Voices as diverse as Salon, The National Review, and Oliver Stone have claimed that we could be wandering into totalitarianism. Some have speculated what totalitarianism might look like in an age where data is mined cynically from devices that we use to do everything from hailing cabs, to monitoring our health, to hooking up.

Given the example of a project by one of the most monstrous regimes of the twentieth century, this future could be even more chaotic than we imagine. Totalitarianism is seldom monolithic.

There is a great novel from the mid-twentieth century that captures some unique insights into totalitarianism. Not “Brave new World” or “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, but “The Lord of the Rings”. The incompetence of Sauron’s orcs which allows Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee to enter Mordor with relative ease, shows the cynicism and paranoia at the heart of most totalitarian states.

Another tale of cynicism and ultimate failure involves a difference between two of the twentieth century’s biggest partners in war crime. Japan’s campaign to populate Manchuria with Jewish refugees, many of whom were fleeing the Nazis, was marketed as a humanitarian project, but many of the officials behind it would be executed as war criminals after Japan’s 1945 surrender. Its backstory is even more bizarre than the premise suggests.

Harbin’s Jewish Community

From the mid-nineteenth century, a large number of Jews fleeing the Tsars’ pogroms in Russia came to China and eventually settled in Harbin. By the early 1920s, the city’s Jewish population had reached 20,000 accounting for five percent of the population.

The settlers excelled in the fields of finance, business, law, medicine, and art, helping Harbin develop rapidly into a city that could compete with Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Hangzhou for economic and cultural activity.

In the summer of 1932, 21 consecutive days of torrential rain caused the Songhua River to flood, killing 250 people. Banks and businesses closed, telephone lines were cut, and refugees fled to nearby mountainous areas including Nangang and Xiangfang, sleeping among the elements, wrapping themselves in their few remaining garments, and living off whatever they could get their hands on.

Harbin after the 1932 flood, image via ChinaNews

Because flooding ruined the harvests, food was scarce. The water was contaminated, and many died from cholera.

According to the American Public Health Association, not a single death was reported in the Jewish community. During and after the flooding, community leaders immediately organized the delivery of bread and water to families in need, and physicians made rounds by boat. Volunteers assisted the elderly and sick by bringing them food from a central soup kitchen until the water finally receded.

Avraham Kaufman, MD, the head of the Jewish clinic, led the fight against the cholera epidemic. Under his advice, community members boiled the contaminated water before using it all summer and ate only boiled and peeled vegetables and fruit. Doctors educated all community members in the best methods to prevent cholera and other diseases. The Jewish doctors used their boats to visit and treat cholera patients all over the city.

The Jewish pharmacy in Harbin, 1932, source Teddy Kaufman, h/t NCBI

By this time, the city’s Jewish population was dwindling. Japanese invaders had taken Harbin in September 1931. Due to a policy of seizing of Jewish businesses and the brutality of Japanese troops, people began to seek opportunities elsewhere.

Jewish-Japanese relations reached their lowest point when Simon Kaspéwas a musician who lived in Harbin, was kidnapped, ransomed for $100,000, starved, tortured (with methods including being kept in sub-zero temperatures, beating and having body-parts cut off) and eventually shot dead by a gang of fascist Russian criminals. The investigation into his death by Japanese authorities, who were attempting to court the White Russian community as local enforcers of their Anti-Communist sentiments, culminated in his murderers only serving a few weeks in prison due to their “patriotic” anti-communist motives.

Thousands lined the streets for Kaspéwas’ funeral to protest the injustice. This, along with the Great Depression, caused more than half of Harbin’s Jewish population to flee by the mid-1930s to Shanghai, the United States and other places that were not under Japanese control.

The Fugu Plan

In 1934, entrepreneur, politician, and Nissan-founder Yoshisuke Aikawa published an essay in The Japanese Diplomatic Periodical titled “Plan to Invite 50,000 German Jews to Manchuria”. The article was well received in Japan.

Yoshisuke Aikawa, who is today best-known as the founder of Nissan

Aikawa had earlier held a secret meeting with senior officials including South Manchuria Railway Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, to discuss the reconstruction of Manchuria. Manchuria was a vast region rich in minerals and raw materials and had long been coveted by Japan. The Great Depression that began in 1929 gave additional voice to those in Tokyo who wanted to capture it.

This ambitious plan had several problems. Money was in short supply because of the worldwide economic situation; it was difficult for Japan to give incentive to its own population to emigrate there; and having broken the monopoly of Western dominance and, after stunning the world by withdrawing from the League of Nations with a defiant speech from Yosuke Matsuoka, the country was something of a pariah to the West.

It became apparent to some that it might be a good idea for Japan to form an alliance with the Jewish people. Jewish culture was held in particular high esteem in Japan since 1904 when American banker and tycoon Jacob Henry Schiff – incensed by Tsar Nicholas’ treatment of his people – extended loans to the Empire of Japan in the amount of $200 million (approximately $32.2 billion in 2016). This provided approximately half the funds needed for Japan’s success in the Russo-Japanese war.

Yosuke Matsuoka, whose impassioned speech to the League of Nations marked Japan’s exit.

Japan also observed the status of the Jewish people in American society and their disproportionate success in fields like medicine, law, finance, and media. With the Soviet Union mutually mistrusted and feared, this might be an opportunity to curry favor with the United States.

By this time, anti-Semitic movements in central Europe were in full swing, forcing many to flee from their homes. If Japan could provide sanctuary for the numerous engineers, lawyers, accountants and bankers forced into refugee status, it would also establish its image as a humanitarian nation.

That is not to say that the people behind this plan were not extremely racist. In the parlance of the day, Jews were seen as similar to Japanese fugu, or pufferfish: delightful if treated with care but highly toxic if handled unskillfully. The person in charge of what became known as the Fugu Plan was Imperial Japanese Army Colonel Norihiro Yasue.

A Russian-language specialist, Yasue was assigned as a young man to the staff of General Gregorii Semenov, an anti-Semite who distributed copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to all of his troops, along with weapons and rations. Yasue read and accepted the premises of the Protocols, and would allow this to guide many of his views through his later career.

