Here’s another view of the fireworks on Chinese New Year’s Eve last Wednesday night, taken by someone on a plane landing over Beijing. In my previous post I wrote, “During no other time, living on the ground here, do I feel like zooming out to become an all-seeing observer.” I guess it’d look something like this.

(H/T Jim Boyce)

For the first time ever, New York City set off fireworks to commemorate Chinese New Year. It happened over the Hudson and was synchronized and jubilant. At one moment it looked like skyscrapers were melting out of the night. Colorful. Impressive. Yet it was still mere facsimile for the real thing. You see, for my money, the most noteworthy — if not outright best – New Year’s celebration happens in Beijing.

It was picturesque again this year, but for none of the reasons above. The explosions were over concrete (except at Houhai, where there was frozen water), scattered and chaotic, and emotionally vacant, all bluster and fury like a child who shrieks because he can’t articulate emotions. Then again, Chinese New Year’s fireworks are for beating back evil, not impressing tourists. They are expressions — extensions? — of spirit, if it’s not too much to say so, celebrations of survival that are neither sanctioned by the soft-culture impresarios who drum up corporate concert celebrations nor, really, encouraged (after all, a significant piece of state property went up in flames amidst fireworks only six years ago). In a country divided along so many lines — generational, wealth, gender, household registration, political, cultural, ethnic — it’s only on Chinese New Year’s Eve that people seem truly united, and even then, only accidentally and incidentally.

Long strings of firecrackers, red and green rockets, shot tubes that brighten the sky, plain explosives — who are the people who light the fuses, who then, comically, scurry for safety? I notice it’s mostly the middle-aged, though a young child is often present, sometimes holding a sparkler or variations of the roman candle. Sometimes there is a small crowd that watches from a remove. Most of the time it’s security guards — young — or policemen who have the misfortune of drawing the New Year’s Eve nightshift, forced to watch over a city suddenly folded inward, its shutters closed like the outer gates of an ancient family courtyard.

During no other time, living on the ground here, do I feel like zooming out to become an all-seeing observer, impartial. Yet simultaneously, paradoxically and impossibly, at no other time do I ache to be a participant, to be not everywhere but more fully in one specific place, the one I’m occupying. It’s not so much the pyrotechnics — I have no particular nostalgia for them — as the space between the bursts: the small silences when you’re allowed to consider where, on a night like this, evil might hide. From where in the deep recesses of yourself will it eventually emerge?

Screenshots from the above video I put together:

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone. SheepGoatRam is better than ManBearPig. Or not. I don’t know. Go drink some wine.

Pro tip: be careful, especially while biking, about those box-like “fireworks” out on the streets. They are actually bombs.

The Uyghur-language Spring Festival song and dance spectacular “New Xinjiang, New Melody” is back!

After a five-year absence following the disasters of the Year of the Ox, the Xinjiang Ministry of Culture, in association with the Bureau of Public Relations, welcomed in the Year of the Horse with a star-studded line-up of all the usual Uyghur superstars. Headlined by Abdulla (53:25) and supported by Möminjan (51:45), Six City (42:32), Ablajan (22:59), Berna (15:55) and a host of others, the event was intended to introduce a “brand-new Xinjiang style” to the nation. The multicultural event even featured a Han singer, Wang Jian (39:19), singing a famous song from Kumul in Uyghur (the second night was sung in Mandarin and the write-up for the concert boasts of Hui, Kazakh, Kirgiz and Mongol involvement in the performances). Perhaps the most moving moment came with the great Ekber Qehrimin singing “Oasis Poplar” (Tёrek Bostan) (26:37)  – a heartbreaking classic from the golden age of the 1980s.

Here’s to a year in Xinjiang where moments of happiness like these come often.

Beige Wind runs the website The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, which attempts to recognize and create dialogue around the ways minority people create a durable existence, and, in turn, how these voices from the margins implicate all of us in simultaneously distinctive and connected ways.

|Dispatches from Xinjiang Archives|

Hope everyone had a fun and — more importantly — safe Chinese New Year on Thursday night. By safe we mean: you didn’t break a window, did you? You didn’t burn anything down? Because there was both a broken window and a HUGE-ASS FIRE at 4corners, the Gulou bar with the healthy reputation for holding uproarious and unpredictable parties.

