“It’s not just children who like it. The core value of the rubber duck is to bring back childlike innocence to all of us, especially weary adults.” – Zeng Hui, head of the Beijing Design Week Organizing Committee

This past summer, the CCP wiped three dangerous terms from the Internet: June 4, May 35, and “Big Yellow Duck.”

For the third term, the culprit — a doctored photo of a rather famous person staring down three tank-sized ducks — disappeared from most Chinese sites before it could become viral. When I first saw it, I imagined John Filo’s 1970 photo of a cold, dead body in a university quad, the incredulous onlookers’ faces superimposed with those of Bert and Ernie.

I kept the nightmares at bay, at least until the announcement that Florentijn Hofman’s “Rubber Duck” (in quotes because, ostensibly, this is True Art) was to be airlifted out of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor to Beijing Design Week.

Well, not airlifted. Replicated. What’s the difference?

The end was near.

An 18-meter-tall ode to a bathroom toy, supported by PVC pipe and pontoons. A disposable thing, a multicolored, artificial thing, floating under the shadow of the Summer Palace. To quote Hofman’s webpage, “The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers; it doesn’t discriminate people and doesn’t have a political connotation. The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relieve mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!”

Hofman channeled what must have been a common sight from his own childhood bathtub, and took it for a multiyear, worldwide tour to Auckland, Sao Paulo, Pittsburgh, Kaohsiung, and now Beijing. He and his promoters could only have assumed that (1) the rubber duck is a universally recognized image; and (2) no one would raise a ruckus if it was placed in a park, or a harbor, or, say, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

They may be right, even if the Chinese translation of “Big Yellow Duck” rejects any nostalgic familiarity. I had to take a look and see what the fuss was about. On the first day of Golden Week, I got off at the Xiyuan subway station in search for the sculpture. Riding up the escalator, I had already counted two dozen ducks, in plush form, held tightly by children and girlfriends.

At the gate near Kunming Lake, street vendors blocked most of the entryways with jianbing stands converted into Duck stores. I swam through and made my way towards the gate.

The Duck faces southeast, with its back towards Longevity Hill. The Seventeen Arch Bridge had the best location for pictures, as long as one was able to secure a spot at the front of the crowd.

The Duck was, in all truth, the least exciting thing on display. It was cordoned off by a circle of buoys which prevented any of the tourist boats from slamming directly into it. A lone boat underneath the Duck housed a man one could call the Duck Doctor, spot checking the Duck and keeping an eye out for any dangers (thrown cigarettes? vandals?) that may endanger his patient.

I yawned. The people were more interesting. I surveyed the shag carpet landscape of cameras and plush dolls. I had more questions than answers. When taking a picture, what’s the most popular pose? (A: Pretend to grab the Duck’s beak.) Why are all of these boats willing to ram each other for a closer look at the Duck? (A: Because you only live once.)

I started to leave, underwhelmed and perplexed as to why, of all of the stops on the Duck’s worldwide tour, the representative bathtubs of China have brought the largest crowds. There’s been something about inflatable art in China as of late. The Duck will one day leave Beijing, but copies and counterfeits will remain.

Like many other foreigner armchair commentators in this jeweled capital city, I tend to assume wrongly that everything Weibo’d on Weibo wields a sharp axe to social and political conventions of China, when we very well know that it is rarely the case, and at the end of the day, most people just want to take pictures of food. The Duck Man picture, even if it was uncensored tomorrow, would likely be buried underneath millions of self-portraits.

But after my brief visit with the Duck, the picture — and its political connotations — made much more sense. The Ducks are coming, part of a steady invasion of 21st-century kitsch, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Before exiting, I turned around for one last look at our new overlord. Long live the true Beijing Duck.

Chris tweets @chrisclayman and keeps a Tumblr.

