Following their success in making sure the Beijing Olympics were not politicized in any way, Chinese officials are now busy ensuring that there is no political intervention whatsoever in the nation’s film industry.
I’m kidding, of course. As you may be aware, Beijing’s bureaucrats this week decided to indefinitely delay the release of our smash hit summer movie Cape No. 7 after Chicom chiefs decided that a harmless love story portraying the history of Taiwan would be too much for the unwashed masses across the waves.
According to Monday’s edition of the People’s Daily, Taiwan edition (better known as the United Daily News), the decision to “delay” the movie’s release came after the Prisoner of the Grand Hotel — Chicom big, big, big, big, bigwig Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) — was so shocked by Cape’s depiction of Japanese culture permeating Taiwanese society that he told a meeting of top-ranking Reds that the film was tainted by “colonial brainwashing.”
Brainwashing.
That’s rich coming from a country where most people believe that a Chinese canoeist discovered America and the Dalai Lama walks around with an explosive belt strapped beneath his robes.
(Note to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九): No, the Dalai Lama doesn’t really do this.)
The Chicoms are apparently afraid that if word gets out that Taiwanese still hold fond memories of their last-but-one colonial masters and usually prefer Japanese to Chinese, then that would enrage their not-in-the-slightest-bit-brainwashed patriotic youth and force them to smash up a few more sushi joints as part of the latest in-no-way-government-sanctioned show of “nationalist pride.”
But before they get too heated, the Chicoms should sit back and ask themselves why we appreciate the Japanese so much. After all, they came close to eliminating malaria, built a genuine railway system and engineered an overall increase in the standard of living — as well as instilling in us a taste for manga and dodgy porn.
What have those Red bastards ever given us apart from threats, disease, toxic food, bullshit and empty promises? (Tourists, anyone?)
Rumor has it that an edited version of the film without any reference to Japan or Japanese culture is nearing completion. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television-approved 10-minute version will be released just in time for the fourth anniversary of the “Anti-Secession” Law in March.
I have to admit that all the time spent collecting items to send to Green Island as part of my gal Cathy Pacific’s Christmas food parcel — as well as wiping our mutt Punkspleen’s butt — means I am one of about 70 Taiwanese yet to see this cinematic masterpiece, but during a little research into the film I came across this gem on its Wikipedia page:
“The film has become a timely respite for Taiwanese, who are troubled by the global downturn, the alleged money laundering scandals from a former president and first lady, the chain of typhoons hitting Taiwan and Wang Chien-Ming’s (王建民) injury during the 2008 Major League Baseball season.”
The perfect storm, indeed.
Anyway, I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall and seen Chen Yunlin’s face at the private showing during his Grand Hotel stay as he tried to stifle his disgust while choking back a chunk of yansuji (鹽酥雞).
A similar reaction had probably not been witnessed since 1900s Austria, when the Rosenbergs popped next door to show the Hitlers and their odd young son grainy footage of young Joshua’s Bar Mitzvah.
Mind you, Chen should have been unsurprised at the film’s content because, in true Chicom style, a couple of weeks prior to his trip he nipped out of Zhongnanhai and down Changan Street to Beijing’s Silk Market to pick up a pirated copy for US$1. Unsurprised, unless his copy was of the same quality as the DVDs I picked up in China a few years ago while on my incognito tour of sites of Nationalist civil war victories (shortest trip I’ve ever been on).
My antiquated DVD player spat them out faster than you can say Emperor Hirohito.
I suppose that we should be grateful that the film was sent to China in the first place given our government’s new policy of asking “How high?” whenever Beijing says “Jump.”
The United Daily News report said senior Chinese officials believed that releasing the film ran counter to the peaceful atmosphere that Taiwan and China have been promoting.
Peaceful atmosphere? Try telling that to the family of Wo Weihan (伍維漢), a 59-year-old Chinese medical researcher who was executed just over a week ago for passing on “secrets” to a group linked to our intelligence agencies.
The secrets in question were information related to the health of a senior Chicom and a few military details that had been printed in a magazine, data that were later reclassified as “secret.”
Matsu help me. If joking about the well-being of the leftover Long Marchers and publicizing stuff lifted from Chinese magazines is a capital offense over the way these days, then I’d better not plan any more nocturnal cross-border visits to Shenzhen (it turns out I miss Cathy more than I ever thought possible).
Oh, I nearly forgot. In her last e-mail, my beloved said the word on the street down there is that the Ministry of Justice has plans to refurbish the Green Island Lodge and use it to house the recently indicted Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) figures who are found guilty. They are also planning to rename the rocky outcrop “Pan-Green Island.”
On a lighter note and in yet another sign of the new warmth felt for pro-independence figures by our commiepatriots, a friend passed me a story from the Web site www.chinareviewnews.com that detailed how the Maokong Gondola’s well-publicized problems have nothing to do with former Taipei mayor and current President Ma’s decision to push the project through without a comprehensive environmental impact assessment (as I detailed in a recent column) and everything to do with sabotage by Taiwanese independence forces.
At first I laughed, but … come to think of it, those DPP Taipei City councilors have been spending an awful lot of time up in the hills of Muzha (木柵) lately scratching around the various pillars.
Maybe the real reason is that they’ve been busy burying all of former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) allegedly ill-gotten gains up there in readiness for when he gets out of jail in 2050.
Don’t scoff. Haven’t you seen The Shawshank Redemption?
Got something to tell Johnny? Go on, get it off your chest. Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but be sure to put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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