Never mind about the window, which might deserve a few more words if not for HUGE-ASS FIRE. The blaze — short-lived, thankfully — began shortly after midnight during the (comparatively tame) fireworks show. According to 4corners co-owner Tavey Lin, witnesses said the blaze was caused by “some asshole dude” pointing a roman candle at the hutong rooftops. Those witnesses may or may not have been as drunk as the rest of us, but it’s certainly plausible: you probably know an asshole or two who might have done that.

“One such witness told him off but to no avail,” Lin wrote to us in an email. “Really any number of things could have caused the fire, including a rather spectacular stunt involving the Jing A Kegg Egg a while earlier, but shortly thereafter a fire was noticed on the far side of the tent, which rested in a cul-de-sac mostly out of view.”

He continues:

Fire extinguishers were brought out but the fire was already too large by the time it was noticed. Several customers jumped out to help drag the burning tent into the lot away from the homes and pour buckets of water on the last of the flames.

Lin and co-owner Jun reacted quickly and responsibly, so big props to them. Look at the video above, taken by Shannon Aliza. That’s a fire that, had it spread onto the wood rooftops of the nearby hutong buildings, could’ve burned a lot longer.

“Jun’s quick decision to pull the burning tent into the lot away from the homes… possibly saved the roofs of the nearby houses from catching fire,” Lin said.

An angry neighbor came by, followed by cops, but the 4corners owners are in no legal trouble. (They just have to pay for the burnt tent and the cleanup.) If you are asshole responsible for this, please realize that you’re the reason the rest of us can’t have nice things. Do reflect.

Beijingers, if you’re looking for something to do over Spring Festival that doesn’t involve elbowing fathers and sons inside crowded parks, check out the Crossroads, a non-profit / NGO community center in Gulou, which is screening two independent documentaries every day from now until February 6.

All films in Chinese with English subtitles. Tickets are 40 yuan (30 for students), which includes a beer or hot drink. Interested parties are asked to RSVP by emailing hello@jiaochadian.org.

Address: No. 18 Dashiqiao Hutong (大石桥胡同), Jiu Gulou Dajie (旧鼓楼大街), Xicheng Disctrict (Note: as you may already know, the address number on hutongs oftentimes are illogical; No. 18 is not, as you might expect, between Nos. 17 and 19 in this case, but is in fact about 700 meters into the hutong from Jiu Gulou St.)

Schedule (films technically started yesterday):

Saturday Feb 1

• 4pm – Our Children
• 7pm – Big Fog + Q&A with Han Tao

Sunday Feb 2

• 4pm – Civil Investigation
• 7pm – Next Generation + Q&A with filmmakers

Monday Feb 3

• 4pm – Lethe
• 7pm – Surviving Evil

Tuesday Feb 4

• 4pm – One Tree, Three Lives
• 7pm – Siberian Butterfly

Wednesday Feb 5

• 4pm – Last Train Home
• 7pm – Blind Shaft

Thursday Feb 6

• 4pm – Queer China, Comrade China + Q&A and talk from Xu Bin, NGO founder and expert on the Chinese LGBT movement
• 7pm – Silent Summer

Film Introductions (as supplied by Lucy Edwards of Crossroads):

The Next Generation

Does your past determine your future? Does your sexual orientation influence your hopes and dreams? What is love? Come and hear the answers given by Chinese students in this fascinating documentary.

Lao An / The Love of Mr. An

This small-scale Chinese documentary by Yang Lina is an intimate look at relationships, and while it is culturally specific in some ways, the unexpected emotional drama that unfolds is universal. Lao An is a slightly rumpled but charming 89-year-old Chinese man. He loves to dance at the neighbourhood park, where locals crank up a big speaker and spend hours doing the latest ballrooms dancing moves. It was at the park that he met Xiao Wei, a woman in her early 50s, unglamorous but with a grand appreciation for the possibilities of life. The Love of Mr. An is a small, powerful film, and while it makes no grand pronouncements about life, it is most profound.

Lao Tou / Old Men

In an ordinary community of Beijing, there is a group of elderly people who go out at the same time every day, as if to go to work. They gather under trees in summers and enjoy sunlight in winters. The routine of their day, sicknesses and deaths, are captured by the camera, and as time goes on, members of the group are replaced by new people.

