distinguished support through balloon colours, later evolving into group-specific lightsticks. G-Dragon’s three-dimensional BIGBANG bang stick became an important reference for later lightstick shapes (The Idol Cast).

The fansite-master role, 홈마, developed around personal websites carrying photographs of idols before moving to Twitter and Instagram (Namu Wiki, 홈페이지 마스터). Fans’ birthday cafés also originated in Korea and later spread worldwide (UDN report).

Taiwan: K-pop’s spread and local formats

Taiwan largely adapted Korean practices to its own venues and rules. Girls’ Generation’s 2010 Taipei Arena concert set the attendance record described in the source for a non-Taiwanese female act performing in Taiwan; the contemporary Super Junior wave also helped drive interest (Girls’ Generation reference, Super Junior retrospective). Groups around that period are widely regarded in the source as important drivers introducing these practices to Taiwan’s fandoms. Local forms include photo booth frames and bus and metro advertisements.

Taiwan’s sports grounds

Idol concerts are only one part of Taiwan’s cheering culture. Professional baseball teams have cheering groups and cheerleaders; team songs, chants and individual players’ songs are many people’s first encounter with 應援. In 2023 the Rakuten Monkeys brought South Korean cheerleader Lee Da-hye into Rakuten Girls (team announcement). Other teams later recruited Korean members, and cheerleaders themselves became recipients of birthday events and support frames.

In the dated directory snapshot below, more than half the real people were athletes or cheerleaders, rather than concert idols. For individual terms such as fan service, banners, lightsticks and signs, see the Chinese fandom glossary.

Four broad project categories

• Food support: meals or drinks for an idol and staff at a workplace.
• Merchandise support: physical goods to distribute or sell, the most common category in this account.
• Advertising support: fans fund placements such as buses or metro lightboxes.
• Birthday support: events tied to a birthday, including cafés and booth frames.

Common practical questions

Can official photographs be used?

An official photograph being publicly visible is not permission to print goods. Personal retention, public distribution, sales and online promotion need separate checks. A free giveaway or the absence of a cash transaction does not establish permission. Identify the rights holder and permitted scope first; see checking image permission.

Which design tools are useful?

For flat graphic design, the source recommends Canva. To make a physical product, consider a Print on Demand provider as well as preparing your own artwork.

First decide what kind of item to make. The older FAQ mentions 13 common categories; the expanded goods guide now details its own fuller list. Joe describes Creatify’s web editor as a convenient route; other providers in his account took completed artwork for manual processing. See the Taiwan POD guide.

Which photo booth operators accept support projects?

Some operators require an exclusive frame design. A reader reported such a rule at Time Stop Photo; ask the operator to verify the actual terms rather than treating a reader report as universal policy. The source describes Snapshot’s support cooperation information as the clearest option in the account.

How can a photocard be made and printed?

The source recommends free Canva for layout, with print shops, 藍格印刷 or convenience-store printing such as iBon as output routes. The October 2026 addition also points to the browser photocard maker for a 55 × 85 mm file at 300dpi with bleed, without installing software.

What are 飯繪 and 飯拍?

飯繪 means fan-drawn illustration or comics depicting an idol or group. 飯拍 means photographs or videos made by fans.

Resource index: choose by what you want to do

The following six sections connect Joe’s articles with the Fan Support directory he maintains. You can jump directly to the relevant task.

1. Understand fandom language

• Chinese fandom glossary: 飯姐, 飯繪, 飯拍 and 飯撒.
• Fansite masters, fan accounts and support accounts.
• Fan-made goods versus official goods and fan art.

2. Make goods: type, dimensions and production

• Common support goods.
• Design apps.
• Banners: common 30 × 10 and 45 × 15 cm sizes, materials and printing.
• Official lightsticks: differences, synchronization, batteries and event rules.
• Illuminated signs: check the organizer’s notice, not only the venue website.
• Photocards: common 85 × 55 mm format, without an official universal standard.
• Card sleeves: common 58 × 89 mm photocard film.
• Official image permission.

3. Organize a project and report the results

• Seven steps from birthday scheduling and fundraising to a results report.
• Birthday cafés and cup-sleeve events: origins, process and costs.
• Photo frames, lightboxes, buses and cafés, with advertising costs.
• Providers accepting booth-frame submissions.
• Support-related shops.
• 2026 camera and lens guide for fandom photography.

Afterwards, organizers can publish a public event page so others can find it. Login is required; submission publishes immediately after technical checks, at no charge and without needing Joe’s personal approval.

Disclosure: Fan Support is Joe’s own website. Looking up its data and registering an event are free.

4. Look up the person being supported

For birthdays, real names, alternative spellings and group affiliations, Fan Support provides individual pages and official links, with birthday source levels marked.

The Chinese original preserves a snapshot dated September 16, 2026: 1,374 real-person pages, 179 character-IP and VTuber pages, and 88 group pages, totaling 1,641 pages, based on 409 actual support applications. Those are historical figures, not today’s live counts.

The 1,374 real people comprised 757 athletes, 376 idols and singers, 207 cheerleaders, 28 actors, three influencers and three unclassified people. More than half were athletes or cheerleaders.

This is not a complete roster: its sources are submitted support applications, so people with no submitted support project are excluded. Group pages have a threshold requiring enough members to have pages; only part of the 120 known groups had pages in that snapshot. The original snapshot also says Japanese, Korean and English page coverage was then much smaller than Chinese coverage.

5. Find birthdays and plan dates

• Birthday calendar: see who has a birthday on a date.
• Zodiac pages: find people by sign.
• Search: use a name or alias.
• Event map: find recent support events in Taiwan.

6. Japanese words borrowed into fandom

• 誕生祭: meaning and use.
• 生誕祭: meaning in Japanese.
• Four Japanese scenarios commonly searched by Taiwanese readers.

Keywords: fan support, cheering groups, support culture, goods, birthdays, fansite masters and Chinese fandom terminology.