In Episode 6 of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, NBC's TV series premiered in fall 2006, sketch actor Tom invited his parents to the studio for his show. The lines between Tom and his father are still echoing through my mind even though I've watched the episode for more than two weeks.
Dad. You still have a turntable at home, right?
A record player? I don't have any use for a CD player, Tom. The music sounds just fine to me coming out of...
No,I... I wanted to give you this. It's a recording of Who's on First. You gotta set your turntable to 78. When you get home you're gonna laugh. And you're gonna listen to it over and over again and you're gonna laugh every time. I love you, Dad. And whether you like it or not, you taught me everything I know.
You all right? You need any money?
I'm fine.
Obviously, the writer of Studio 60 portrayed Tom's parents who live in Columbus as complete rubes, because almost every American from the generation has heard of Who's on First, however, the thing happening in Tom's family is not that far off. I got the impression that he had a very stern education and laughter was not a main part of his infancy. And it's the very reason he knew little about the comedy shows, and couldn't catch up with Tom from time to time.
My heart really ached for Tom, because I have an interest in something called show-biz that my parents could never comprehend and have spent many times having similar conversations with them in a similar frustrating way. When I lived in Fuzhou, a small city in the southeast China, during the National Day vacation, I bought the DVD of Peter Jackson's King Kong and played it on the big flat-screen TV with Dolby Digital 5.1 surrounding sound system for my parents. Five minutes past, my mom said, "Now we're too old to understand the story."
It seemed as Tom's father had not asked "You all right?" for such a long time that Tom could hardly hold his tears after the words. I don't see why they could get so out of touch, but I've got the answer to myself. Actually, I could not remember the last time I watched any TV programs with both of my parents.
"How endless choice is creating unlimited demand." Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, wrote on the cover of The Long Tail. With the content becoming tens of thousands more than ever before, each member of a family could find his or her favorite on the big screen or the Internet. There are three televisions and four computers (including two laptops) in my parents' house, so how can we go back to the "good old days" when my mom, my dad and I watched Mickey Mouse or Tom & Jerry at 18:30 on CCTV 1 every weekend?
The poor situation is going from bad to worse recently. Since the rise of Internet video, watching has transformed from a family activity undertaken in the living room to a solitary practice embarked upon while bored at work. Sure, YouTube videos are e-mailed from friend to friend, but we watch them alone. As Slate's associate editor said, if America's Funniest Home Video was a vacation slide show at grandma's house, YouTube is a viewing booth in a porno shop.
I've got an E-mail by Michael Turton from Chaoyang University of Taichung, who is maintaining a blog named The View from Taiwan. In the e-mail, Michael shared his experiences about the Taiwan media and corrected a mistake in the post titled Red Packages written by me several days ago:
It's actually called a red envelope. The same system prevails in Taiwan, and you should probably add that reporters will call companies and blackmail them for $$, threatening to write a negative article about them if they don't cough up. My wife actually had that happen to her in her role as a cookbook translator! Another thing that happens are paid adverts that are presented as news stories, but which the company actually pays for. The media are a pretty sick bunch in Taiwan. Probably they are braver in China, in fact.
About a decade ago Douglas Habecker had an article in the old China News (now Taiwan News) on the red envelope system here in Taiwan. I'm not a member of your blog system, so I can't post this. But go ahead and put this in the comments if you like.
Thanks Michael Turton.
By the way, compared to the blog service providers like blogger.com or typepad.com, vox.com doesn't supply unregistered users with commenting function. So please send e-mails to flypig [at] gmail.com if you've got some advices for me and hate registering on a social networking website.
Is there a television near you! Change the channel to CCTV 1 immediately. Chen Shui-bian was killed by a bomb. And the police have blocked the whole Taipei city. 19 were dead, 32 were injured, 11 were missing, and 1 was fooled.
Randy Jiang is also known as Pingke, who has hosted several successful serious radio programs in Tianjin, and works at New Century Weekly now as a senior editor. He's also running Antiwave the podcast website which won the Global Podcast Award by Deutsche Welle last year.
