Society

My mother told me that its not polite to say “I told you so”, but I can’t help it. From the start of the global economic crisis last year, we’ve been blogging and Podcasting like maniacs saying, “Yea … I know it is rough out there. But China could be a shining light at the end of the tunnel for companies going through the rough stuff. If the rest of your world is crumbling, now might be the time to really look at China.”

And now, no less an august body than the U.S.-China Business Council is saying just this. In their recent survey, released on October 7th and highlighted in this article from Industry Week, they say, and I quote, “Most U.S. companies doing business in China are profitable and many want to step up investments despite fears on the economy, protectionism and intellectual property rights.”

Yep, I told you so.

I woke up this morning with two words running through my head: “Reality TV”. Kind of a scary thought, huh? But what got me thinking about Reality TV is not the content, per se, but the business model: find a bunch of people, average schlubs, and film them acting as such; edit the content to highlight the schlub-iest moments and then put it on prime time television. Violà… instant ratings. Like all great ideas, I am kicking myself that I did not think of it first. Why, you might ask, should I consider myself so forward-looking as to think I should/could come up with that idea? Well, because what they call “Reality Television” I call “the average day in China.”

An Uncanny Story

On July 16, 2009, an anonymous internet user in a popular Baidu discussion forum posted a message titled “Jia Junpeng, your mother wants you to go home to eat.” The message has only twelve Chinese characters in its title and has no other content. Yet it got 3,000 responses within five hours, responses that range from the routine socializing type (“Support!” “Interesting!”) to the funny and sarcastic (“I am not going to eat at home today. I’m eating in the Internet bar. Please pass on my message to my mom.”). Within one day, it received seven million hits and 300,000 comments. Large portal sites like sina.com, netease.com, people.com and newspapers like Southern Metropolis began to cover it, adding to its popularity. A cryptic posting was thus turned into a national media event. Jia Junpeng became a household word in Chinese cyberspace overnight.

No one knows who posted the message or who the Jia Junpeng in the message is. In their responses, many people doubted whether the Jia Junfeng in the posting refers to a real person. The name might just have been made up by whoever posted the message.

On the first day of term, Southern Metropolis Daily asked primary school children in Guangzhou what they want to be when they grow up. Here are some of the answers: