I hope my little brother Grant’s East Asian Politics class will take the time to watch this video and discuss its contents. Below is a link to the popular cartoon in China called Kuang Kuang which is the equivalent of America’s South Park. The creators are equally edgy, but what makes this three minute video much more sensitive than say South Park’s infamous Muhammad episode is that China is known for its strict censorship. For instance, yesterday I was doing a report on China’s population and pollution problems and half of the sites providing facts were blocked. The episode of Kuang Kuang I posted was taken off the Chinese web in a matter of days, but still lives on YouTube. The episode was posted last month for the Chinese New Year and recounts some of the corruption and atrocities that have happened in China all the while relaying an undertone of government corruption and moral ineptness. Please watch the video first and then read the explanation below and then watch the video again. Most of the subtitles are in Chinese, but I translated the important parts. It is pretty gruesome so beware!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNzjClqE1pY
Ok, let’s address the many questions you may have. Kuang Kuang is the little character with the bloody nose and he has just received a New Year’s gift from his girlfriend Xiao Hong. Kuang Kuang begins to read and falls asleep and starts to dream. The book is about rabbits and the song begins, “Little Rabbits, white and white, love to eat carrots love to eat lettuce, hoppy hop so cute…and so on”
The next scene is Kuang Kuang and Xiao Hong as rabbits feeding their baby. The delivery truck was driven by a tiger and the truck reads “3 Tigers Milk” which is a parody of the “3 Deers Milk” which contained melamine and caused many babies to become sick and die in China this past year.
The age old fight between the rabbit and the tiger dates back to the Chinese Lunar Calendar as they are not compatible creatures to marry and be friends. This also adds to the comedy of the cartoon by portraying the tigers as “The Man” and the rabbits as “the commoners.” The next scene you see Kuang Kuang running to a tiger cave and the translations show, “To serve the rabbits” and “to build a harmonious forest.” Two phrases used by the Chinese government, “To serve the people” and “to build a harmonious society.” The fire that takes place in the cave and little rabbits being incinerated refers to a school fire that happened ten years ago in Xinjiang when the teachers shouted, “rang ling dao xian zou” which means “let the leaders leave first.” This caused outrage all over China as many children were burned to death in the school fire as they waited for the teachers to leave.
Next scene, the slot machine reads “destroy” and the construction machine runs over a TV showing a tiger that looks very much like Hu Jintao. This TV program refers to last summer when Mr. Hu went to a woman’s home in Beijing to ask her how her quality of life was in the city. Clearly staged, she said it was fantastic and only paid 77 Yuan a month for rent. This caused so much uproar in Beijing because it was a blatant government lie. Rent in the city is nowhere close to 77 Yuan a month. It is more like 77 Yuan per square foot, per day!
The next scene shows two rabbits and a nail house or a “ding zi hu.” Nail houses are people who refuse to relocate as the government has bought the land for construction. The rabbit lighting herself on fire refers to a woman five years ago who protested the moving of her home and lit herself on fire. The government proceeded to tear down the house after her death. The old rabbit you see who’s face turns to the words “I object!” goes to the government to state his views but as you see he is beaten badly. You will see the old man again, remember?
The next scene is a tiger driving a car as Kuang Kuang and Xiao Hong are running down the road. The car hits Xiao Hong and kills her. The tiger gets out of the car and says “My dad is Tiger Gong!” which refers to the Hebei incident when the son of the powerful Hebei police official, Li Gong, drove drunk and killed a girl who was biking on the road. He got out of the car and shouted to the villagers “My dad is Li Gong, sue me if you can!” and drove off. This caused such outrage in China about corruption of officials that the sentence for the boy was quite heavy and he will be serving a long sentence in jail.
The old rabbit appears in the cartoon again as he is thrown under the tire of the car. This refers to the murder of a village governor in Guangzhou who protested the destruction of villages for infrastructure. It still remains an unsolved mystery, but he was found one day decapitated by a truck tire. Some believe government thugs held him down and had the truck drive over his head.
As you can see by the end the rabbits cannot take it anymore and fight back. This might have undertones of a revolution, but to me it is just some edgy artists’ black humor. I hope this explanation helps and you can watch it again and get what is trying to be conveyed through the cartoon. As Americans we are not as shocked by this as we should be, but just think about this from a Chinese perspective and how censorship rules the media. The fact that this cartoon so openly protested the government and China’s morality is clearly a novel idea in Chinese media and is worth discussing.
PS nothing we know of has happened to the creators of the cartoon.
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Jordan J. Foley
傅力波