After returning to Japan in 1922, Yasue worked in the Army Intelligence Bureau, translating the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Japanese. His translation attracted the attention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he was sent in 1926 to Palestine to research the Jewish people. He became particularly interested in the emerging kibbutz movement, which he believed would be used to colonize the world.

By the 1930s, Yasue’s influence, and that of his comrades, grew, particularly among those who were frustrated by Japan’s relative lack of influence in global affairs. Yasue and his “Jewish experts” met the so-called “Manchurian faction,”. Yoshisuke Aikawa in particular was interested in Yasue’s ideas, and together they came up with the Fugu Plan. In 1939, Yasue recommended that Japan set up an autonomous Jewish region near Shanghai; by providing a safe place for Jewish refugees to live, and granting them the autonomy to live as they desired. He also arranged for Abraham Kaufman to be invited to Tokyo on a formal visit.

Yasue was central to the operations of nearly every aspect of the Fugu Plan. He coordinated everything from choosing and setting up sites for settlements, transporting people to the settlements, speaking with community leaders to gain economic and moral support, and working within the bounds granted him by the Japanese government. He organized missions to Jewish communities in the United States, and cultural exchanges with rabbis that stressed the similarities between Shinto and Jewish beliefs.

The population was to range from 18,000 to 600,000. Details finalized included the land size of the settlement and infrastructural arrangements including schools, and hospitals. Jews in these settlements were to be given complete freedom of religion, along with cultural and educational autonomy. While Yasue believed that the community needed complete autonomy to thrive and attract investment, it was ultimately decided that the community be closely supervised and guided.

Failure and Defeat

By 1942, the Fugu Plan had fallen apart. Japanese aid for Jews would not be tolerated by Nazi Germany, and attempts to shuttle refugees through Russia were halted when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. That same year, Gestapo chief Josef Meisinger was sent to Shanghai and began preparations to exterminate the population of the Shanghai Ghetto. This never came to fruition, as the community appealed to Yasue who revealed Meisinger’s intentions to the government in Tokyo and saw it prevented.

After Japan’s surrender, the protagonists behind the Fugu Plan had mixed fortunes. Yoshisuke Aikawa was arrested by American occupation authorities and incarcerated in Sugamo Prison for 20 months under suspicion of Class A war crimes. He was eventually acquitted.

Though his time in prison took a toll on his business, Aikawa played a key role in post-war economic reconstruction of Japan, and purchased a commercial bank to organize loans to small companies. He died in 1967 of acute gall bladder inflammation at the age of 86.

Yosuke Matsuoka was arrested by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in 1945 and held at Sugamo Prison. He died in prison of natural causes on June 26, 1946, before he was tried for war crimes before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. In 1979 he was enshrined in The Yasukuni Shrine, together with 12 convicted war criminals of the Pacific War.

When the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria in August 1945, Norihiro Yasue did not attempt to flee. He arranged a formal farewell to his family, in which he announced he did not feel it would be honorable to flee from the damage he and his generation had inflicted through the war.

He allowed himself to be captured by the Soviet forces and died in 1950 in a labor camp in Khabarovsk.

The post The Forgotten Story of Japan’s Plan for a Jewish State in China appeared first on The Nanfang.

In fact, the opposite is the case. You can’t read a short story properly online. They demand something that today’s digital world forbids us from giving: our undivided attention.

“Blind Water Pass”, a collection of short stories by Anna Metcalfe, some of which are set in China, deals with issues that are often too discomforting to think about. These include the plight of immigrants who live in the grey areas of the legal system, the communities and traditions that are being destroyed by ruthless progress, and the suffering of people who make life in developed countries so comfortable.

The collection supports John Carey’s assertion in “What Good Are the Arts” that literature is a profoundly middle-class art form, historically hostile to pride, grandeur and self-esteem. Most of its central characters are caught up in social and geopolitical forces beyond their understanding.

One standout example is “Number Three”, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Sunday Times Short Story Award. It takes place in a city’s Number Three Middle School and focuses on Mr. James, a foreign English teacher, Miss Coral, who is appointed as his liaison, and Moon, a diligent student who takes tuition from Miss Coral.

The story captures the slowness of life in a Chinese public school and the smallness of the individual in its vast mechanism: “(Moon) neither seeks friendship nor refuses it, and wanders the extensive grounds of the school wearing a look of mild surprise, as though perpetually living her first day.” Like most of the stories, it is not particularly action-packed, but teases out the notion that when spending time in an alien culture, we may do much more damage than we intend by seeking to be understood before trying to understand.

Metcalfe seldom specifies where the stories are set, but those that explicitly take place in China capture the uniqueness of the Middle Kingdom and at the same time demystify it. The following description appears in “Number Three”: “A late afternoon sun casts a haze over the urban sprawl. Smog and fresh dust linger, hovering over warehouses, slums and disused factories as they leave the inner city and approach the airport.”

The collection’s title piece revolves around a girl who entertains tourists with made-up Confucian quotes. This serves as a metaphor of how China’s ancient history is ever-changing to fit the needs of the present.

The central conflict is between the teenaged Lily and her grandmother, who clings onto a folk spirituality that she cannot adapt to the new China. Lily speaks implausibly good English for a rural girl, able to discern the quality of translations and to edit them, but like all good fiction, these stories operate with their own internal logic.

The three major forces in the story are spirituality, technology and nature, but none appears to have the answers the characters seek: “Lily looks at the sky as though waiting for its wisdom to descend.” By avoiding didacticism or a clear environmental message, it lives longer in the memory than the vast majority of what appears on the internet.

Of the other stories set in China, “Everything Is Aftermath” also follows a young girl stuck between two seemingly irreconcilable worlds. Metcalfe’s minute attention to the details that her viewpoint characters observe recalls some of Katherine Mansfield’s best work: “His ears are stoppered with blue rubber headphones that produce a tinny, rattling sound. It reminds her of the metal gates at her school, the way they clatter in the breeze.”

Other standout pieces include “Old Ghost”, in which the narrator is an immigrant female taxi driver in Paris whose relationship with the mysterious title character was torn apart by unspecified political issues. The hypnotic “Mirrorball” follows a narrator who begins each section by saying her age, following her from nine all the way up to twenty-two as she gradually evolves to become like her abusive father’s attractive young girlfriend.