Sometime after 9 pm on July 18, Linzhou police officer Guo Zengxi, off-duty and on a night-long bender, stumbled outside a KTV building, snatched a 7-month old infant out of an unfamiliar couple’s hands, raised her over his head, and slammed her into the ground. The young girl, named Yueyue, lost consciousness before being rushed to the hospital, then spent days in intensive care with multiple skull fractures.

Meanwhile, Guo stayed home on his chief’s orders, under the surveillance of his colleagues. He was only considered a “suspect.” It took nearly a month and widespread news coverage and outrage in social media before Guo was formally charged of any crime.

Like with many recent cases in China, many are left wondering whether this delay in justice was the result of incompetence, obstruction, or an awful mix of both.

This recent CCTV report, led by “One on One” reporter Dong Qian, is a revealing look into not only what transpired that July night, but also the lengths that local officials will go, if only to protect the image of the upstanding, trustworthy local policeman. Dong sits down with Guo as well as Yueyue’s father and the recently suspended police bureau chief in Linzhou. Here’s a summary of the 22-minute show.

~

Yueyue’s father was playing with his daughter outside a KTV building when Guo strolled by and nudged him. The father pushed back. Guo reached out and grabbed the child.

“Until then, while I was holding her, I wasn’t worried [about him],” the father says. “I didn’t know he was going to do that. It was fast. Two seconds.”

Yueyue’s father tried to take back his infant, but it was too late. Guo had stepped away, Yueyue in hand. Some accounts claim that Guo raised the child over his head. Others say that he simply lost grip. Yueyue hit the ground, let out a brief cry, then went silent.

~

“I hit the table. I cried,” says Linzhou police chief Wei Shuping, recounting the morning after the incident — the moment he caught wind of Guo’s actions.

What happened next is a comedy of errors, from misfiled medical reports to clumsily distributed hush money (“We wanted to make sure they could afford the best doctors,” says Wei, explaining the 20,000 yuan “donation” to Yueyue’s family), and a month-long twiddling of thumbs.

~

Guo woke up the morning after the crime sober and “repentant” for what he had done. On camera, he is handcuffed and flanked by two guards.

“You used to put handcuffs on others,” the reporter notes, “and now you are wearing them yourself.”

Guo, at the very least, looks remorseful for how one night of drinking ruined so many lives.

When the reporter asks Guo about whether the ordeal was the result of a drunken bet, as was originally reported, he responds, “That’s a joke. I want to clear this up: it’s fabricated. I can’t figure out how it started, but it’s all false.”

“Then how did this all happen?” Dong asks.

“After drinking, I really don’t know what happened.”

It took more than a month for Guo to end up behind bars. He was escorted home and put on a sort of unofficial house arrest for seven days. Afterwards, Guo’s physical and emotional state convinced the bureau to allow him to leave his house. This entire time, and throughout the following weeks, the bureau chief claimed that they were waiting for formal charges from Yueyue’s family, as well as for final reports from the chief medical examiner. Neither came.

Dong sits patiently while Wei explains the legal process that blocked them from leveling charges against Guo. It’s a classic exercise in politics to divert the blame through technicalities, but while Wei denies a cover-up, he finally admits that he did not really want Guo’s crime to come to public light. And why would he? With something this egregious, and with the entire reputation of the local police on the line, why not just plug your ears and start humming?

~

But something like this never goes away so easily, especially given the witnesses (and apparently a video) at the scene of the crime. In a month’s time, the story explodes on social media. A news organization puts together a sensationalist animation recreating the incident, and the Linzhou Police Bureau finds itself in the national spotlight.

In a very telling moment near the end, Dong finally, almost angrily, asks Wei whether the bureau deliberately staged a cover-up.

“We didn’t have the means or a reason to do so. If a reporter asks us questions, can we obstruct them from asking?”

Dong later snaps, “You must know that you are not just police; you are the People’s Police. Do not forget those two characters (人民).”

Wei looks straight back at Dong. He apologizes for injuring the family, injuring the reputation of the police, and injuring the public trust. He then asks if the interview can be done with, stands up, and bows to the camera.