Wild Grass

A bracingly unsentimental take on emotionally charged material, Chinese-French co-production Wild Grass (“Ye cao”) documents a group of orphans over 12 years. The circumstances faced by Hongjun and his friends have clearly been very tough, sometimes horrifically so, as when one hapless passerby is casually identified as having had had his arms chopped off by a crazed parent. But the sense of camaraderie amid the “struggle” is palpable throughout: They are “all in it together … brought together by mistake.” Yang and Stephen’s no-nonsense approach allows us to sympathize with their subjects without crossing the line into mawkishness or tear-jerking kiddie-misery. And it endows the occasional more poetic touch — as when Hongjun, who describes the orphans as “twisted trees,” is shown sitting on a swing in the drizzling rain of this coastal city — with a genuine, unobtrusive grace.

Big Fog

Reveals the problems different classes face and how their values based on their interests shape the foundation of society. The documentary has three parts. The first shows Chinese right-wing intellectuals who criticized the modern Chinese culture which undermined independence and ethical belief, and commemorates those who fought and sacrificed for the truth. The second part follows the progress of a new cancer drug. The documentary then focuses on a Chinese village where a farmer has committed suicide because of land grabs and forced evictions. An official is forced to resign due to pressure from the media, but problems are completely unresolved for the villagers…

One Tree, Three Lives

One Tree, Three Lives is an intimate documentary focusing on the Chinese American novelist Hualing Nieh Engle. Hualing Nieh Engle is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author of 23 books of fiction and non-fiction, who has been a major influence on generations of writers in the Chinese diaspora and beyond. At times sad, at times funny, this inspirational film reveals a woman of unusual charisma, integrity and determination, and a person in continual exile.

Our Children

Reviews from different individuals on casualties caused by collapses of schools during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. By drawing on everyday people’s testimonies and an abundance of images from digital phones and cameras, Our Children succeeded in preserving both individual and public memories and facilitated the healing process.

Civil Investigation

This documentary shows the efforts of volunteers independently investigating the casualties caused by the collapse of schools during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

Last Train Home

This critically acclaimed documentary follows a Chinese family as they leave their daughter to look for work in more industrialized areas. As well as focusing on their train journey to their home province, in what is the biggest migration in human history, the film spans over two years observing the family’s struggles for money as they attempt to keep their relationships intact.

Silent Summer

Zhouzhou is a lonely 12-year-old living with his grumpy alcoholic father, and whose mother has long since left the family home. Father and son embark on a bike ride, encountering trouble, and many strange people, but as the summer wears on both father and son undergo changes.

Siberian Butterfly

The Siberian Butterfly is a documentary that explores issues of creativity and sexual identity in an intimate portrait of a Chinese folk artist. He learned the traditional Chinese art of paper-cutting from his mother in his birthplace of Shaanxi province. But as a child of China’s Cultural Revolution, his homosexuality was deeply repressed by social convention, and so he followed the path of most men of his generation and married, having children. Still, he found an outlet for his true identity through the themes in his artwork. In this richly woven exploration of the creative process, the artist’s inner world is revealed as he patiently carves out space for his true identity through his paper cuts. Now that his children are grown and he has moved to Beijing, he discovers who he really was all along, calling himself the Siberian Butterfly.

Blind Shaft

Blind Shaft is a 2003 film about a pair of brutal con artists operating in the illegal coal mines northern China. The film was written and directed by Lina Yang (李杨), and is based on Chinese writer Liu Qingbang’s short novel Shen Mu (Sacred Wood). Most of the filming took place 700 meters underground on the border between the Hebei and Shanxi provinces. Li and his crew were harassed and threatened during the filming. Blind Shaft has won at least a dozen awards, including the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement at 2003 Berlin International Film Festival.

Surviving Evil

A documentary about the victims of rice-bran oil contaminated with PCB (a toxic chemical that may cause cancer and birth defects) in Taichung in 1979. It won the top prize at the 2008 South Taiwan Film Festival and prompted the public to find the first local support association for victims in 2009.

The Chinese Lesbian Rights Movement

A documentary looking at the progression of the emerging movement for the rights of lesbians in China.

BBC uses a slightly different Chinese zodiac.

(H/T Becky Lipscombe)

Those adorable creatures from the Despicable Me franchise would like to wish you a Happy Chinese New Year. Either that or they really like saying the word horse.

(Via Bill Bishop)

There was a time, years ago, when Chinese New Year’s Eve in Beijing was the world’s most bombastic celebration of existence, a collective yell held for three straight hours amid concussions of light and racket. Because here we were, we declared, right here. Earth shook heaven. I remember forked lightning, fractals of red, blue, and orange, air rent with the shape of sound. It felt surreal to be centered in this steady beat of a burgeoning and explosive declaration, ours, that we had survived and would survive yet (Do your worst!), and yet it felt right. If this seems like a poor conceit — Man speaks to Nature — so be it, I don’t know how else to describe it: to be caught up in something so furious and chaotic and human-made and mad.