A graduate of the famous Creative Writing Master of Arts at University of East Anglia, Anna Metcalfe is a ferociously talented writer whose best work is well worth tearing oneself away from one’s smartphone for.  Her best work has something to say about cultural contrasts that is beyond the ordinarily expressible.

The post “Blind Water Pass” by Anna Metcalfe: Haunting Stories of Intercultural Miscommunication appeared first on The Nanfang.

“Wish Lanterns” by Alec Ash does not focus on extremes of poverty and upheaval, but instead describes in intimate detail the lives of six people whose experiences will be alien to much of the readership. They are China’s millenials, the generation born after the political catastrophes of the Mao era when Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms brought unprecedented peace and prosperity to the People’s Republic.

By minutely focusing on these lives, “Wish Lanterns” serves to both demystify a nation which is by turns demonized and exoticized as well as educate even the most experienced China watchers about the people who will write the next chapter in the Middle Kingdom’s history. The three male and three female subjects were born within five years of each other, all have a university education and all have lived in Beijing.

It is not a comprehensive portrait, but the depth and quality of the writing make it well worth anybody’s time. By removing himself from the action – though Ash was present at some of the key scenes described – the book gets fully under the skins of six Chinese people who have come of age at the beginning of what some say will be the Chinese Century.

One of the characters flies to Shanxi Province to meet a person with whom she has exchanged flirtatious WeChat messages. Within eight pages they have shaken hands, flirted, declared their love, been to bed, met the parents, and married, a series of events that covers a timespan of thirty-five days.

This might seem profoundly weird to a cosmopolitan person of the same age. In another writer’s hands, the chapter would probably be a frontrunner for the Bad Sex Award, but Alec Ash has so comprehensively evoked the pressures, dilemmas and uncertainties that the characters face, that readers will find it difficult to imagine themselves doing things differently. The spare prose and rugged, unforgiving setting even help make it romantic, despite the immediacy with which the couple discusses marriage as a practical arrangement.

“Wish Lanterns” is littered with exquisite touches. When the rebellious, tomboyish Mia is offered a fashion stylist job at Bazaar, it is described as the kind of job her more demure friends “would have given a gloved arm and stockinged leg for.” The weekend bonanza of families visiting Ikea describes scenes in which couples “have real domestics in fake kitchens.”

Perhaps the strongest and most dramatic chapter in the whole book involves Snail, a boy from the Anhui countryside who is the first in his family to go to college, making it all the way to the nation’s capital for his studies. The scene is set in the mid-2000s when World of Warcraft was at the height of its popularity. Standout lines include: “The game offered a sense of accomplishment that three-dimensional life lacked”.

Snail is apprehended by his parents for neglecting his studies due to his gaming addiction. Like the rest of the book, the moment is brilliantly grounded in the six senses (“Snail was pulled out of World of Warcraft to face something he hadn’t seen in a long time: sunlight”.) Every viewpoint is poignantly observed and no person is judged (“With the supervisor’s help, the first time his mother used the Internet was to look up the website for an Internet-addiction rehab center”.)

The book covers issues with which any China-follower of the past decade will be familiar, from the Wang Yue tragedy to the downfall of Bo Xilai. Yet as well as looking at old issues in a new light, it will teach just about any China hand things they did not know.

One subject Fred, a Tsinghua University graduate from a privileged Hainan family, encounters the New Left thinker Pan Wei who is too radical for even the left wing of the Communist Party. The West, Pan Wei argues, is historically a nomadic society which by nature favours individualism, while China is by tradition agrarian and better suited to traditionalism. The evolution of Fred’s political thinking is one of the most engaging elements.

Yet politics is only a tiny part of “Wish Lanterns”. Through his interviewing skills and keen observations, Alec Ash has interwoven six compelling stories and unobtrusively presented the economic, historic and cultural realities that lie within.

The post “Wish Lanterns”: Poignant Entertainment For All Levels Of China-Watcher appeared first on The Nanfang.

Coming-of-age romance “Yesterday Once More”, based on the 2012 novel by Liu Tong and directed by Yoyo Yao, provides an entertaining window into the early lives of people born in China in the 1980s. Set in a high school, exam stress, a regimented schedule, and parental pressure along with restrictions on hairstyle, dress and dealings with the opposite sex turn the characters into the adults they will become.

In 2001, Lin Tianjiao (Guo Shutong) is top of her class in most subjects and sports and set to study Finance at the nation’s best university. Class clown Gao Xiang (Bai Jingting) accepts the blame for an act of cheating that would have derailed Lin’s academic career.

An unlikely romance blossoms between Lin, whose mother (Liu Mintao) insists that in high school there are no friends, only competitors, and Gao, who lives alone with his heartwarmingly wise grandfather (Wang Deshun, who had a similar role in “Miss Granny”). Throughout the ensuing conflicts, no character is judged and no piece of bad behavior goes unredeemed.

Bai Jingting (R) as Gao Xiang and Guo Shutong as Lin Tianjiao

Lin’s affinity with Gao Xiang and their friends Ou Xiaoyang (Ding Guansen)  and Lu Tiantian (Wang Herun) who are in a clandestine romance proves to be a distraction from her bid to win the Three Good Award, a provincial-level accolade that would be life-defining for her parents and career-defining for her teacher (Su Youpeng). Lin becomes fascinated with Astronomy which is not considered a serious academic subject but, along with English (which they only study coldly and mechanically) represents an escape from their unglamorous surroundings.

Knowing that they will soon have to join the ranks of the enemy, the non-adult characters commit a series of rebellious acts that are pure cinema. These include Ou and Lu shaving their heads in solidarity with each other; Gao and friends repainting Lin’s classroom; and Gao hang-gliding over the playground, a scene that, though reminiscent of Heath Ledger in “10 Things I Hate about You”, nods to the social problem of teen suicides.

One of the film’s many virtues is that it does not shy away from the ugly side of society. The stigma of his father being in jail is the reason why Gao appears to have given up on life. Lin’s tiger mother and liberal father keep up the charade of marriage despite being secretly divorced. The characters’ enthusiasm for learning is extinguished by the need to perform well in school.