Chris tweets @chrisclayman and keeps a Tumblr.

BJC contributor Chris Clayman attended the Dali Erhai World Music Festival in Yunnan province from April 29 – May 1. His dispatch follows.

A Cop with a Weird Haircut

We’re standing near the fortune teller when Lin Dan shows us something.

“I’m a cop,” he says. He pulls out his wallet and holds it close to his waist, his left hand shading a badge. Then he looks around to make sure one of the five hundred policemen present that day isn’t nearby.

“I’m one of the few at my office who is not a party member.”

“If you’re undercover, you’re doing a pretty bad job,” I tell him, since he had snuck a joint with one of my friends earlier that day. It all stank to me. This guy, faux-hawked, showed up out of the blue somewhere in the queue to get in, then followed our group — a “suspicious” mix of foreign and Chinese twentysomethings — for an entire day before calmly telling everyone that he’s the police.

“No worries. I’m just here for the music.” He stuffs his wallet back into his pocket. “I’ll catch you later.” He quickly signals to his friend, the fortune teller, who stiffens and walks toward the stage with him.

What Are You Doing Out Here?

You could mistake this festival for any other in China, MIDI or Strawberry or what have you, full of off-duty Lin Dans, students who have a few days off, square glasses and leopard print leggings, a sprinkled few who seem amazingly out of place, and about as many security guards to make sure things stay copacetic.

Then again, this festival is the first of its kind in a city where “music culture” usually implies white people with dreads selling bongos in Old Town.

Welcome to Dali.

While at MIDI you may split your time between an actual band and the Mountain Dew Mist Tent, Erhai’s distractions are minimal: a few food tents, a Converse-sponsored skate park, and a sedated BMW show with a few bored models and no customers. The single stage at the festival, blasting music toward the lake, draws people away from all else.

The three-day event was likely the best-organized rock festival Yunnan has ever seen. No big delays, only one technical fuck-up, a few ejections, Porta Potties cleaner than my own bathroom, cheap food, and multiple trash cans. What more to ask for?

Maybe a nastier crowd, for one. I’m used to dealing with complete jerks at music festivals in Chicago and North Carolina. The (mostly) students near the stage rarely pushed and shoved, and had a tendency to put their hands on each other’s shoulders and mimic a train snaking through the crowd during each set. The only palatable anger on display was directed at the guards, who were quick to push back the crowds or try to squash an aspiring moshpit. But most of the audience’s hands never gave the bird, only the heavy metal horns, which is international sign language for “I guess this is what we do at music festival.”

The Bands

Check out the Douban pages of the participating bands — Escape Plan, Shuangzi, Reflector — and you’ll likely conclude that they’re all rather stale. The songwriting is dynamic, but the recordings are flat and lifeless.

What they don’t reveal is how each band likely got its chops playing small shows in Beijing and Kunming. And every hour and a half at this festival, a band goes on stage and proves they’re meant to be heard live, not through the tinny speaker of a counterfeited Smartphone.

Escape Plan (逃跑计划) gives a reverb-laden performance that reminds me of both Keane and New Order. Their lead singer is one of the few frontmen who doesn’t feel the need to posture, and seems genuinely happy to perform. Miserable Faith (痛仰) has one of the largest fanbases there, a crowd full of logoed flags. Brain Damage (脑浊) performs a short, kinetic, and shirtless power-punk set.

There are also those who underwhelm.

The headliners — with the exception of Xu Wei and former Voice of China contestant Chu Qiao — have certainly seen better days. He Yong (何勇), the Godfather of Chinese Post-Punk, could’ve used a good nap, a sad thought considering his wacky and defiant past. Black Panther (黑豹), one of Beijing’s first metal bands, now with new singer Zhang Qiren, is likewise a big bowl of cheese dressed up like Ronnie James Dio. Smaller bands such as Tiantang (天堂) and the artist Shuangzi (爽子) sound like theme songs to Ed Hardy t-shirts.