Therefore, some people who received the message have never thought they would be "fooled" by such a well-known person and a probable event with an urgent tone. And the message has caused a stir in a national newspaper's headquarter, according to a source in the know.
For more than one· year at Economic Observer, a weekly business newspaper whose goal is to be the Financial Times in mainland China, I've met plenty of PR agencies. For some of them, I'm a good private friend, and we often hang out for dinner together and share some ideas about the industries or our daily lives. For others, Steven Lin has become a footy name printed on an rectangular, which has been probably thrown into a recycle box and vanished.
How to judge them? And what kind of relationship should be proper between journalists and the PR agencies? My friends from the western media often told me that they are definitely standing on the opposite sides. Journalists' mission is to discover the truth behind the magnificent scenes glossed by the companies, while the PR agencies will protect you from doing such kind of things in full sail. All of the words from the agencies' mouths are diplomatic and they are only some slippery people who are blindly loyal to their employers. Is it true?
Company A is among the biggest search engines over the world and I‘ve contacted with two PR people who work for it. When I met Ms. B for the first time, she was a business reporter from a leading weekly magazine in China. After less than one year, she joined a PR agent, one of whose clients is Company A. Every time I criticised the company on my blog, she counldn't stop arguing with me and often ask me to publish "something good for them".
On the contrary, Ms. C is the PR specialist of the company and always told me to write "anything objective no matter it's positive or negative" if I feel comfortable. She helped me to get the full permission in their office building for some inside stories, but promised not to modify my articles unless there are some inexact data.
Of course you have gotten aware of my attitutes to each of them, and my answer to the "relationship" quesion. Most PR people i've met in Beijing are unprofessional - they had done tons of things out of their duties, appended too much personal points to their daily jobs and annoyed the journalists. For any PR agency, being tactful or diplomatic is
one thing, making lies or trying to curb media is another.
It has been proved that any actions to provoke the media will cause stronger conterforce. Remember the PR agencies of EMI China who wanted to buy media? The wave of critism on The Flower Band is a good example of what would be brought out by some inconsiderate PR strategies.
George W. Bush: We'll stay the course. Really!
Tony Blair: The war is not inevitable. Really!
Kim Jong Il: North Korea's nukes are negotiable. Really!
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Iran doesn't have nuclear bombs. Really!
Thaksin Shinawatra: My mission is to make everyone as rich as I am. Really!
Russians: We only trust Putin and the mass media. Really!
Chinese Government Official: We don't censor the Internet. Really!
It reads: "I like you. Come over to my house and fuck my sister." I'm not Anti-Japan indeed, but it's... really god-damn funny! It sounds like a pure Communism country. lol. via Local Insanity
What would you suppose to see when opening an envelope with a familiar trademark on the front? A well-printed promoting paperback for the Spring Festival shopping season? Maybe. A fancy invitation to the company's cocktail party? Possibly. But for most Chinese reporters, no matter on whose press conference they got a commercial envelope, it always equals to a Hongbao (Red Package in Mandarine), the most important source of their afterhours income.
How much money has been enclosed by the PR persons? No legible standards. But the amount depends on the scale of the company who hold the press conference, essentiality of the product or project which will be released, status of the speechmaker who attends the conference, and sometimes, type of the media which the reporter is serving for - as you know, a Hollywood Paparazzi, a Silicon Valley Reporter and a Wall Street Journalist are always treated as three totally different careers.
Based on these inexplicable factors, the amount of money in Red Packages ranges from 200 to 500 yuan (USD 25.00 - 62.50), and the average is 300 yuan. It seems not a big deal. But if a reporter keeps the pace of attending more than 20 press conferences per month, the situation will be dramaticly changed. The ordinary monthly salary for a newcome reporter in Beijing is no more than 3000 yuan, but a familiar face on the press conference would earn from the companies 2 to 3 times much as they get paid by the media.