Most of the laughs come from the characters’ immaturity (there is a scene involving a urine-filled water balloon) and the most touching scenes are the ones that tell Gao’s backstory. Every character is believable and sympathetic given their circumstances though, when the inevitable English song is sung, one wonders why every fictional character in today’s China has a professional singing voice. Lin’s mother would surely have destroyed her musical talent in early childhood.

“Yesterday Once More” will prove educational for anybody who did not go through the characters’ experiences and nostalgic for all who did. Though set just 15 years ago, much of the action would have unfolded very differently if the characters had access to 2016 technology. With both tears and laughter, it enables an entire generation to reminisce about the way they were.

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This article was originally published in Shenzhen Daily.

The post Yesterday Once More: A Daring, Entertaining Mainstream Romance appeared first on The Nanfang.

On the other hand: they fill our days with meaningless bites of information that get stuck to the walls of our consciousness. They encourage us to be irresponsible with our attention in ways we would never be with our money, health or reputation. They create the illusion of “micro celebrity” while causing us to give away information to advertisers and people with more sinister aims.

Social networks are here to stay and even to avoid them is to have a relationship with them. This is a reality I have been faced with in recent weeks after deactivating my Facebook and Twitter accounts in an attempt to move onto a more mature phase of online life.

Some social media accounts I will never be able to delete as they are either too darned useful (WeChat, LinkedIn) or their history is too much part of my offline life (QQ). But there is one for which I will always have special affection, the much-maligned troll breeding ground Shenzhen Stuff.

The least irritating social network? 

Now and for the foreseeable future, WeChat, a product of Shenzhen-based Tencent, rules the online life of China and China-watching communities. Its ease of use gives it many of the positive qualities of Facebook, G-Chat, Whatsapp, Tinder, Twitter, Sina Weibo and MySpace.

However, WeChat is mostly used on devices with small keyboards such as phones and tablet computers, a quirk that contributes toward discouraging nuance and encouraging the use of pictures to communicate. The intelligence-level of a WeChat group is not equivalent to the stupidest person in the group but considerably lower.

Shenzhen Stuff had its prime from around 2008 to 2011 and its relative decline has coincided with the rise of the smart phone, where online life is no longer primarily had on desktop and laptop computers. For this reason, some of the better discussions from this time involve responses of the kind of length, variety and balance that seldom if ever exists on WeChat.

The social network that leaves WeChat in the dust in most of the world is of course Facebook. For the most part, the only people who can see our Facebook posts are our “friends”, people whom we have allowed into our circle and can block, delete or mute as we wish. For this reason, Facebook is one of the more civilized wings of the internet.

This online echo chamber was brilliantly satirised in “Safe Space”, a recent episode of South Park in which new anti-hero Reality crashes the party.

Facebook “likes” may be more pleasant than trolling, but both are ultimately worthless. Likes encourage a culture of self-congratulation in which we seek praise for where we have traveled, who we have met, and how much we have exercised.

One alternative to the sheltered nature of Facebook is Twitter. On Twitter, anyone can write anything (in 140 characters) and debate is often lively, bringing celebrities closer to their fans and politicians closer to their electorates.

However, it is dangerous to suggest that Twitter is less guilty than any other social network at distorting people’s take on reality. Gloating about his unexpected general election victory in 2015, British Prime Minister David Cameron made the depressingly necessary point that Britain and Twitter were not the same thing: “The vast majority of people aren’t obsessives, arguing at the extremes of the debate.”

On the nominally more refined end of the scale is LinkedIn, described by CNN Money in 2007 as “Facebook for grown-ups.”  However, Linkedin differs from Facebook in a similar way that it differs from the vast majority of mingling events for Facebook. All connections are based on usefulness.

LinkedIn is like a world where every person you meet is an Amway or Mary Kay employee. This rant illustrates why:

It’s reaching the point where everyone on LinkedIn is selling something. And it makes you suspicious about engaging in any conversation, when you know it’s heading sooner or later to a request for a sales meeting.

No matter how wisely you have chosen your LinkedIn connections, scroll down the updates and count which percentage are edifying or illuminating.

Troll-breeding ground

Internet trolling is an idiotic and unpleasant phenomenon. On Shenzhen Stuff it is even harder to avoid and ignore than on any of the above-mentioned networks. As with any long-term social media user, I have been on the receiving end of my share of ad hominem attacks, some fair, some not.

The worst trolling I got was when I first joined the sister-site Guangzhou Stuff. This happened because I was guilty of self-promotion. When they survive for a number of years, these local community-based sites become similar to a group of friends mingling in a front room. By and large, newcomers, particularly ones that show off, are as mistrusted as door-to-door salespeople.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, this kind of trolling provides a useful life lesson, one that is articulated in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” – “private victories precede public victories”. For example, working out three times a week is the former, having perfect abs is the latter.

Facebook and WeChat, where we are surrounded by friends, LinkedIn, where we are surrounded by associates and Twitter, where we are surrounded by followers, are not the best places to receive this lesson. They encourage the premature conversion of private victories to public.

A Goldilocks site

As websites give way to apps at the center of our online lives, Shenzhen Stuff has gone into a decline that may well be terminal. It ain’t what you do it’s what it does to you, and when it comes to meeting good people and learning interesting things, I cannot think of a more positive force during my Shenzhen years than this tiny website on the ass-end of the internet.

In its prime it was a Goldilocks site, containing just enough trolling for there to be a functioning bullshit detector, but also enough civility for most users to be willing to meet each other in person. Below is my choice of five of the best things I have ever seen on Shenzhen Stuff, none of which would be out of place in a professional publication:

1. How to be an evil foreigner 

2. Morons

3. Twisted Fairy

4.How Much Lower Can American Politics Go? (See the variety of points-of-view and relative civility of the debate)

5. Differences Between American and British English (see the eighth paragraph)

Nothing lasts forever, and the trolls that currently overrun Shenzhen Stuff are neither smart nor witty. Many of the best accounts have been deactivated which has dropped a lot of good writing into the mists of time.

It may be pathetic to get nostalgic for something that was never more than pixels on a screen, yet it is fast becoming old-fashioned to draw a distinction between online life and real life. For me and many others it was the right site at the right time.