But with the possible exception of He Yong, the bands all give off great vibes, and the crowd eagerly returns it (even lesser-known reggae bands like Path of the Dragon God (龙神道), who pushed back their set to fit crowd demand, had plenty of fans singing their lyrics by heart). Zhang Qiren runs laps around the stage, as well as off of it, inspiring about 400 local security men to scramble around him like Keystone Cops and block him off from the mob. Shuangzi calls out for audience participation during “I Don’t Give a Shit” (我不管) and has everyone off their feet in one of the most fun songs that week.

In the middle of “Your Request is Impossible” (你的要求我做不到) by Recycle, a pop-punk four-piece from Beijing, I push my way to the front, trying to get a good overhead of the moshpit. This is what I’m talking about.

“I Heard English”

It was common to look up at the Jumbotron on stage and see a close-up of one or two white faces, though there were maybe a dozen foreigners among the thousands. There are still some places in China where the presence of a foreigner is an Event, particularly for those of us expats who hide in the corners of Yunnan and are the laowai of our villages and cities. After my pale face makes the cut, my girlfriend mutters: “Foreigner approaching.”

“Hey, I just heard English and had to come over.”

The guy works in a smaller town outside of Kunming as a lawyer for US visas. He offers to help secure my girlfriend US citizenship.

“Well, we were thinking of a fake green card marri…”

“Everything I do is above board, man. So many misconceptions.”

He leaves us his card and fades back into the crowd.

“Ta Zuo Yi Ge Hen Bang De Kickflip”

Besides the drummer and guitarist in Xu Wei’s band, there’s only one other foreigner working at the festival, and boy does he work it. Converse, the main promoter, set up a small skate park which doubles as a shoe storage unit. I’m unsure whether they’ll find any promising young skaters, but not for lack of trying. Converse Man offers 100RMB, then 200RMB to the first skater to land a 180° kickflip, and we all wait in suspense. Boards fly into the crowd. I watch for about fifteen minutes before a young boy in dreads finally lands one.

But I mut give Converse Man credit, who’s nothing but positive as young guys fail and fail. If only we could have heard just his voice and not seen the skaters, we’d have assumed they were amazing. Converse Man, get a job at Huawei. You can do them some good.

Back at the Monkey

It’s midway through the second day, and I’ve had enough of reggae-infused aggro-rock and pop music, and leave in the middle of Miserable Faith’s set. Later that night, I run into Lin Dan at Bad Monkey, a popular bar in Dali Old Town. “How were the rest of the bands today?” I ask.

“Xu Wei, man. Xu Wei!” He gives me the metal horns.

“You going tomorrow?”

“No. Gotta go back to being a cop tomorrow.”

So it is. And the day after, Dali returns to a city of yuppies and tourists, towners and relocated urban dwellers who’ve found refuge in this backwater. A city of low clouds with a wall, a mountain, a lake, and an alright music scene — at least until next April.

Chris tweets @chrisclayman and keeps a Tumblr.

Anybody watch Happy Camp (快乐大本营), Hunan TV’s flagship variety show? Turn on the TV because it’s probably airing right now. The show inexplicably has five hosts. There’s He Jiong, unarguably the Ryan Seacrest of the show, then the charming Xie Na, and then three others who stand nearby and occasionally say and/or hold something. Every once in awhile, just to remind us he’s still there, host Du Haitao steps into the frame and cracks a one-liner.

But even as the scrub of Happy Camp, Du lands plenty of TV and movie roles, has millions of fans, and must be aware that whenever he is in public, someone is probably taking a video of him.

According to Du’s manager, Du was filming on location last week when a fan approached him and tried to snatch his sunglasses and necklace, but no real scuffle occurred.

