"If You Are The One" Courtesy of Reuters

Times are hard in the world of Chinese reality TV. If You Are The One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao), China’s mega-popular answer to reality TV dating shows, has been gradually feeling the pinch of SARTF’s tightening regulations on entertainment broadcasting. Edward Wong of The New York Times reports in the latest in a series of articles entitled “Culture and Control“:

[R]egulators formulated a sweeping policy that takes effect on Sunday and effectively wipes out scores of entertainment shows on prime-time television. The authorities evidently determined that trends inspired by “If You Are the One” and a popular talent show, “Super Girl,” had gone too far, and they responded with a policy to curb what they call “excessive entertainment.”

That a dating show could help set off the toughest crackdown on television in years exposes the growing tension at the heart of the Communist Party’s control of the entertainment industry. For decades, the party has pushed television networks here to embrace the market, but conservative cadres have grown increasingly fearful of the kinds of programs that court audiences, draw advertising and project a global image not shaped by the state. Television, after all, occupies a singular position in the state’s media arsenal: with its 1.2 billion viewers and more than 3,000 channels, it is the party’s greatest vehicle for transmitting propaganda, whether through the evening news or staid historical dramas.

(more…)

"The East Wind State Farm" (dir. Hu Jie)

By Maya E. Rudolph

The Cultural Revolution Cookbook, a recent title that draws on the legacy of communal agricultural during the Cultural Revolution, researched and written by Sasha Gong and Scott D. Seligman, was recently released by Earnshaw Books.

The book incorporates some realities of Cultural Revolution-era cooking and eating with a definite bend towards popular American culinary trends, asserting of the young people who cultivated these recipes in the 1960s and 70s:

They learned to prepare remarkably tasty and healthy dishes with the fresh, wholesome foods in season, to conserve scarce fuel and to improvise when ingredients were unavailable. They used locally grown produce because there wasn’t anything else. And they mastered the art of getting peak flavors and maximum nourishment out of unprocessed, low-calorie foods, devoid of artificial preservatives, fresh from the fields, ponds and streams.

These are their recipes – entirely authentic, and easy to prepare in an American kitchen.

(more…)

"Meishi Street" (dir. Ou Ning)

The plight of unexpected activists and dingzihu, those Chinese households who refuse to yield their homes to demolition and real estate overhauls, has been well-documented over the past several years. Though the stories of stalwarts striving to preserve their farms and homes at the mercy of relentless “development” policies have appeared in film such as Ou Ning‘s 2006 documentary Meishi Street, rarely has such a story received the widespread attention of the still-unfolding events in Wukan Village, Guangdong.

The New York Times‘s Andrew Jacobs reports:

A long-running dispute between farmers and local officials in southern China exploded into open rebellion this week after villagers chased away government leaders, set up roadblocks and began arming themselves with homemade weapons, residents said.

The conflict in Wukan, a coastal settlement near the country’s booming industrial heartland in Guangdong Province, escalated on Monday after residents learned that one of the representatives they had selected to negotiate with the local Communist Party had died in police custody. The authorities say a heart attack killed the 42-year-old man, but relatives say his body bore signs of torture.

(more…)