The post Remembering the Good Ol’ Days of Shenzhen’s Raucous Expat Website, Shenzhen Stuff appeared first on The Nanfang.

Rapper MC Confusing, created by comedian Jon Lajoie, is one of the more charismatic performers to have emerged in the music industry over the past decade. Here is a typical example of his lyrics:

Other rappers are comprehensible – not me

First on the mic MC Confusing!

I took a piss on my nut sack and called it Jack Black

It’s a fact, I got more rhymes than Zack Braff taking a nap

I attack motherfuckers wearing purple backpacks

And I snack on towel racks and take a shit on your track

Yeah, you’re wack cause everybody understands what you say

But when I get on the mic, I make milk out of clay

And I play air guitar with a tube of toothpaste

And I say, “Karate pencil case” and put it on tape

MC Confusing has never been known to perform more than two verses at a time, but if he ever did a 100-minute set, it would no doubt feel similar to romantic comedy “Oh My God”: utterly bewildering but with just enough quirkiness to maintain your attention.

An article by humorist and critic Luo Beibei – who describes herself as a “public servant”, watching awful movies so her compatriots don’t have to – exploring just how unfathomably awful this film is, has become popular. With international superstar Zhang Ziyi as an executive producer and bestselling young adult author Guo Jingming as a producer along with some of the hottest young acting talent in China’s film industry, how awful can “Oh My God” be?

Why the naysayers are probably right

Lack of genre – The movie begins with Mo Han (Jiang Wen) carrying out an astrological prayer ritual on the roof of a condominium on the outskirts of Beijing, hoping that Chenmo (Cheney Chen) will stay with her forever, despite being a few years her junior. While she prays, a rock falls out of the sky and lands beside her.

The next morning, Mo Han and Chenmo wake up to discover that the rock has morphed into a baby that contains the DNA of both of them as well as the couple with whom they share their condominium, Lu Mijia (Jacqueline Li) and Leyi (Zhang Yixing)

It later emerges that the baby has superpowers that only appear at opportune moments and it is never discovered or explained what these superpowers are or what the other characters think of them. If the film wants to be considered a fantasy then it needs to be aware that fictional fantasy worlds like Narnia and Middle Earth need to be even more logical and detailed than the real world, and once this alternate reality is created then there must be no deviations from it.

Children’s author Terry Pratchett put it best when he said that you can have a story where pigs can fly, but as an author you must be fully aware of the implications: how does it affect pork prices, are pigs still considered dirty animals by some religions, is life on land very different? In “Oh My God!” neither the characters nor their world are ever anything but superficially zany.

Lack of plot – In 2008, the year he turned 25, Guo Jingming was described by The New York Times as “China’s most successful writer.” Though it is Wei Nan and Wei Min who have the dubious distinction of having directed the movie, it very much contains the signature of producer Guo in that it is full of shots of beautiful people looking happy, unexplored plot strands and nothing that can seriously be described as a story.

Anybody with any basic training in storytelling knows that a story can start with a coincidence but cannot end with one. Despite now being in his thirties, China’s most successful writer has yet to demonstrate any ability to structure a story, which is as absurd as an academic who is unable to make an argument.

The film dabbles in every cliché from recent Chinese cinematic history – the leftover woman who is desperate not to be the only old maid in her friendship circle, the manchild who is reluctant to grow up and be monogamous, the child who was orphaned and looks to his friends for familial support. All of those issues are touched on but none are turned into a story.

Warped values – The film’s first slapstick sequence involves our quartet of heroes having their efforts to commit infanticide hilariously thwarted. Finally they are arrested, booked, released, and punished by having their baby returned to them. Why the world’s largest authoritarian state allowed its police force to be portrayed as so irresponsible remains a mystery.

The main characters after a side-splittingly unsuccessful infanticide attempt

A later sequence involves Mo Han trapped at an impromptu high school reunion, unwashed and underdressed and desperate to give a good impression. She calls Chenmo and tells him to urgently get over there with the baby and show what a happy family they are. In the world of this film, being single is assumed as a defeat for any woman. This movie is not sufficiently aware of the clichés to defy them.

The movie has a theme song titled 《快乐青春》 (Happy Youth), sung by all four leads. It is catchy enough but it can best be described as bubblegum pop. This makes it even more difficult to figure out what this film is trying to say, perhaps that raising children is all just fun and games, which makes attempted infanticide all the more risible.

The viral review by Luo Beibei contains a total of five “face palm” pictures. This seems generously few.

Cheap humor – Arguably the centerpiece of the whole film is a balletic diaper-changing sequence that plays out to the tune of “La Donne e Mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto. The baby is both extraterrestrial and supernatural but nonetheless prone to fits of raging diarrhea that cause his female minders to shriek attractively.

As members of China’s mollycoddled Generation Y, none of our four protagonists is adept at nurturing little ones so the need to change a dirty diaper causes Chenmo and Leyi to slip and slide comically at the top of the stairs while their girlfriends sit on the sofa applying makeup and eating candy. After several near misses, the girls look up to see what is going on just in time to end up with globs of feces to land on their faces.

Jacqueline Li and Jiang Wen about to be splatted in one of the film’s more intellectually stimulating moments

Why the naysayers might be wrong

Watchability – Just like Guo Jingming’s “Tiny Times” series, “Oh My God” is beautifully photographed and populated by a cast of smoking hot actors, so it is never completely unwatchable. Also, if you suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder and do not care for a plot that you can sink your teeth into, there are some eye-catching sequences, including a wild helicopter ride and a stunning display of kung fu in front of a white tiger. That neither appear to have anything to do with anything need not matter.

Subtext – At times, “Oh My God” reminded me of collaboration between two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. “Un Chien Andalou” (An Andalusian Dog), a 1926 short film made by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel which may be the big screen’s greatest ever depiction of a dream.

Its extra-logical shifts in setting and mood and resolute refusal to make it easy for the audience may have just been surpassed. The makers of “Oh My God” have arguably been even bolder with their inclusion of a wise-cracking baby and a shark with human teeth.

The writing of this movie reminds me of the below letter that was posted into irreverent British magazine The Viz:

Since I won the Football Pools, my life has been like a dream come true. Only the other day I gave my girlfriend a cuddle, but she turned into my dead grandad and started to chase me, and it was like I was running through treacle. And then I realised my maths ‘A’ level was about to start in ten minutes and I’d done no revision and couldn’t find a pen.

