Interesting thread.
These are just the symptoms of an authoritarian bureaucratic state. China, obviously, still has an issue with recognizing what is quality and cannot seem to relate to the developed western world’s desire for high quality products including cultural ones. In general, the Chinese are also blind to the evolution of culture and shun their homegrown contemporary arts for anything classical, which they deem to be superior. It incredibly difficult for them to get out of the 5000-years-of-history mindset.
And yet, China will attempt to imitate popular mainstream culture with a “close-enough” attitude and pump out piles of garbage. I recently went to see “Man in Macau 2” in theaters with my girlfriend because she heard it was good.
Watching that was like having someone vomit on me for 2 hours. Come on Chow Yun Fat! I had so much respect for you in the Corruptor!
Additionally this:
Typical example of China trying to mimic a western concept (the Flashmob), and miss the mark completely. It’s supposed to seem like something spontaneous, surprising and be entertaining for passersby, not something obviously staged with costumes, lipsynced?, and a confusing display of lack of coordination and nationalism in a foreign language.
I’m being a little harsh, because it’s mostly just straight up ignorance, but it’s frustrating when beautiful contemporary Chinese culture does exist, but goes unrecognized or is purposely stifled.