Then, like clockwork, a video appeared on Sina Weibo showing Du throwing a healthy jab at the fan. The manager must’ve misled us! Alert the Weibo morality police! #duhaitaohitssomebody!

I for one can’t tell who is at fault or why there are almost 9 million discussions about this fight on Weibo. On the other hand, I’m sure that when Brian Dunkleman gets into a bar brawl, it’ll trend on Twitter. For now, Du can probably safely return to his spot on Happy Camp and continue asking C-Pop stars about their girlfriend situations.

Chris tweets @chrisclayman and keeps a Tumblr.

Found the above on Reddit, posted by Dog22222, titled, “Taobao Seller’s Infographic on Shavin Your Unmentionables.” Eh, why not? We asked our resident pubic hair expert, Chris Clayman (just kidding! Or not… we didn’t run this joke by him), to take a look. He sent translations!

Before we get to those, a little background: we couldn’t find the above infographic on Taobao itself, but a company called LC Love Cosmetic is running the image on its website (featuring a weirdly inappropriate ad for Shinayaka Wash). If you use the product, so goes the ad, “there will be a big difference in a couple’s love-making experience.”

The “Cool” Look

Even wearing small panties, it won’t come out from either side! Feminine elegance — sure enough an elegant inverse triangle.

The Fortune-telling (八字?) Look

It’s always poking out from both sides of the panties. And the boyfriend has just entered the atmosphere. He can’t help but start worrying.

The Exploding Look

The hair freely grows in all directions. It’s oppressed by the panties. A disheveled look, like waking up and not arranging your hair.

The Dense Look

Looks like a dense forest, curly and messy. Intimidated by the possibility her partner has the same look!

The Long-Hair Look

This has never received care, note the length and texture!

The Inverse-Tail Look

Always keeps the middle long and shave around it. During intimate moments there is a danger of stinging her partner.

Discuss. (H/T Alicia)

Chris tweets @chrisclayman, keeps a Tumblr.

China’s air travel bubble is bringing out its fair share of violent characters, many with the burning desire to take out their frustration on airport personnel. January saw riots at Kunming’s new Changshui Airport, and a month later, CPPCC delegate Yan Linkun lost his cool.

So what’s new in airport violence? See: Guangzhou gate agent in the fetal position.

On February 20, two passengers impatiently waiting on a delayed flight from Melbourne beat and kicked a gate agent to the ground (via Adam Minter for Bloomberg). Not much else is known about the incident, save the image of an undeserved beating that flared up on Sina Weibo.

欣Hidden：Why is it mainly us who get injured?

巴伐利亚的：There’s no justice!

It’s one thing to destroy property, and another to harm an attendant who holds no responsibility for your flight woes. You wouldn’t beat up the mailman for delivering your expensive utility bill (a few expletives are fine, for the record). While we all wait for details on what brought on the beating, someone should grab angry travelers by the shoulders and shout, “Welcome to air travel, dudes! Expect things to not always go your way!”

There’s hope that the end of Spring Festival will bring reliable travel, and with that, cooler heads. Given that, such thugs will likely make annual appearances. Our thoughts and prayers go out to airport service people everywhere (yes, that includes the attendants who had to deal with Anthony Bordain and a guy who couldn’t contain himself).

Chris tweets @chrisclayman, keeps a Tumblr.

While the China blogosphere rolls out the usual news — your local PM 2.5 particulates and brutish chengguan – state media would like to remind you that there’s a gentler side to this country. In the above video, as part of CNS TV’s recent series on “Warming the Zhongyuan“ (Central Plains), the anchorwoman reports:

Although these days it isn’t uncommon to donate to charity, including funding students, the commitment to helping others still comes mainly from the little people using their small contributions to represent a larger love. We went to Luoyang to get to meet an old man…

84 year-old Hu Fasheng of Luoyang, Henan spends most of his day scavenging for trash, but he uses most of his earnings to help out fellow villagers: pens and notebooks for students, mooncakes for the elderly. He’s been at this for close to 11 years. This kind of selfless service toward the people of his community is commendable given Hu’s own hardships. Queue crying local man; orchestral swells.