BBC critic Mark Kermode once insisted that all aspiring filmmakers should be forced to make a low-budget horror before they are allowed to attempt anything more ambitious. In this way they can learn the basics: plot, forces of antagonism, development of empathy between audience and protagonist, and (above all else), how to tell a story using limited resources.

The people behind this film had everything at their disposal, but unless they strive to become some cinematic equivalent of MC Confusing, then a low-budget horror might be their best bet.

The post Is “Oh My God” the Worst Chinese Movie Ever Made? appeared first on The Nanfang.

China’s “red songs”, works that show support for the Chinese Communist Party and its causes, appeared to be making a comeback in 2011 due to a campaign by charismatic Chongqing official Bo Xilai. A few years earlier, an American going by the stage name of Hong Laowai became a much-loved online celebrity in the People’s Republic for his renditions of patriotic Mao-era songs. In neither case was a movement sparked.

Though writing music is often an attempt at achieving immortality, even the most popular music can die with the beliefs that inspired it. Songs that were staples in the 1960s such as “The East is Red” are now seldom heard outside period dramas due to their toxic associations.

Luo Lang, the man who conducted the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) orchestra as they played that song and other triumphant anthems in Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949, died earlier this month. His best known composition is the dirge that was played at the funerals of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and those of ordinary Chinese every day. All things considered it is almost certainly the most played and enduring piece of music written for the Communist Party cause.

Luo Lang

The dirge

Surveys of the most popular funeral songs in the Anglophone world tend to throw up “golden oldies” such as “My Way” by Frank Sinatra and “Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong. Since Graham Chapman’s televised memorial service in 1989, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” has been widely played. Much-loved hymns such as “Abide with Me” also remain popular.

Though to a certain generation it is perhaps more associated with The Undertaker and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Chopin’s “Death March” was performed at the state funerals of John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. However, in the West there is nothing quite as universally played at funerals as the dirge 《哀乐》 composed in 1945 by the 25 year-old Luo Lang.

There are an estimated two million funerals a day in China and by far and away the most played piece of music at these funerals is Luo Lang’s dirge. It may be the most played piece of music in modern China. What’s more, Luo Lang never collected a fen in royalties, insisting that it is the people’s property.

“After witnessing the aftermath of the liberation of Zhangjiakou in 1945, he observed that many of the soldiers’ bodies were lying down as if still poised to enter battle. It was then he decided to write a dirge that, as well as being somber, also had an air of defiance. He subsequently adapted a northern folk song that was originally for suono horn,” his daughter Luo Jing told CPC News.

On September 30, 1949, the day before the People’s Republic was declared in Tiananmen Square, Luo Lang conducted a band of more than 40 players in the dirge to honour those who had fallen in the war from which his side had just emerged victorious.

Is it really a red song?

It is not a rabble rouser and appears to do a lot less to promote Marxist values than John Lennon’s “Imagine” (also a staple at funerals). However, the song and its author’s red credentials are beyond reproach.

Born Luo Nanchuan in Dehua, Fujian Province, he followed his father to Malaya (now Malaysia) as a child before returning to Shanghai aged 13 to pursue his studies. He entered the music department of the Lu Xun Arts Academy where he studied under some of the masters of the day such as Xian Xinghai, Xiang Yu and Li Huan.

After his mother was killed by Japanese soldiers in 1938, Luo became highly politicized and went with six friends to Yan’an to join the revolution. During the war, Luo composed over 200 military anthems, including 《从军区》 (From the Militarised Zone) and 《英雄赞》 (Praise the Heroes).

Luo Lang on Tiananmen Square October 1, 1949

Acting as composer of a military band of over 200 players as they performed triumphant red songs including “The East Is Red” and “Without the Communist Party There Would Be No New China” on October 1, 1949 was later described by Luo as “the most unforgettable experience of my life.”

In 1956 Luo was appointed as head of the People’s Liberation Army’s top musical academy, training the army’s most promising musicians such as French horn player Sun Dehua. “The people who he trained in the 1950s went on to keep the tradition alive,” a tearful Sun told CPC News.

Though in his old age, his eyesight and hearing declined and he became more foul tempered as the friends he went to Yan’an with died off, Luo kept strict the habits of his military background – bathing at exactly 9 p.m., keeping strictly regular patterns of eating and making his own way up and down several flights of stairs, according to Luo Jing.

In 2009, during the build-up to the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic, an 89 year-old Luo conducted an impromptu rehearsal of the Chinese National Anthem during a visit to a military camp.  The anthem, “March of the Volunteers”, which is now banned at funerals, was written by left-leaning, politically-engaged people but not members of the PLA who dedicated their lives to its cause.

If you listen to the lyrics it could just as easily have been written by supporters of Chiang Kai-shek. Lyricist Tian Han died in prison in 1968 after being denounced as a counterrevolutionary.

The dirge is the work of a man who had a long life with the Communist Party and a relatively uncomplicated relationship with it. “He is now conducting the PLA band in the sky,” his daughter told Caijing.

A musical soldier

The dirge was of course played at the funeral home on Balao Mountain in Beijing on July 17 as Luo’s loved ones said their last goodbyes. It remains to be seen whether his estate will continue to give the song away for free.

Music, unlike politics, can be simple and utopian. His political convictions may have prevented Luo Jing from hitting the heights of the great composers.

Shostakovich, for example, reluctantly joined the Russian Communist Party toward the end of his life.  His late string quartets are not heroic statements defying totalitarianism but a desperate comment on his own cowardice and opportunism. They were the works, according to Slavoj Zizek, of a broken man,

In “The Lives of the Great Composers,” Harold Schoenberg compares Haydn to Mozart. Haydn was, according to Schonberg “a very nice man to know,” who never acted in ways that were petty such as worrying about younger, better-looking composers stealing his thunder.

Mozart, by contrast, was “the more dangerous, repressed, rebellious man.” Schoenberg suggests this might be the reason why Mozart ultimately hit greater heights.

Luo Lang’s rigidity and conservatism may have held him back, but he wrote the piece that may well have brought tears to more eyes than any other in the past century.