Eventually, those days will be past, as we insist on insisting and whingers continue to whinge — about pollution, etc. Eventually, as on pedestrian streets refurbished for tourists, Chinese New Year’s fireworks will be launched pro forma, a nod to another forgotten tradition. I’m not upset. Maybe fireworks are antiquated. Maybe we would, in our aging and agingness, prefer a quiet toast to the bygone year, a tap on our chest as polite reminder to the unseen widow weaving in our heart, before we retire to our solitude. Let us wangle compliance from the unruly and unsettled. Let us sip scotch in the subdued warmth and subdued expression of a gentle fire, muzzled nature. Let’s act our age, or older, of English sophistication or first-world cultivation, raise unsmudged port glasses with kisses for loved ones and the same untelling smile we’ll wear to our graves.

Or, I don’t know, fuck it. On this day, I mean. If not quite yell in the nip and shade until breath disappears, at least light something up. Tonight: breathe.

Have a good one. Just don’t break anything, yourself or others. We’ll see you in the new year.

They asked Yao Shaoshuang when he was coming home to celebrate Spring Festival.

Throwing his saddle over his shoulder, he whispered “马上”.

But really Shaohuang, a competitive rider, couldn’t buy a train ticket to get to his mother and law’s home, and so decided to ride his steed home to ring in the year of the horse in style. Netizens loved it, and photos of his trip have gone viral.

Additional Reporting: Chendu Daily, CNS Wire

Last Sunday night was Lantern Festival. As such, C and I had holiday dinner next door with a friend of hers whose parents, sister, and the sister’s spunky 6-year-old daughter were in Shenzhen for the holiday. The dinner was fine, lots of salty spicy fish, chicken and pork dishes, and some vinegary cucumbers.

I toasted with a vodka and tonic while the others raised modest glasses of cheap Chinese red wine mixed with 7-Up. For reasons I’ve never been able to pinpoint, red wine with Sprite or 7-Up (or scotch mixed with green tea) is considered the height of sophisticated drinking by many middle-class Chinese, though I’ve long since disabused C of that notion and she now admits it tastes lousy. She only bent her Absolut on the rocks rule in order to “not be the bird that flies away from the flock.” As a foreigner, the flock rule doesn’t apply to me.

We returned to our place and before we slept she told me she was leaving the balcony light on for the night.

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s so our ancestors can find their way to where we live tonight.” She cleared her throat and laughed self-consciously. “But I don’t know how mine are going to know where I am in Shenzhen…” (Her hometown, Dandong, is more than 1,000 kilometers north).

“I don’t know how mine are going to find me either,” I said. “Most of them probably never thought of coming to China — except maybe my mother’s father, Knox. He was Irish. Before she died my mother told me he loved reading stories about Asia, particularly by a British writer named Kipling. Something about a ‘Burmese girl,’ I think, too.

“Though I don’t know that story or poem. Maybe if he had a thing for a fantasy Asian girl from Burma or China, he’d have enjoyed knowing about us.”

“Maybe.”

We slept as the balcony light glowed through a night punctuated by staccato New Year’s fireworks and omnipresent smoke. And I dreamed.

I dreamed that my grandfather Knox who died when I was two and my mother Mila who died 12 years ago were told I could be found in China. If they desired, they could leave whatever realm the dead inhabit and join others who were visiting their descendants here for one night.

I’ve no real memory of my grandfather, though I’m told he was fond of me and that he died peacefully napping on his couch after lunch as my mother, dad and I were visiting him and my grandmother.

“You played on his body until the ambulance came,” my mother told me. “You didn’t know he was dead and thought he was pretending to sleep. It was a game you’d played with him before.”

Now I am sleeping and my dead grandfather and mother are flying through the air to see me in China. He calls it “Cathay” in my dream because that’s what Shenzhen’s province, Guangdong, was called by foreign barbarians when he was alive. Cathay.

“C’mon now, Mila. We’re flying to Cathay to see Justin,” he tells my mother. He’s wearing a tweed suit, white shirt, thin tartan tie and perhaps set off with a tweed newsboy cap, attire I either imagine or think I’ve seen in old photos of him.

