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Three scenes from the subway (includes subversive panda content)
Life under ground, in three acts.
1.
The subversive pandas go soft-power. For illustrations of their previous quasi-menace, check
here,
here, and
here. Now, a love-bombing campaign, as seen at the Jianguomen station today:
It's all part of an ad campaign to boost tourism to Sichuan province, homeland of the pandas and of course the site of last year's earthquake.
2.
What is inside those mysterious blue anti-bomb pots? Not very much, it turns out. (Background
here.) At an undisclosed location, I found one of them sitting propped open. Inside there appears to be a miniature cargo net, to cradle whatever suspect item is placed there. Otherwise it's just a big metal ball. I feel safer now. (You're looking down from the top in this picture, to see an inch-thick metal lid tilted open, and the reddish metal interior.)
3.
Is 'Prison Break' big in China? It is very, very big! The star Wentworth Miller -- "Michael Scofield" -- is absolutely enormous, dominating a skyline view of Shanghai in an ad for the Chevy Cruze.
That's the rocket ship-shaped Tomorrow Square building, eponym for my
latest book, on the far left side.
GM looks sexier here than it may at the moment in the US -- Buick is still a dominant, tres chic brand.
Political PS: security is ratcheting up in Beijing, as we move toward a 20-year anniversary that is 36 days from today. A subway cop came over looking hostile when he saw me taking pictures of the 'Prison Break' ads. Relying on the widespread Chinese assumption that I
am in fact the 43rd president of the United States, I explained reassuringly that I was interested in the posters because they were of "my friend in the United States." It was too complicated to explain the real connection -- which is that Miller's father was my classmate in graduate school.
Subversive Panda II: More freedom, more confusion (updated)
Recently I mentioned the winsome advertising-panda of the Dongsishitiao subway stop in Beijing. (Cameo reminder photo below; previous post
here, with link to larger picture.)
I asserted that the English version of the slogan -- "More Freedom, More Happiness" -- was ambiguous in a subtly provocative way. Was the beloved symbol of the Chinese nation really saying, "the freer you are, the happier you will be"? Or saying that only to visitors who could read the English translation? Or saying it inadvertently via mistranslation?
As for the Chinese version of his slogan, 更多自由, 更多欢乐 -- that is, the version that 99.9% of the passersby would pay attention to -- I (wisely!) declared myself agnostic on how that should be read. And I had no explanation for the oddity of a panda talking about freedom in the first place.
The wisdom of the readers:
1) Many people, Chinese and otherwise, said that the ad was really a way of stressing that the pandas of Chengdu and greater Sichuan province now enjoyed bigger, freer enclosures than before and therefore are happier. Sounds like a stretch to me, but: OK. More on the pandas of Sichuan and the now-destroyed Wolong Panda Reserve in
this article and
this slideshow and
these posts.
1A) One man suggested that it was an ad for tea. The cup in the panda's
hand paw in fact says "tea."
UPDATE 1B):
John Zhu and some other native-speakers of Chinese have said that the "freedom" implied by the term 自由 really implies the ease, leisure, and kicking-back approach to life with which Chengdu is associated. By this reasoning, the ad is speaking neither about bigger enclosures for pandas, nor wider political liberties for people, but simply a nice-and-easy vacation in Sichuan.
2) I have had a delightful and instructive introduction to the mysteries of language via emails like the two I list after the jump. Basically the pattern has been this: an expert on the Chinese language who is
not a native speaker (linguistics professor, long-time resident, etc) writes to say: "Obviously the Chinese phrase means X..." The meaning of X varies from one expert to another. Then a native Chinese speaker will write in to say, "I dunno... could mean one thing, could mean the other."
3) And, with gratitude to all who wrote, my favorite reply was from reader KS who said that Subversive Panda "will be the name I suggest for my son's rock band, when he's old enough to have a rock band."
Illustrations of point 2, below.
________
Continue reading "Subversive Panda II: More freedom, more confusion (updated)" »
Comic strips about the earthquake
Not ha-ha funny comics, but graphic novel-type earnest renderings of some of the earthquake scenes now becoming famous in China. They are by the Chinese artist/illustrator Coco Wang and are here, with captions in English. Check the index on the right side of the page -- "Strip 2: The Boy Who Lived," etc -- to see each of the several-panel installments.
The current installment tells of the rescue of pandas from the Wolong center -- including the fact that the staff was instructed to rescue the foreign visitors first, then the pandas. The images are copyrighted, so here is just one atypically jokey frame from the panda sequence:
Most of the other stories are in far more heroic/tragic mode. The strips are interesting in themselves and are a little window on the imagery and tone with which the earthquake is entering public imagination here. (Thanks to Brian Wagner.)
An account of Mao Mao the Panda's funeral in Wolong
I mentioned earlier that the remains of Mao Mao, a 9-year-old mother panda, had been found in the rubble of the Wolong Panda Reserve a month after the devastating Sichuan earthquake. The current home page of Pandas International features an account by PI's Suzanne Braden about the search for Mao Mao, who had been missing since the earthquake, and what happened thereafter.
It has photos of the search for Mao Mao, an explanation of the "quake lake" phenomenon (which is what did Mao Mao in), and an update on the panda reserve. Strangely moving, including the part about how Mao Mao must have been trapped by rising quake-lake water when the wall finally came down on her. It takes nothing away from respect for the enormous human cost of this event to recognize the other costs too.
Mao Mao the panda laid to rest
Mao Mao, a nine-year old panda who had given birth to five cubs, had not been seen at the Wolong Panda Reserve since the Sichuan earthquake on May 12. On Monday of this week, her body was found under the ruins of her stone enclosure.
The current home page of the (Washington DC) National Zoo's panda page reports her death and says, "Mao Mao was a valuable member of the panda community and will be missed." An AP story on Mao Mao points out the larger peril the earthquake has posed for the Wolong panda breeding program, since many of the females were in the "falling in love" season and were newly impregnated. Also, much of the panda sperm stored in freezers at the reserve, to maximize genetic diversity, may have been lost.
Her keeper, He Changgui, mourns at her grave. According to the AP, "he had cared for the panda since she was 3, speaking to her in the local Sichuan dialect as he worked.
"It's like you could say something and she would understand," he said. "If you were happy, she was happy too."
I do love the idea that Mao Mao spoke not just Chinese but the Sichuan dialect. After all, it was her native region.
(Thanks to Margot Griffith.)
Pandas on TV
Word from Pandas International is that an NBC-TV crew has recently been to the Wolong Panda Reserve, heavily damaged in the recent Sichuan earthquake. Reports are scheduled to run on both the Today show and the Nightly News with Brian Williams tomorrow, Friday, June 13.
"Are scheduled to" is not the same as "will." But for the heck of it, why not tune in? I would if I could.
