Charles Custer, meanwhile, reported for Danwei from the heated kang of a courtyard house in the far north-east of China, where he spent the holiday with his in-laws:

The Li family home is in Kedong, a small town that’s more or less halfway between Harbin and the Russian border. It was once a collection of pingfang – traditional Chinese one-storey houses – but those are increasingly being replaced with modern apartment buildings. Nowadays, if you stood in the center of Kedong, you might even feel like you were in a city. But it’s just an illusion; the apartment buildings give way to farmland within a few blocks in any direction.

The Lis take Spring Festival traditions more seriously than most, or so Mr. Li – my father-in-law – tells me …. In the Li family, the most important is the tradition of paying respect to the family’s (male) ancestors. On the morning of the day before Spring Festival, as his son glued a red and gold Spring Festival couplet to the door of the house and then the gate of the courtyard, Mr. Li washed his hands carefully and pulled scrolls out of a corner. These scrolls, it turns out, are likely at least 200 years old – they go back ten generations – and have been inscribed with the names of every one of Mr. Li’s male ancestors. After affixing them to the wall, Li taped on a 100 RMB note and then, reflecting on my presence perhaps, added a US $100 note above it.

CCTV’s annual New Year Gala was not warmly received by the Li family. The variety marathon will mark its 30th anniversary next year, and somewhat questionably boasts an audience of well over a billion people. The government’s political sensitivity may be undermining the show’s entertainment value, however, with a number of participants dropping out this year amid rumours of censorship. Among them is Zhao Benshan, who was absent for the first time in over twenty years. From Barbara Demick and John Lee at The Los Angeles Times:

Although the 55-year-old actor cited exhaustion, there was widespread speculation in the television industry that the skit he submitted this year didn’t get approval.

“This is the most censored show on Chinese television,” said Wu Renchu, a film critic based in Shanghai. He said the gala acts must go through three rounds of approval.

“There is more and more ideology and less entertainment. It is all about praising the achievements of the party and the nation. With stand-up comedy, you can’t have anything that touches on the reality of life in China ….”

Jiang Kun, a master of the Chinese comic art known as crosstalk, is also off the program this year, with columnists speculating it’s because his skit touched on a train crash last year in Wenzhou.

Zhao and Jiang’s absences were surely balanced, though, by the inclusion of a year-old, borrowed clip of billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” with a ukulele.

Judge for yourself at CNTV.cn, where this and previous years’ shows are available to view online.

New Year fireworks threatened to cloud the government’s new PM2.5 air quality readings, whose accuracy has already come into question. From Jonathan Watts in The Guardian:

Wang Qiuxia, of the Darwin Nature Knowledge Society NGO, said the air quality in many Chinese cities deteriorated sharply every New Year’s Eve.

He joined other activists in launching an online campaign for a “green new year” that urges people to save the money they would spend on fireworks and donate it to civic groups so they can buy pollution-monitoring devices.

Others demand tougher actions. The author Zheng Yuanjie, has used his Sina Weibo microblog to press the Beijing government to resume a ban on fireworks inside the fifth ring road. Others suggest the city should stage a single spectacular display – as Hong Kong does – rather than allowing millions of individuals to fire off starbursts and fire showers ….

The explosives also create a mountain of rubbish. According to the city environmental sanitation department, 58 tonnes of used fireworks were picked off Beijing’s streets during the new year festival in 2011.

Looking beyond the holidays, couples in China and around the world are seeking fertility treatment in order to give their offspring an astrologically auspicious start in life. From The Wall Street Journal:

Assisted-reproduction clinics in the U.S., China and elsewhere are reporting a surge in demand tied to the year of the dragon. The Los Angeles-based Agency for Surrogacy Solutions and sister company Global IVF Inc. have seen a 250% increase in business from Chinese or Chinese-Americans so far in January, according to co-founders Kathryn Kaycoff-Manos and Lauri Berger de Brito.

