Friday, May 25, 2012

Video of the day

As noted at the Marmot's Hole earlier this week, Yang Rui, a well-known Chinese TV host on state-sponsored CCTV posted a scathing attack on foreigners on his blog which mentioned Japan, Korea and the West, though ChinaSMACK notes that it wasn't so popular. This seems to be a part of a xenophobic 'gust' which was influenced in part by the video described here. At any rate, here's the (probably NSFW) Taiwanese take on Yang Rui's rant:



There was a case in China six years ago which might sound rather similar to the English Spectrum incident in Korea, and drew similar responses:
Chinabounder, an anonymous British expat and self-confessed wastrel in his early 30s, likes to boast on his weblog of his sexual conquests of Chinese women, including some of his students. This has so outraged Shanghai's web citizens that they have resolved to track him down and "kick the foreign trash out of China".

In racy language suggesting a Terry-Thomas-like rogue cutting a dash in the seedy bars of Shanghai, Chinabounder describes seducing a different girl every night of the week.

The postings are also critical of Chinese male sexual prowess and contain occasional snipes at Chairman Mao Tse-tung's womanising and the frustrations of Chinese housewives.

The collection of juvenile if provocative musings on sexual mores in contemporary China may even be a hoax cooked up by artists to gauge the reaction in China to such unsavoury comments from a foreigner.

Access to his "Sex and Shanghai" blog - which attracted millions of readers - is currently denied as the author hides from a wave of contempt. Cyber-vigilantes, furious at his claimed seductions of married women and teenagers, have threatened him with a beating if they track him down and some comments are couched in dangerously xenophobic language.

[...]Zhang Jiehai, a professor of psychology at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, describes the blogger as a "piece of garbage" and "an immoral foreigner". "Netizens and compatriots, if you are a Chinese man with guts and if you respect Chinese women, please join this 'internet hunt for the immoral foreigner'," he wrote. Other postings have called for Chinabounder's head and described his girlfriends as "national scum".

Jeremy Goldkorn, the publisher of the influential Danwei website, believes that most people have been measured in their response.

"A lot of the comments about Chinabounder have been fairly moderate - people saying how Chinese men are far worse than Chinabounder, for example, or pointing out that there was no question of rape or anything like that," he said. And there have even been imitators. An overseas-born ethnic Chinese woman has set up a site, ABC Chick in Shanghai, describes herself as Chinabounderess and defends Chinabounder. She then goes on to describe her own flirtations in Shanghai.

Some more descriptions are here, and in 2008 the writer outed himself in order to promote a book he wrote describing why China would never be great, which I'm sure helped make him even more popular in China. The number of visitors to the online campaign against him - 17,000 - is the same number AES would eventually draw, but goes to show that, comparatively, not that many people were interested, considering the number of internet users in China.

3 comments:

ChinaBounder's email: said...

Your analysis seems pretty spot on to me. The ‘scandal’ these events cause is generally blown out of all proportion because the stories make good filler for an always-hungry press. My little foolishness was reported by papers all over the world; but as you say, it really was only the tiniest of flashes in the pan. Seventeen thousand visitors, given the huge size of the net population (and it was huge even back then), shows quite clearly that the CB blog was the tiniest tick on the backside of a Z-list celeb’s least favorite dog; barely worth mentioning at all.

Anonymous said...

Despite the contretemps over the Sex in Shanghai blog (aka the "China Bounder"), which seems to have been quite limited in comparison to the English Spectrum incident, the blog itself is still standing and the identity of the blogger remained anonymous until he chose to reveal himself.

China is not normally known as a country supportive of freedom of speech on the Internet but I'm wondering is it qualifies as such in comparison to Korea in this regard. That is to say, I can't help but think that a blog about 'Sex in Seoul' written by a 'Korea Bounder' type character wouldn't survive the scrutiny and ruthlessness of local netizens. If the "Ask the Playboy" column at English Spectrum is any indication the answer seems clear enough.

Anonymous said...

Dear China: When men say they're having all kinds of hawt sex all the time they're usually lying.

Just saying.