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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| After Years of Socialism Chinese Lack all sense of humor |
| 2003-11-02 |
| EFL from Guardian In the history of comical flops, few pranks can have gone down quite so badly as the fake-genital skit performed by three Japanese students in China’s Northwest University. That fake genital stuff is kind of edgy. I don’t know that the Chinese audience is ready for that, yet. Camping it up in red bras and knickers bulging with paper cups, the performers must have been expecting guffaws or at least shy giggles from the freshmen and faculty they were entertaining at a welcoming party for new students. Should have gone for the standard pillows under the big tee-shirt sumo gig. It’s an old oone, but the Chinese probably don’t see much TV. Instead, they sparked an anti-Japanese demonstration by thousands of fellow students, internet death threats, and articles in the national media accusing them of attempting to humiliate China and its people. The Chinese people should consider themselves. I’m sure this whole episode involved a couple of bottles of rice wine. It could have ended up with poorly sung Elvis Kayoke. No one should be subjected to that kind of treatment. The outcry sparked by the innocuous display of student humour this week is the latest and most bizarre in a series of public demonstrations against anything Japanese - one of the few issues on which the Chinese government appears ready to tolerate large-scale protests. According to the state-run news service Xinhua, the performance at the party for foreign language students in Xian, western China, included three Japanese students and a teacher wearing brassieres and false genitals made from paper cups hanging from their waists. They danced "obscenely" and threw scraps of paper pulled from their underwear at the audience. The audience of conservative students and professors called a stop to the high jinks. If the performers had been Chinese, Russian or European, that would probably have been the end of the matter. But the fact that they were Japanese turned a cultural misunderstanding into an international incident. Notice to Carrot Top and Gallgher - Sight gags don’t go over well in Beijing, but you may do fine in Tokyo. Several thousand Chinese students gathered in front of the university’s foreign students’ dormitory on Thursday to demand that the Japanese offenders apologise. Yesterday hundreds continued to protest, shouting anti-Japanese slogans and waving banners, according to witnesses. Hate to be some poor Cuban kid living down the hall from these jokers. After the performance was given prominent coverage in the media, internet chatrooms filled with calls for the culprits to be deported. Deport them? Why are they still there? Maybe they understand that the Chinese use students to lubricate tank treads. Anti-Japanese feeling has lingered since the second world war, when Japanese troops used Chinese civilians as sex slaves and guinea pigs for biological experiments. But its expression has undergone a change recently, with calls for financial compensation. A newspaper published front-page stories about a sex tour by 400 Japanese men who allegedly hired 500 Chinese prostitutes. Come on - it was a joke. Don’t you get it? There were more hoolers than there were guys. Don’t you get it? Tough crowd. On the whole the Japnese appear to be challenging our throne as the world’s most unwanted guests - at least in China. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |