Saviours and Slackers

SAVIOURS AND SLACKERS Linda Jaivin HE 2017 FILM Wolf Warrior 2 film in any single territory worldwide T战狼 II, which is set in an unnamed after Star Wars 7 in the United States. African country, portrays the dramatic Not long after the film’s release, rescue of Chinese and African hostages a rumour arose online that Wu Jing from ruthless American mercenaries was a foreign-passport holder. On by a Chinese special forces operative. 7 August, the official Weibo account of The film’s tag line is as muscular as its the Jiangsu Police posted the Chinese director and action hero star Wu Jing passports of both the director and his 吴京: ‘Whoever offends our China will wife, affirming that the whole family be put to death’ 犯我中华者，虽远必诛. held Chinese citizenship, following this (A more literal reading would be statement with a bouncing ‘thumbs up’ ‘whoever offends our China, no matter Theatrical how far away, must be punished by release poster for Wolf death’.) Patriotism sells. Within two Warrior 2 Source: weeks of its late-July release, Wolf Wikipedia Warrior 2, based on the cult 2006 military novel Bullet Hole 弹痕 by Fenwu Yaoji 纷舞妖姬 (the pen name of Dong Qun 董群), became the highest grossing film in Chinese history. Within one month, it had taken in US$800 million at the box office, becoming the second-highest grossing 34 emoji. The police reminded people that patriotic fervor, which asserts that the 35 the ‘malicious spread of rumours and Chinese will act in the best interests of slander’ was a crime.1 It is uncertain as the world’s downtrodden, while the rest to whether the police were suggesting of the world just exploits them’. that it was slanderous to say someone China’s prosperity has sparked held foreign citizenship. There can be a huge resurgence in national pride, a thin line between patriotic pride and and a growing sense of China taking its anti-foreign sentiment. That line was rightful place in the world. The Party- crossed more than once in Chinese state’s carefully curated narrative Saviours and Slackers Linda Jaivin popular culture in 2017. of China’s rise slates all the pain and There is not a huge conceptual leap sorrow that the Chinese people have 2017 from the patriotic heroism of Wolf War- suffered over the last two centuries rior 2 to the pimp-rolling xenophobic home to foreign exploitation, begin- swagger of Chengdu rapper Xie Di 谢帝, ning with the Opium Wars of the early CHINA STORY YEARBOOK CHINA STORY aka ‘Fat Shady’. In his expletive-filled nineteenth century. Some fifty-three music video ‘Stupid Foreigners’ 瓜老外, per cent of the population was born released in July, Xie Di accuses foreign- after 1976; most of them would have ers in China of being losers who could no idea of the suffering of previous not make it in their own countries, in- generations at the hands of the Party vites them to polish his (foreign) car itself in the decade-long Cultural Rev- and his (foreign) boots, and then be- olution, the three-year famine that heads with a baseball bat a mannequin preceded it, or any of the other move- on which is written ‘stupid foreigners’. ments later swept under the carpet of New York film critic Simon Abrams, official history. Many have only known writing on rogerebert.com, said of Wolf increasingly higher standards of living Warrior 2: ‘its characters’ sense of pat- and ever-greater social and personal riotism is built on the back of racist as- opportunity. With limited access to sumptions that would, in a European or uncensored international discourse American narrative, be rightfully crit- around such topics as China’s actions icized for being part of an ugly “white in the South China Sea, they are aston- saviour” power fantasy’. Noel Murray ished and outraged by negative per- of the Los Angeles Times commented: ceptions abroad of how China is man- ‘there is something bracing about its aging its growing power: Wolf Warrior 2 and Fat Shady’s lyrics are among the about China’s national achievements cultural expressions of this. including the space program and mo- With its assertive delivery and bile phone payment systems. CD Rev’s association with bling, ‘pimped rides’, previous songs include ‘The Force of and all the rest, hip hop 嘻哈 appeared Red’ 红色力量, which refers to the pres- well suited to conveying a message of ident of Taiwan as the ‘bitch Tsai Ing- prosperity pride. Hip hop was part of wen’, and another that addresses for- China’s diverse popular music scene eign correspondents as ‘media punk for some years, but went mainstream ass white trash fuckers’ and ‘faggots in the summer of 2017 with the broad- from the West’. Swearing, misogyny, cast on the video channel iQiYi of the