Hu is making a small and inspirational impression in Luoyang, like many others throughout this amazing country. Next time you’re down on the state of the PRC, feel free to turn toward these kind of stories, which are reminders of what brought you here in the first place: the good people who pursue a peaceful life.

BJC’s An Expat Christmas series will roll on through the week. In a place where Christmas is an “event” and not part of the culture, it can be cancelled as easily as it is arranged, as Chris Clayman recently found out at his school in Lincang, Yunnan province.

By Chris Clayman

For religious folk, shut-ins, and fans of Home Alone, a one-man Christmas sounds nice enough. It’s really touching how Kevin McAllister takes the time to set up a Christmas tree when no one is around to see his work. But the rest of us likely need others to validate these strange traditions. Does Christmas have meaning when you are the only one celebrating?

My fellow teachers in our isolated Yunnan school are not true holiday comrades; “Christmas” in Ximu means shaokao and overpriced apples. I obviously welcome any Yuletide wishes! But it works only as formality, like saying “good show!” to the violin virtuoso after his performance: one sees the product and the other sees the process, the endless hours of repetition in practice. My co-teachers can’t recall the Christmas mornings of their childhood, their sleepwalk through years of awkward family dinners, the mistletoe in the dorm hallway waiting for a willing couple. In this town, the holiday only exists because I exist.

The sort of material fascination with holiday culture found in China’s cities never made its way to the countryside. I guess I could walk outside drunkenly screaming shengdan kuaile, but most people would take my ramblings only as a reminder that yes, that weird Western holiday happens to be today. So that special festive feeling is confined to my teacher’s dorm: a Santa poster and a Charlie Brown-sized Christmas tree, covered in student-made ornaments. When Skyping with friends and family back home, I’ve made sure to place these things within view, giving off the illusion of globe-spanning Christmas cheer.

Early on I realized that one of my roles as teacher is as the Official Envoy for Western Culture. It’s the only way to keep the Yule log burning, so to speak. So began the month-long challenge of teaching my first- and second-graders a few Christmas songs. Yesterday afternoon, with the rest of the school looking on, the students put on their cardboard Santa hats and gave their interpretations of “Jingle Bells” and “Deck the Halls.” Between songs, two students took out the Charlie Brown tree, stepped in front of the choir, and hung stockings on the branches. In teaching traditions to six- and seven-year olds, sometimes you have to cut a few corners.

The kids held hands and sang “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” maybe the only song they could fully understand. I’m no slouch in Chinese, but I’d like to see you try and explain the lines “boughs of holly” and “bells on bobtails ring” to your EFL students. Actually, I’d like to see you explain them to any adult. Their pageant was moving in the way most children’s choirs move. The kids screamed each syllable, attracting the attention of some of the elderly who were wandering around the school. To me, the spirit of Christmas continues in the busted vocal chords of my students.

When Anthony asked me to write about my Christmas experience in rural Yunnan, I made an ill-advised crack about BJ Cream’s exhaustive car accident coverage. But someone died today, and Christmas is to blame.

I’ll be brief. My principal was suspiciously absent during the pageant. At dinner, a car pulled up in front of the cafeteria. Everyone who stepped out of the car — our current principal and a few teachers — looked like they had aged a few years. Then I heard the story: while gathering food for the Christmas shaokao, Mr. Li, our school groundskeeper, hit and ran over our school’s former principal, a retired man from the nearest village. Under these circumstances, we effectively cancelled Christmas.

The shaokao planned for last night will have to wait until another day. My principal came to my door, shook my hand, and told me Merry Christmas. It’s just that sometimes there are more pressing concerns.

Chris teaches at Ximu Elementary near Lincang, Yunnan province. He keeps a sometimes-active Tumblr, My Own Private China, and tweets @chrisclayman.