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One person who I had not met for six and a half years but left a deep impression on everyone who knew him was Wade Schroeder – a South African former water polo player known throughout our place of work as a gentle giant. He arrived in Huizhou, Guangdong Province in 2006 to work as a tutor at Thames School of Languages and the following year he became the school’s sole full time kindergarten teacher.

Wade had a laugh like Mozart in “Amadeus”, would do anything for anyone, and was the only long-term China expat I ever met who responded to every shout of “hello” from a stranger with a broad smile and a like-for-like response (in Huizhou at that time friendly attention directed at foreigners could be as oppressive as paparazzi).

While the 23 other expatriate teachers who taught primary and middle school-aged children had the linguistic safety net of a teaching assistant and the psychological safety net of each other’s company, Wade was getting an entirely grassroots-level experience of China. Despite being in a very different world from his native Port Elizabeth, there was no danger of Wade saying or doing anything insensitive or inappropriate as he would never wantonly hurt anyone.

He had slightly old-fashioned ideas about being a perfect gentleman, holding doors open and letting people get off the elevator first, regardless of how unlikely his courtesy was to be reciprocated. Wade had a different schedule to the other teachers, but whether you wanted a wild night in a noisy bar or to sit on the balcony talking about life the universe and everything, Wade was among everybody’s favourite people to spend time with.

Though the friends he made in China have since gone in a wide variety of directions, his death this week at age 31 has inspired dozens to offer tributes to a man who was, as one friend put it: “Always going out of his way to help his mates while never expecting anything in return.”

The list of my own wonderful memories of Wade is too long to post here.  There was, for example, the aftermath of the house party for New Year’s Eve 2007/08 when a bunch of us sat up into the small hours singing “Wild World” by Cat Stevens. Another great memory happened a few days later.

Toy guns with foam bullets were the most popular children’s toy at the time. Being slightly infantilized by the experience of working with children and cast as outsiders in our host country, a group of colleagues would organize gun battles in the dormitory.

After one drunken Sunday night, I and a colleague named Zak Wood decided to load some of these guns and spring a surprise on some sleeping roommates. Wade’s was one of the few bedrooms that were not locked, so Zak – with a sock serving as a balaclava – fired several rounds and jumped onto his bed while yelling a battle cry before disappearing with stealth.

Wade’s work week began at 6 a.m. on a Monday morning, but this did not prevent him from getting up on time, sitting alone at the breakfast table remembering the incident and filling the dorm with that infectious laugh that came so easily.

Lucky old angels, lucky old heaven.

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Another such man was Dai Li. A genius of military intelligence, Dai (also known as Dai Yunong) was China’s most accomplished assassin during the War of Resistance against Japan. As well as helping Chiang Kai-shek claim the scalps of high-profile enemies and defectors, he also bedded some of the most glamorous women of his day.

After Dai’s death in a plane crash on March 17, 1946, Chiang Kai-shek is known to have rallied his troops by insisting: “Dai Li never died.” His death was indeed mysterious and conveniently timed for those who might have wanted him dead. On its anniversary this week, Xinhua went over the whole story and the various conspiracy theories around the plane crash. However, none are as bizarre as the official history.

Career

He was born Dai Chunfeng in Zhejiang Province’s Jiangshan City in 1897. After showing early academic promise, he got into The No. 1 Middle School in Zhejiang Province before moving to Shanghai. In 1924 he joined The Huzhou Military Academy.

In 1926 he began training at The Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou where he met Chiang Kai-shek. This was the beginning of a highly fruitful period of collaboration during which Dai’s nicknames included “蒋介石佩剑” (Chiang Kai-shek’s personal sabre) “中国的盖世太保”(China’s global bodyguard) , “中国的希姆莱”(China’s Himmler), and “中国最神秘的人”(China’s most mysterious man). Here are just a few of the reasons why:

In May 1933 in Beijing’s Grand Hotel, Dai personally assassinated Zhang Jingyao, a fearsome warlord who tried to help the Japanese set up a puppet Manchu government. In June of the same year he was responsible for assassinating the democratic activist Yang Xingfo. In 1934 he killed the celebrity journalist Shi Liangcai and Communist Party member Ji Hongchang.

Dai Li, the most formidable assassin of his day.

From 1937 onwards, Dai Li would often carry out reconnaissance work in the most dangerous occupied territory. In January 1938, he was involved in trapping and killing Shandong Governor Han Fuju who was suspected of colluding with the Japanese to spare his province and position. In March of the same year, he was part of the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Wang Kemin who would later commit suicide while on trial for treason.

In February 1939 he assassinated Chen Lu, foreign affairs minister of the puppet government, in Shanghai. In March of the same year Dai was sent on a special mission to Hanoi to assassinate Chiang Kai-shek’s political rival and Japanese collaborator Wang Jingwei. Wang survived the bullet wound but died in Japan in 1944 when receiving treatment for an infection caused by it, avoiding a likely execution for treason.  In August 1940 he shot to death Zhang Xiaolin, leader of notorious Shanghai criminal organization The Green Gang and in October of the same year he stabbed to death Shanghai’s puppet mayor Fu Xiao’an.

After the attack on Pearl Harbour, which Dai had accurately predicted, he was invited to collaborate with American Intelligence Agencies. In 1943, he was behind the successful poisoning of Li Shiqun, who had defected from the Communists to the Guomindang and later headed the No. 76 Spy Organization which became notorious for torturing Chinese who fought their invaders. In January 1944, he was behind the bombing of a Japanese-occupied coalmine in Hebei. When the war ended in 1945, he began a campaign to arrest suspected traitors throughout the country.

Love Life

As well as being a feared assassin, Dai was also a notorious lothario. His lovers included actress Hu Die, one of the most famous beauties of the era.

However, the woman who brought out his softer side was Chen Hua, who he affectionately knew as “Huamei”. Chen Hua, was sold as a concubine at age 13. At 16 she married Yang Hu, Sun Yat-sen’s Shanghai Garrison Commander. Dai met her on a train in 1932.

