"This Is China" - " Dorky" Rap Song Promotes World's Largest Nation
http://time.com/4388991/china-rap-propaganda-cd-rev/
“The red dragon ain’t no evil,” raps Chuckie, referring to his native China, “but a beautiful place.” To scenes of cuddly pandas, spewing smokestacks and goose-stepping soldiers holding aloft a Chinese flag, the English-language music video for “This Is China” begins with a mission to “restore the impression you have of my country, China, which have been [sic] exactly fabricated by media for such a long time.”
The offending media, in case it isn’t clear, are foreign, says Chuckie, whose real name is Wang Zixin. “I would like to tell Westerners that young people in China are not foolish,” the 22-year-old recent college graduate tells TIME. “We know the good and bad in China. It is just that some problems cannot be solved immediately. I want to change Westerners’ stereotypes about us.”
Although the rap song was the brainchild of Wang’s ensemble CD Rev — lyrics by Pissy (no, seriously) and beats by Chuckie — the music video was produced with help from a studio run by the Communist Youth League of China.
“This Is China” fits into a campaign by China’s ruling party to soften its image amid overseas criticism of Beijing’s muscular foreign policy and domestic human-rights crackdown. In recent months, government-linked studios have released videos featuring everything from a cartoon Chinese President Xi Jinping playing whack-a-mole with corrupt officials to an English-language explainer of China’s 13th five-year plan for its economy. Another animated music video included a hip-hop verse that went, “It’s everyone’s dream to build a moderately prosperous society comprehensively.” (The latter is one of Xi’s “four comprehensive” slogans, if not a catchy rhyme.)
The rhymes on “This Is China” are equally wooden — indeed hilarious to foreign ears weaned on a diet of Kanye and Lil Wayne. “As an individual presently based in the southwest of the country,” declaims Wang, in what must be the most unlikely introduction ever to fall from the lips of an MC. “First things first, we all know that China is a developing country,” he continues, as though reading from a textbook. “It has large population [sic] and it is really hard to manage.”
In like manner, “This Is China” then name-checks the wonders of Chinese society, such as ubiquitous payment by mobile phones (even to make appointments with doctors!) and strict gun control that prevents “gun slaughtering.” Scientific achievements also make it into the song, including KBBF crystals used in laser technology and the discovery of malaria treatment aremisinin by Nobel Prize–winning scientist Tu Youyou. “Obviously China is rising, but we have 5,000 years of Confucian education so we are a peace-loving country,” says Wang. “We will not initiate attacks on others.”
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I would like to give a knowledgeable review but I could only understand every 20th word or so.
Same for any rap music.
From the YouTube transcript...
Read it, and I still can't understand it.
I've always been fascinated by China, and have read many books on the subject. My son has even taught himself to write and speak some Chinese. I try to tell my pain doctor, Dr. Zhou, thank you in his own language, which he seems to appreciate that I am trying... even though I likely mispronounce it, badly.
My thought: no matter what anyone does, the Chinese people have done it first, and likely placed something about it on a rice grain. They seem to be an unusually creative and intelligent people.
Next time, try saying "shyay-shyay". Next time you could really surprise him and when you first see him say "nee how".
Is that like nee how ma? (How are you?) My son has told me to say shyah shing, to say thank you... sort of. I don't have an ear for Chinese... He's a nice man.
Just say nee how. It means hello. Shyay shyay (or shyeh shyeh) means Please. Sigh jee-anne means goodbye. Bookaychee (emphasize middle syllable) means you're welcome. Wo boo je dow means I don't know, and you can say Wo je dow (or just je dow) meaning I know. If you are asking for something, like ordering a dish in a restaurant, and you hear them say mayo, it means there isn't any. That should get you started.
Thank you, Buzz! VERY much!
I will try to remember...
It might be all the government allowed them to say without banning it. The commies in China censor music.
Like any authoritarian regime, China has a history of censoring songs with political content. In May, the government banned a Mongolian hip-hop protest song and arrested the rapper behind it. Last year Tibetan singer Tashi Dhondup spent 10 months in prison for recording "subversive songs". And Guns N' Roses' 2008 album Chinese Democracy was banned for somewhat obvious reasons. In comparison, the 2009 directive is a recipe for absurdity.
Pop music censorship tends to be unwittingly comical because censors show so little understanding of the art form. For every song that is banned, hundreds more explicit ones go unmolested. The accusation of "poor taste and vulgar content" has been levelled at rock'n'roll since its inception – Jerry Lee Lewis wasn't singing about actual balls of fire , you know – and a war on innuendo is a war that is doomed to failure.
Even by its own expansive criteria, the Chinese blacklist defies logic. Why, for example, target six songs from Lady Gaga's Born This Way album yet not the title track's LGBT anthem? You can see why the censors might balk at Katy Perry's Last Friday Night (TGIF) , which rhymes "streaking in the park" with "ménage a trois", or Canadian punk-pop band Simple Plan's frankly dreadful You Suck at Love ("You were such an awesome fuck"). But if the Chinese censors have never heard anything more outrageous than Minnesotan milquetoast Owl City's Plant Life ("Your spirit is sweet so pull off your sheet") or the Backstreet Boys' vanilla 1999 hit I Want It That Way ("You are my fire/The one desire") then they must live miraculously sheltered lives and they're in for a hair-raising time once they discover Nicki Minaj .
But this risible detour isn't the censorship that matters. Amusing though it is to see a regime getting flustered about a 12-year-old Backstreet Boys song, China's real war on free speech, as Tashi Dondhup and the Mongolian rapper can testify, is no joke.