He hasn’t lost his Irish accent in my dream. He came to the US as a young man who’d taught at a deaf school in Belfast and had dabbled in boxing only to visit a brother in Oregon who had immigrated to the US. But Knox never returned to Ireland until many years later.

While in America he’d caught polio shortly after coming and the Illinois woman he eventually married was one of his nurses. She was my grandmother but she’s not visiting tonight. It was also complicated between her and my mother and probably still is in the hereafter.

“Hullo mum,” my grandfather had greeted his mother with an American accent upon returning for a visit to his ancestral home in Northern Ireland’s County Down. According to family lore, he was limping due to the polio. His mother stood silently on the porch of their whitewashed home called The Spa.

“Ah, Knox. You’ve got the Yankee twang,” she finally said of his greeting. Until this exchange, they not spoken to or seen each other in the 25-plus years since he’d left for a “short” tour of America.

There is no Yankee twang in my dream. He’s soaring through the air to Cathay — a place he’s only perhaps read and maybe dreamed of — arms outstretched like Peter Pan, one hand clasping my mother’s who looks as she did in her high school and college photos.

In those black and white pictures she isn’t tethered to an oxygen tank or embittered and numbed by the booze and pain pills that momentarily pacified her arthritis pain but inflamed her demons.

She’s not even Mila. Tonight she’s “Johnnie,” a high school/college nickname due to her maiden name, Johnston. She sometimes smokes a pipe and is already a talented artist. She wears bobby socks and is a babe. And though it was also very complicated between her and her father, tonight they’re feckless and free together. She’s thrilled to be on her father’s arm flying and free-falling to Cathay to see her son, and her father is quietly proud to take her. And though it’s a country of 1.3 billion, with a gazillion more dead Chinese ancestors crowding the airspace tonight, they’ll have no problems.

You see, because beautiful C has left the light on so they’ll know where to find me.

In the immediate aftermath of Taiwanese magician Lu Chen’s withering joke during the CCTV Spring Festival Gala — simultaneously seen live by millions, then re-watched over and over in the proceeding days, even after it got censored from subsequent reruns — we were told that all parties involved were cool with it.

That might not have been the case.

Let’s revisit the incident. On February 9’s big CCTV show, Lu tried to make a joke that plays off the public perception that Li Yundi and Leehom Wang, two famous young stars, are gay lovers. Lu and Li were on stage for a simple disappearing trick when Li whispered something in Lu’s ear to set up a punchline. Lu’s quip, however, was extempore.

“Looking for someone?” he asked. “Who? Leehom?!”

The audience gasped and laughed and cheered.

Leehom Wang, backstage, must have blanched. Multiple people wrote that they saw the pop singer, who was scheduled to appear in a separate act, slap Lu. The two publicly denied it, but the controversy continued. Lu’s camp said the joke was Li’s idea, while Li denied that. And then Leehom Wang unfollowed Li on Sina Weibo, and vice versa — but he still follows Lu.

We’re now finding out that the fallout runs deeper. On February 21, Lu’s publicist said the magician will not be appearing in tonight’s Lantern Festival Gala to mark the end of the 15-day Spring Festival. Reports Sina:

According to his agent during an exclusive interview with Chinanews.com, Lu has been so deeply vexed by the incident of late that he decided to “take a break” in the hope that he would be spared from future offense and criticism.

The agent denied that Lu’s exit was due to his poor relation with CCTV. He also appreciated the understanding and support by Ha Wen, the chief director of the upcoming gala.

Note to everyone: this is not how you handle a joke. Whatever happened to the idea that all publicity is good publicity?

Magician quits Lantern Festival gala over Leehom joke (Sina, h/t Alicia)

One of the most talked-about and controversial moments from this year’s CCTV Spring Festival Gala was magician Lu Chen’s “looking for Leehom” joke. His one-liner got the best crowd reaction — a mixture of delight and genuine shock that such a joke could fly — and ensured he’d stay in the public eye for days, possibly weeks, to come.

Lu’s remark to pianist Li Yundi — riffing off public perception of Li and Leehom Wang as lovers — got him in trouble with CCTV producers, who cut the scene from subsequent gala reruns. But it’s his performance that should have drawn criticism. Thanks to netizens, it now is, belatedly.

Check out his first trick, a simple sleight-of-hand involving sliding a wine glass through the middle of a wine bottle. Lu’s elementary mistake is highlighted here:

While pouring wine to prove that the bottle is solid, wine drips out from the middle, the exact location of the slit in which he’ll eventually slide in the wine glass.

