Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

There is too much adultery on Chinese soaps. The China Daily reports the concerns of the broadcasting watchdog that seeing infidelity dramas ‘will cause young people to feel that society is too dark and dent their hopes concerning love and marriage’.

Last time I was here it was too many presenters with dyed hair. Such edicts give the impression -probably not far from the truth- of some grumpy old geezer flicking through the channels and mumbling at the screen, ‘not more adultery!’ ‘why do these young folk bleach their hair?’ -as grumpy old geezers do. The difference with this geezer, of course, is that what he grumbles goes, and goes for a billion people.

So, Chinese TV. The first thing to note is that there is a great deal of it, over fifty channels sometimes, and every city has a station or two that goes nationwide. There are a few constants: sift this technicolour mulch for long, and you are bound to find a dramatisation of ‘Journey to the West’; a historical drama set in the Qing dynasty, with all the men sporting shaved pates and pigtails; a man in a military uniform reading the news; and football.

A girl in hot pants and thigh length high heel boots walks on stage. Soap bubbles, disco lights. Everyone in the audience is waving a yellow foam hand. The girl begins to declaim, heaping praise upon her older sister. ‘My older sister is always there for me,’ and so on. A peak of sibling adoration is reached, and another girl comes on, similarly attired, perhaps her hot pants are even tighter. It’s the older sister in question. She takes the microphone, gazes into sister’s eyes, and begins, ‘My younger sister brings sunshine into my day.’
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A singing contest! Exactly like ‘How do you Solve a Problem Like Maria’, ‘Pop Idol’ and the like. The viewers have voted, the girls wait to see who will be eliminated. There are a great deal of these at the moment, following the rip roaring success of ‘The Mongolian Yoghurt Super Girls’ last year, which transcended its medium and prosaic sponsor to become a social phenomenon. The audience of teenage girls is split into clans of supporters who hold up portraits of their favourite. It has been observed that the winner of these shows is generally the boyish, feisty, not so pretty one, rather than the doe eyed ideal of Chinese femininity. It’s impossible to watch this without reflecting, with a frisson of pathos, that it’s the only time Chinese people get to vote. The girl in a sari, who sang an Indian song, is for the chop – the others rush to embrace her –

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An advert for skin lightening cream. This reminds me of my all time favourite dodgy cosmetic medical ad, in which a presenter interviews a short man, looking down at him and nodding sympathetically as he expresses his ardent desire to be taller. A device resembling a medieval rack is displayed and snazzy computer graphics show it in operation, elongating a human skeleton. Now another interview with the man, but what’s this – now she’s looking up at him! The machine has worked! Tellingly, they are only shown from the waist up. I remember shouting at the TV ‘He’s standing on a box!’ the first time I saw it.

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A beauty contest. There are a lot of these. I haven’t seen it, but I am looking forward to catching the ‘artificial beauty’ contest, in which the contestants, each sponsored by a different cosmetic surgery parlour, talks about how much work they have had done. There is no stigma at all, they are seen as pioneers, trying to improve themselves like the short man on the rack, the Chinese dream. Cruelly, the old winner is made to take her crown off and put it on the head of the new season’s number one, which she is transparently not happy about.
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I am being unfair, some stuff is worth it. Here is ‘Uproar in Heaven’, a feature length cartoon from the sixties, the story of Monkey and his fight with God, depicted as a staid Chinese Emperor. The powerful but troublesome Monkey King is given a job at the heavenly court in the hope that it will curb his anarchist tendencies. He wreaks havoc, God gets annoyed, there’s a massive fight. It’s a real classic, as visually rich and stylish as early Disney, it took ten years to make and they never finished it. And this is my favourite bit: Monkey versus the giant three headed baby. The soundtrack of relentless Beijing opera can get a bit much though.

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Another gem; a documentary following the life of a school teacher in a remote village in Tibet. Slice-of-life stuff is generally the best thing on. They just artlessly show some guy going about his usual business, and there’s no attempt to squeeze a drama or a story out of it, the way they do similar shows back home. It’s quietly compelling, but it’s curtailed by an ad break. My patience wears thin, these can go on for twenty minutes -

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Ah, that’ll do. Man U versus Charlton.