They expect the trend to continue until mid-May, the time by which couples need to conceive in order to deliver a baby by Feb. 9, 2013. Any baby born after that will be a snake not a dragon.

Luxury brands also have high hopes for the year ahead, according to CNN:

Watchmaker Piaget created more than 20 pieces exclusively for its Dragon and Phoenix line, which honors the dragon and its mythical mate. Items from the collection range from $25,000 to north of $100,000 for its Altiplano Double Jeu, a 43 mm watch in 18-carat white gold set with 78 cut diamonds, with an enamel dial and a white alligator strap.

Shanghai Tang incorporates the dragon motif in its Nespresso Dragon Collection, which includes a shiny red coffee maker, a box to hold Nespresso coffee capsules and a cup-and-saucer set.

Instead of starting from scratch, Rolls Royce’s Bespoke Team incorporated imagery and colors of the year of the dragon to put a new spin on its classic Phantom automobile.

And looking in the opposite direction, the Smithsonian Institution’s Surprising Science blog wonders where the idea of dragons came from in the first place. Via Jeremiah Jenne:

Ancient people may have discovered dinosaur fossils and understandably misinterpreted them as the remains of dragons. Chang Qu, a Chinese historian from the 4th century B.C., mislabeled such a fossil in what is now Sichuan Province. Take a look at a fossilized stegosaurus, for example, and you might see why: The giant beasts averaged 30 feet in length, were typically 14 feet tall and were covered in armored plates and spikes for defense ….

The most fascinating explanation involves an unexpected animal: the human. In his book An Instinct for Dragons, anthropologist David E. Jones argues that belief in dragons is so widespread among ancient cultures because evolution embedded an innate fear of predators in the human mind. Just as monkeys have been shown to exhibit a fear of snakes and large cats, Jones hypothesizes that the trait of fearing large predators—such as pythons, birds of prey and elephants—has been selected for in hominids. In more recent times, he argues, these universal fears have been frequently combined in folklore and created the myth of the dragon.

For a taste of how Beijing rung in the new year, see this video produced by the New York Times:

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air quality, CCTV gala, censorship, chinese new year, fertility clinics, fireworks, lunar new year, New Year's Gala, Spring Festival, Warren Buffett
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Zhao, in his role as a simple peasant in the countryside, sits on the stoop outside his home, when two men — one with a video camera hoisted over his shoulder — come by introducing themselves as “online journalists.” They work for an imaginary Sohu.com program called “Seeking the Root of the Matter” (刨根问底). They want to interview Zhao’s character and make the interview available “to the whole world” via the Internet.

That may sound harmless enough. But the two reporters for “Seeking the Root of the Matter” would, according to administrative regulations in China, be denied press accreditation in the first place. And that means the entire fictional interview that provides the frame for the Zhao Benshan skit depicts an illegal act.

The Zhao Benshan skit — and its censorship gaffe — is particularly interesting in that it depicts something both increasingly commonplace in China — that is, information gathering and dissemination by unauthorized “citizen journalists,” or gongmin jizhe (公民记者), of all stripes — and increasingly vexing to CCP leaders who want, as best as possible, to control information at its source.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV gala, Internet control, Internet news, media conditions
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It is said that the playwrights for the Spring Festival Gala are the best artists in the country, and that the program is produced under strict supervision and many levels of inspection by officials.

However, I find that many of the dramas in the Gala center on acts of deceit, or even sing the praises of so-called well-intentioned lies. The characters who told lies usually ended up achieving their goals, and were portrayed to be noble heroes.

Let’s briefly review the popular dramas that contain elements of deceit:

1. The first Gala drama that Song Dandan played a role in centered on deceit… The story went like this: A lazy man in a village was trying to find a wife. The village head introduced him to a girl and invited the girl to visit the man’s house. The man was so poor that there was no furniture in the house. So he and the village head made a fake TV set and fake sofa out of paper boxes before the girl’s arrival, and pretended to be rich. The plot of the drama was created largely on deceit. This drama was aired 20 years ago. It set a tone for later shows, many of which borrowed the theme of deceit from it.

2. Another well-known actress, Gao Xiumin, also made her debut in a drama that started with cheating. Gao played the role of a middle-aged woman who went to buy a shirt for her husband at a clothing shop. The shop keeper cheated her by selling her a shirt whose two sleeves didn’t have identical lengths. But it turned out that the shirt fit her husband very well, because his arms had different lengths due to a stroke. Thus both sides were happy in the end.

3. There was a popular drama in 2007 which was named Scheme, played by several celebrities, Zhao Benshan, Song Dandan and Niu Qun. Three characters in the drama planned a scheme and pretended that they found a magic rooster that could lay eggs. Using deceitful tactics and telling lies, they successfully sold this rooster to a credulous customer.

4. Another drama in 2007 was named False Words and True Love. You see, they clearly sang praises full of lies. The belief is that lies are wonderful if they are well-intentioned and told out of love.

5. Kids were encouraged to tell lies in another drama. A father asked his son to tell lies to his grandfather to please the old man. The boy was actually bored by his grandfather’s story, which he had told many times. But he pretended to like the story very much, and even cheered for it, in order to make the grandfather happy.

6. In one drama, a mother helped her son to court a girl by telling lies, and the son ended up winning the girl’s heart.

7. Another widowed mother resorted to cheating to show her love for her son. She asked a vendor to pretend to be her partner, in order to assure the son that she enjoyed herself in life, when the son came to visit her from overseas.

8. The dramas that best represent swindling are the ones produced by Zhao Benshan. In a series of dramas, the character he played swindled a credulous man three times in a row, selling him crutches, wheelchairs, and stretchers that the man didn’t need at all. Thus he made the phrase Hu You (swindling) known in every corner of the country.

Several dramas at this year’s Spring Festival Gala inherited this “core value” of deceit.

1. In the drama Ji Xiang San Bao, a maid fell in love with a security guard but their relationship was opposed by her brother. The girl planned a scheme to change the brother’s mind, using tactics such as false suicide, and she succeeded in winning his sympathy.

2. The drama Huang Dou Huang was also centered on deceit. The main character didn’t get a chance to watch the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, but he lied about it, in order not to disappoint his village head and an important client. Although his lie was disclosed by the end, he was still portrayed as a good figure.

3. In the drama Beijing Welcomes You, after one female character swindled another person of his volunteer outfit, she gladly said, “it’s so easy to swindle him.” Many in the audience laughed at her words. She found out later that the person was actually a fake volunteer — he put on the outfit of his son and walked around the streets to show it off. But both of them were praised as righteous and kind people in the end of the drama.

4. Zhao Benshan’s drama continued to center around deceit at this year’s Gala. The character he played asked a waiter to tell lies for him after paying the young man money.

I could bring up so many dramas that centered on deceit off the top of my head, without doing any serious research. None of them criticized or denounced cheating. All of them sang praise full of lies. Is this the main theme of our society? Is this our core value? It seems that lies and deceit have entered deep into their bones, so they take it for granted and even take pride in it.

Is there any hope for such country?

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV, CCTV gala, cheating, netizens' voices, nuo ying, social culture, Spring Festival 2009, truth
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An amateur alternative to Central China Television’s annual Lunar New Year’s Eve gala failed to reach its audience, as the online programme proved inaccessible to most would-be viewers.

The ‘Shanzhai’ show, billed as a grassroots alternative to the glitzy and propaganda-heavy extravaganza by state-owned CCTV, was supposed to air online Sunday night on China Countryside TV and through Macao Asia satellite TV.

Would-be viewers posed a series of complaints that the download was too slow, kept cutting off or was ‘blanking out’ on the website (www.ccstv.net).