The most interesting story about Red Packages I've heard is about an intern reporter from a national daily newspaper who threw two envelopes she received on a press conference directly to a trash can, unaware of what else could have been put into them besides the boring company backgrounds. When she discovered the truth soon after coming back to office and chitchated with her colleagues, she rushed back for the gold immediatly.
Nowadays, Red-Package reports almost fills every newspaper in mainland China. I don't know how the PR agency build relationships with reporters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the western countries. But in The Hospital, a Taiwan TV series aired in the autumn 2006, the surgeon played by Leon Dai asked his assistant to "prepare some little gifts for our reporter friends".
Maybe it's the best way to push reporters to copy and paste the PR releases on the newspapers, however, for the reporters who work for the newspapers that don't allow any kind of news release or so-called "soft advertisement" being published, receiving a Red Package would turn out to be a beginning of nightmares. The phone calls, emails, instant messages and instand messages from PR persons to remind you of the article will badly mess your work and daily life.
In the first days of every Chinese lunar year, aged people always hand Red Packages to their grandsons and granddaughters and make some wishes for them like "learn harder and get better grade for the future". When the reporters receive Red Packages from the PR persons, they would probably see a sentence "work harder and make more money for the company" on the meaningful smiling faces.
What did you think you would never ever do... but did?
Submitted by Murky.
Failed an exam.
It was the final-term exam of Marxism Political Economics: Socialism Part in which I got the lowest grade of all my classmates: 56/100. I don't like anything about Carl Marx or the so-called Socialism, both of which are taught in class only mainly in some Socialism countries like China or North Korea as brainwashing tools. What's more, the only thing I could do when facing a textbook about Marxism or Socialism was sleeping. Who needs this kind of bullshit?
However, I have to admit that I was absolutely fucked up when the worst news I've ever heard of was released. Indeed, I had not failed any exams and always got A or B at least in the first 19 years of my life. It was the Mid-Autumn Festival 2003, I could not stop shaking for the whole day even though the seniors told me it was nothing to care, nothing to care, nothing, take it easy man... again and again.
Ok, I found 50 ways to fail an exam. It's great sharing the tips with you guys. Enjoy~.
Do you remember your first flight? Where did you go? Why?
Submitted by Laurel.
In the days all my families are waiting for the exam's result, my mom asked me if I wanted a travel. "A travel to some big and famous cities for the historic sites! We could got a brilliant discount, maybe 50% or more, for the air tickets in summer vacation." She said. In that days, each of the monthly salaries for my mom and dad was only a little more than 1,000 yuan, which could not pay for one air ticket without discount. However, my mom insisted on the plan. "Go to see the outside world, my son." my dad patted my head and said.
Different from the westen families, trip was not a necessary part for most Chinese ones. Maybe, the most important reason was the people cannot afford it. If a travel would cost lots of money for which you should work so hard for half a year and keep saving money without consuming for any big things, who could even think about it? For many Chinese families, this situation never changed. But the idea of getting their son "to see the outside world" made my parents withdraw the money out of the bank and buy the tickets for my mom and me.
Finally, my grade for the exam was the best in the primary school of a small city, and mom was very proud of me and took me to the airport by bus so happily that I cannot forget for the whole life. Our plane to Jinan, the first stop of the travel, delayed, and I telephoned my dad and described the boring scene for him.
I still remember every moment of my first flight - the mood of excite, the shaking plane, the "fasten seat belt" instruction, and the kind expression in my mom's eyes. Short before landing, it's totally dark outside and I cannot see anything. I felt a little disappointed, because I had thought there would be plenty of beautiful lights on the ground. But that kind of thinking disappeared at once, and the eagerness of taking a glance of the big cities came back again...
From then on, my mom and I haven't travelled together for long, because I'm "too busy" nowadays. This stupid reason has came out of my mouth time and time again, and I discovered one day that we are all so busy that we cannot remember the first flight with mom or dad or both of them, which came true when we were their little lovely kids.