Dai was enchanted by her beauty. He tried to arrange for his student Ye Xiazhui (the wife of General Hu Zongnan) to be her assistant but Chen saw what he was up to and refused.  Later, they got to know each other and Chen found a kindred spirit in Dai. She later became his only close friend. It was her who helped Dai spy on Wang Jingwei and on many other projects. He later stated that she was 50% responsible for his successes.

Hu Die (left), Chen Hua(right)

Dai Li had a taste for fast cars and lavish homes but was never that rich so often had to rely on other people such as Chen to provide him with them. She was known in intimate company to call him “Little scrounger! Little penny pincher!”

However, when she was stuck in Chongqing during the latter part of the war, he made sure she was kept in the lifestyle she was accustomed to with mink coats and imported shoes and stockings. When those resources became too rare, he had her sneaked on a plane to Hong Kong.

On the last night they spent together in Shanghai in March 1946, Chen Hua claims Dai said to her: “I keep telling you Huamei. As soon as the old fella (Chiang Kai-shek) no longer needs me, I’ll be dead.”

Already anxious about her lover’s safety, Chen received a phone call on March 17 from local politician Wang Xinheng saying that Dai would fly from Qingdao that day to have dinner with him. Chen took the liberty of making her own way to Wang’s home. When Wang arrived, he told her that Dai’s plane hadn’t shown up. Then in front of the already present dinner guests, Chen said with a mysterious grin: “It’s crashed!” before being reluctantly escorted away.

Chen Hua opined that Dai Li killed himself, shooting the pilot before crashing the plane. Dai wanted to have a post-military career in politics but, according to Chen, Chiang Kai-shek saw him as more trouble than he was worth now that the Japanese had been vanquished.

Conspiracy theories about Dai Li’s death

Air travel was a lot less safe back then, so Dai Li’s death may well have been simply an accident, or Chen Hua may have been right. Conspiracy theories have abounded and debate continues to rage, yet none are as bizarre as the official story published by Xinhua this week.

One theory posits that, considering he knew too much and had collaborated with the Americans, Chiang Kai-shek could not risk keeping him alive. Another suggests that it was American agents. Some say he was murdered by the Communists – Wang Ruofei and several other senior Communists had recently died in a plane crash so this may have been revenge.

However, the real story of what happened and who was responsible is even more fanciful. At 1:13 p.m. on March 17, 1946, Dai Li’s plane crashed over Jiangning County, the crew members all escaped unhurt. This was widely agreed to be an accident until two years later when Chiang Kai-shek received a top secret memo claiming that Dai Li was murdered by Beijing-based colleague Ma Hansan.

Ma and Dai went back a long way. It was Dai who helped Ma get promotions to Lanzhou, Ningxia and eventually Beijing. So why would Ma repay him this way?

In March 1946 Dai went in person to Beijing No. 1 Prison to interrogate Manchu Princess-turned Japanese spy Kawashima Yoshiko. There the spy told him that Ma Hansan had been arrested in 1940 and told the Japanese everything he knew as well as handing over a priceless Kowloon sword from the Qing Dynasty. Ma was sworn to secrecy and released, according to the spy. He later retrieved the sword from her house when the Japanese surrendered.

Though stunned by the revelation, Dai Li acted as normal and even left a letter to Ma saying he trusted him to keep watch over Kawashima Yoshiko. On March 16 Ma and Dai were all smiles when they met for the last time at Tianjin Airport. It is here that Ma is alleged to have told close friend Liu Yuzhu to put a time bomb on Dai’s plane in Qingdao.

At Qingdao Airport, Liu Yuzhu used his identity as a member of The North China Supervisory Body to get to the plane as a safety checker. While supposedly checking the plane, he placed a time bomb in a wooden box that was due to detonate over Shanghai.

The next day the rain was too heavy to land in Shanghai so they diverted to Nanjing where the rain was also too heavy. After completely veering off course, the time bomb went off, causing the plane to nose dive into a 200-metre tall hill just south of Banqiao Village in Jiangning.

After a thorough investigation, Ma Hansan and Liu Yuzhu were arrested in Beijing on June 30 for conspiracy to murder. They were both executed at a secret location on September 27, 1948.

The post The Forgotten Story of…Republican China’s Most Mysterious Man appeared first on The Nanfang.

The animated series has even become somewhat popular with conservatives as no matter how badly patriarch Homer behaves, no matter how many better options his wife has, the family always stays together. Li Xinman’s romantic comedy “One Night Stand” also contains humor that prissier members of the audience may disapprove of: the first scene sees a curtain fall in a sperm bank and later a table full of dinner guests find themselves accidentally eating a baby’s diahrreah. However, it comes to a deeply conservative conclusion about marriage and whether or not a woman can have it all.

In the early scenes, the two main characters are established: Zhuo Xiaoxin (Jiang Yiyan) is a high-flying alpha woman who is determined to have a baby without getting attached to a member of a gender she has little time for; Zha Yi (Zheng Kai) is a formidable 28 year-old pick-up artist who boasts that he never sleeps with the same woman twice.

By the time the irresistible force meets the immovable object, it is easy to predict what the characters’ arcs will be. After Zhuo takes the initiative in dragging Zha to a hotel room, she pulls off the condom so she can have a child with the genes of a handsome man with a high IQ.

The plot is then driven by Zhuo’s attempts to reinvent himself as a responsible father and the determination of Zha, who happens to be a black belt in Taekwondo, to stave off any attempt to take her baby away. After Zha’s family take her to court, Zhuo finds that it’s impossible in today’s China for a woman to have it all unless she lets a man into her life.

The humor is low-brow but what makes the film worth watching is the snappy dialogue and believable characters. Both Zha and Zhuo are archetypes of the post-80’s generation and much of the comedy derives from their clashes with their older family members.

Like the “Carry On” films made in Britain during the 1960s, it is raunchy but ultimately conventional. The message is wise in saying that when one moves toward one good thing one moves away from another (e.g. you cannot be a Mother Goose with a happy brood and have a high-flying career, you cannot have the flexibility of a 28 year-old playboy and the stability of a family man), but it shows that like America in the 1930s and 40s, China is determined to promote conservative values through its cinema.

It is all well and good when a film contains the message “focus on the family.” However, one hopes a director in mainland China will one day have the courage to make a movie that says “focus on your own damn family.”

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