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV gala, online culture, shanzhai
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“CCTV Spring Festival Gala,” a more than four-hour showcase of comedy skits, music and dance, has become a lounge room fixture for hundreds of millions of Chinese since the first edition beamed in the 1980s. Lunar New Year starts on January 26.

The show has also become an object of derision for much of the younger generation, poking fun at presenters’ gaffes and the sometimes shoddy production quality, something of an annual sport among China’s soaring Internet population.

China Central Television (CCTV), its producer and state-controlled broadcaster that beams the show on at least three different channels, cops especially raw criticism.

One critic of the show is wedding photographer Shi Mengqi, who plans to broadcast an alternative Spring Festival Gala, which he is calling “Shanzhai (copycat) Spring Festival Gala Party” on his website, China Countryside Television (www.ccstv.cn). From the Hollywood Reporter:

…For 36-year-old Shi, the son of peasants from Sichuan Province, the Spring Festival is a grass roots celebration and not about state accomplishments. It’s about individuals and will feature more than performers from around China, including amateur singers dancing monks and a man who pedals a bicycle with his hands.

Shi told The Wall Street Journal his show’s message was: “If you can do it, then I can as well.”

Shi, who could not be reached for comment, has promoted plans for the program online for a year. He will bring it off with handheld cameras and computers sponsored by friends, individuals and organizations interested in his idea, the China Daily reported.

He has not yet accepted any offers by TV stations to broadcast his show, but he has partnered with Tencent, China’s biggest online instant messaging provider.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Chinese Hollywood actress Zhang Ziyi was accused of lip-synching during the annual Spring Festival evening gala broadcast live on Wednesday night. The China Central Television (CCTV) program enjoys top audience ratings worldwide among Chinese.

Zhang, 29, an internationally recognized Chinese actress, lit up the stage with a pink outfit that drew envious gasps from ordinary girls.

She sang “Fairy Scattering Flowers(????),” which was specially composed for her by leading musician Ji Zhongping. Zhang was alone on stage during the performance.

Comments at Sina.com, a major Chinese news portal, were not too kind. Posters said that her performance was just ordinary and she had no real singing skill; it was just her fame that got her audience attention. The complaints about the program started to appear almost as soon as the show signed off at about 1:00 a.m.

See the video clip of “Fairy Scattering Flowers” via Youtube:

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV gala, celebrities, Spring Festival, videos, Zhang Ziyi
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Although it has a declining viewership, China’s New Year Gala on CCTV is probably still the most watched show ever in the country (it’s like China’s version of the Super Bowl). Some comedians make their living on the show by laughing about human weakness, some joke about physical disabilities. The former, it’s fair to argue, fully showcases the ugly side of people in society and we can say it is an outstanding form of art. It pries open everybody’s inner side and the flaws inherent with human nature and exposes them to the audience, so that an echo or sympathy sparks between the viewers and those who are being laughed at.

The latter, however, makes fun of people with disabilities to entertain others, which we cannot say is genuine art, but a low-ball trick, or even unethical social behavior. A few years back, comedian Zhao Benshan (赵本山) topped China’s most loved gigs with a series of skits (小品) that center around a limping man. The shows triggered some criticism on the Internet. Although the skits did entertain hundreds of millions of people, they also could have cut deep into the hearts of many disabled people and their families.

This year is no different. Another heavy weight comedian Cai Ming (蔡明) performed a skit about selling apartments, in which she spew out derogatory phrases containing the term for “Alzheimer’s disease.” [Alzheimer's has another, more commonly used name in Chinese, lao nian chi dai zheng, 老年痴呆症, which has a sharply derogative connotations, mostly meaning "stupid."] China has more than 5 million people who with Alzheimer’s, and these people and their families are probably not happy with the comedian freely throwing up a controversial term for a light laughter.

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Alzheimer's disease, CCTV gala, comedy, disabled
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- See also Video: Dance – Lanes of a Small Town in Rain (????) via CDT

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV gala, dance, Spring Festival, videos
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