When your audience gives you this reaction, it’s not a good sign:

Remember this when we don’t see Lu Chen on next year’s Spring Festival Gala. It’s not that he made an off-the-cuff remark that made CCTV producers uncomfortable. It’s that he’s not good enough yet at what he does.

It’s easy when you have a classically trained soprano. Props to Anhui TV for having the foresight to invite international recording artist, Phantom of the Opera star, and friend of China Sarah Brightman — who sang at the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony — to perform at its Spring Festival gala on Friday. She’s probably done “It’s Time to Say Goodbye” a thousand times, but the tune is, as we say, timeless.

And now we ask: who had the best Spring Festival performance? The other candidates are PSY, Celine Dion, and the Backstreet Boys.

Ah, live TV. Did magician Lu Chen give the CCTV Spring Festival Gala — the most-watched show on Chinese television every year — its Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” moment?

First, a little background. Top Chinese pianist Li Yundi and Chinese American singer Leehom Wang are best buds who spend so much time together that people openly question the nature of their relationship. (The two have repeatedly said they’re not gay lovers.) It’s kind of a running joke, the sort that feeds gossip mills and keeps tabloids in business.

On Saturday night, Li took the stage in Beijing for a magic act with Lu. The plan was simple: Li would play the piano behind a curtain, and Lu would “disappear” him. Meanwhile, young viewers would swoon, and CCTV would placate critics who call its Spring Festival Gala outmoded.

It didn’t turn out to be so straightforward, however. At the 2:20 mark of the above video, watch as Li stops playing and pokes his head out from behind the curtain. Perhaps this was part of the script. Then again, perhaps it’s here that CCTV producers break into a cold sweat.

Lu goes over, and Li whispers something in the magician’s ear.

“Looking for someone?” Lu asks. “Who?”

More whispering.

“Leehom?!” Lu exclaims.

It takes the audience a second to process the joke, but then the gasps and squeals of delight come cascading down.

Lu breaks into laughter, then says, “Sorry, sorry.” Li retreats back behind the curtain, and the act continues. Lu pulls on a rope, and not only has Li disappeared, but he’s standing in the middle of the audience. Applause all around. “Lu’s joke immediately became a hot topic discussed by netizens across China, with many calling it the best part of the entire gala,” reports SCMP.

You know who hated it, though? China Central Television, which excised the Lu-Li exchange from its reruns.

According to SCMP:

Homosexuality in China remains a sensitive topic in the state media and discussions about it are suppressed. So, it was no surprise that when the Gala was repeated the next day, the scene had been removed.

Anxious to disassociate itself from the joke, the gala’s official weibo account posted a statement saying, “Lu Chen’s joke about Li and Wang was not planned by the producers, but rather an impromptu act by Lu.” The gala’s chief director Ha Wen later confirmed the statement in an interview.

Li also said it was impromptu, but Lu, on his Sina Weibo, refused to play along. “Everything we said on stage was agreed by both parties. Come on! Be honest,” he wrote.

It was rumored that Leehom Wang confronted Lu backstage and slapped him, which seems ridiculous at face value. The two had some fun with this.

Wang wrote on Weibo, “Lu Chen, did anyone assault you? Does that person look like me?” To which Lu replied, “I think I was hit so hard that I lost my memory. I can’t remember this. What should I do?”

Good for everyone involved. In America, after an incident like this, the public would cackle and we’d all await the inevitable commercial or Saturday Night Live sketch involving the three. In China, however… perhaps we’ll not see Lu in another national Spring Festival gala for a while.

Not that that’s a bad thing. Regional Spring Festival galas have risen in visibility (thanks to the Internet) and popularity (thanks to CCTV’s own antiquated show) in recent years, as evidenced this week by the Backstreet Boys on Liaoning TV and PSY on Dragon TV. Meanwhile, CCTV’s production is stuck in the 1990s. “The Spring Festival Gala is a cultural legacy from the colletivism and group identity of socialism after China was liberated,” so goes a Southern Metropolis editorial from 2007, as translated by ESWN. “But following the changes in Chinese society today, this model is increasing[ly] more difficult to realize.”

Performers like Lu, Li, and Wang, with the goal of entertaining – what a revolutionary concept, right? — can help bring back this tradition, if only authorities will let them. There’s nothing wrong with collectivized entertainment, as the Super Bowl teaches us each year. There is something wrong and downright repulsive, however, about an entity imposing its narrow, blinkered idea of collectivism on all of us.

(H/T Alicia)