and homophobia are traits that Pissy’s first episode of the music competition lyrics share with some of the more in- The Rap of China 中国有嘻哈 (with famous rap songs from the US; missing the prize being gold chains that spell is the anti-authoritarian spirit of genre- ‘R!CH’). By October, The Rap of China defining songs such as N.W.A.’s ‘Fuck had racked up billions of views. Tha Police’. Pissy’s message is more Within a mostly anodyne scene ‘don’t fuck [with] tha’ police’. that has produced, for example, songs Although at the start of 2018, the about the local delicacies of the Xi’an Party-state decided to ban rap and hip- region, a number of what you might hop from television. Yet, the Commu- call patriotic prosperity rappers had nist Youth League had helped produce emerged. In 2016, the group Tianfu ‘This is China’, and Pissy widely vaunt- Shibian 天府事变 (also known as CD ed his Party connections and support. Rev) produced an English-language Stating that it is important for young ‘red rap’ 红色嘻哈 called ‘This is China’ people (he is twenty-three) to ‘step 听好了，这才是中国. Singer Li Yijie 李 into this system’, he told Reuters that 毅杰 (who goes by the English name the members of his group ‘frequently ‘Pissy’) said he wrote it as a response dined with officials to exchange ideas’.3 to Western media ‘fabrications’ about Domestic critics of ‘red rap’ dismiss China and his conviction that the them as typical ‘50-cent-ers’ 五毛党 — American government hires people in that is, hacks paid by the Party to spout China to brainwash Chinese children the Party line — and the Hong Kong into loving the US.2 The lyrics boast and Taiwan media have expressed dis- 36 through the creation of memes, in- 37 cluding from the 1990s Chinese sitcom I Love my Family 我爱我家, in which comedian-actor Ge You 葛优 plays an archetypal loser, spending much of his time sprawling dishevelled and listless A Ge You sofa meme on a friend’s sofa. Source: Baidu Sang culture appeals on the basis taste for the form as well. This does not of humour. But as many commentators Saviours and Slackers Linda Jaivin bother the red rappers, however. One have noted, it also expresses the futil- 2017 article on the Chinese-language web- ity felt by many young people in the site xihachina.com responded to such face of barriers to social mobility and critics using the English phrase: ‘What- shared prosperity such as the prohib- ever’.4 Despite the ban, at time of pub- itive cost of housing as well as corrup- CHINA STORY YEARBOOK CHINA STORY lication xihachina.com was still going tion and nepotism. Working hard, as and so was hip hop. urged by the People’s Daily in its re- ‘Whatever’ could be the slogan for sponse to sang culture, does not solve another, entirely opposite genre of cul- everything. Clearly onto its more sub- tural, or rather subcultural production versive implications, the Party organ that rose to prominence in 2017 as well: has labelled sang culture ‘ideological ‘sang culture’ 丧文化. The character opium’ and linked it to crime and sui- 5 sang when pronounced in the first tone cide. But sang culture is also an anti- means funeral or mourning. When dote to the frenetic pace of a rampant- pronounced in the fourth tone, as it is ly materialistic society that provides here, it signifies to lose or have lost, as scant opportunity for leisure or idle- in ‘lose virtue’ 丧德, meaning degener- ness. Another exemplar of sang culture ate; ‘lose ambition’ 丧志 or ‘lose qi’ 丧 is a conversation in the 2016 Japanese 气, to have bad luck and become dis- film Setoutsumi セトウツミ, in which couraged. Sang culture icons include a schoolboy laments the notion that the Netflix animated comedy Bojack young people should always be ‘run- Horseman (now banned in China) and ning and sweating’; he asks a question Catcher in the Rye. One of the most that has become a popular meme: ‘why typical expressions of sang culture is can’t I just waste time by the river?’ DO’S AND DON’TS, by Linda Jaivin China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) had a busy 2017. The following are among the year’s major directives: • China’s 2,500-odd television stations must no longer broadcast shows ‘fo- cussed on entertainment’ or ‘with foreign elements’ during primetime. • Online video content must follow a new set of ‘general rules’ 通则 issued in September. These include a ban on de- pictions of homosexuality, which they Still from SAPPRFT’s video shorts lump together with incest and sexual Source: YouTube assault under ‘abnormal sexual behaviour’ — despite homosexuality having been de- criminalised in 1997 and struck off China’s official list of ‘mental disorders’ in 2001.

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