BEIJING LETTER:There are some who take satirical articles a little too literally, missing the irony completely
IT WAS the kind of satirical article that any reader of Phoenixor Private Eyewould find familiar.
Writing in Hong Kong, magazine columnist Chip Tsao penned a piece recently commenting on the dispute between China and the Philippines over the sovereignty of the remote Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
In the article, Tsao took on the persona of a nationalist Chinese lecturing his Filipina maid on why the islands were Chinese, and telling her to inform the other 130,000 Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong not to mess with “patriotic Chinese”.
“As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master,” he wrote.
“Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout ‘China, Madam/Sir’ loudly whenever they hear the word ‘Spratly’.”
Intended as a satire about patriotism, the joke misfired, and in every way possible. Filipino workers in Hong Kong and the Philippines staged protests, and the bureau of immigration in Manila barred Tsao from entering the Philippines.
Hong Kongmagazine pulled the article off its website and replaced it with an apology.
“The column in question was satirical. One aspect of satire is that it can at times be read in different ways. In this particular case, many people have read meanings into this column that were never actually intended.
“We wish to assure our readers that we have nothing but respect for Filipinos, both living in Hong Kong and abroad,” the apology ran.
On the other hand, tens of thousands of Chinese thought the columnist was defending China’s territory and lauded him as a patriotic hero. This wasn’t what he meant at all.
Comments posted on the sina.com website about the article support his patriotic call, even if he meant precisely the opposite. Some even criticise Tsao for employing Filipino help, saying he should have hired a mainlander as a maid.
The episode happened weeks after the sale of two Chinese relics in France by auctioneer Christie’s – an issue bound to have patriots up in arms.
Satire is a difficult proposition in modern-day China. It is definitely not part of the political vocabulary, and the Communist Party is not especially known for taking jokes well.
The internet is alive with tales of caonima, or grass mud horses, who live happily in the desert, but their habitat has come under threat from river crabs. Many people blog about the grass mud horse and how successful it is in combating the river crab.
What looks like a tale of ecological struggle is actually a subtle satire on internet censorship and freedom in China.
The word for river crabs, hexie in Mandarin Chinese, is a homonym for harmony, which is the central message of President Hu Jintao’s theory about a harmonious society, so “river crabs” are basically censors.
Caonima, meanwhile, is said like a strong expression of anger, so the parable of the grass mud horse and the river crab is actually an expression of unhappiness with the major campaign of internet censorship that has been going on since the start of the year.
One big hit on this subject is a remarkably accurate parody of a Tang dynasty poem and painting. Some shops are even selling toy grass mud horses. There is also a range of grass mud horse songs.
China is not happy.
The world’s third-largest economy behind the US and Japan, you’d think China would be happy, particularly after hosting a successful Olympic Games and conducting its first space walk.
The patriotism that Tsao was satirising forms a major part of a best-selling new book, China is Not Happy, which calls for China to be more assertive and to be more aggressive in its foreign policies. The book is written by five "grassroots intellectuals".
“With Chinese national strength growing at an unprecedented rate, China should stop self-debasing and come to recognise the fact that it has the power to lead the world and the necessity to break away from western influence,” the book says.
It argues that the current financial crisis is a reflection of the corruption in American society, and it has plenty of harsh words for the French.
“We should incorporate retribution and punishment into our diplomatic strategies, especially when dealing with Sino-French relations,” it says, referring to the meeting between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama in December last year.
