‘The box office success of your last film depended entirely on “assembled viewing”. Can you tell us whether the sequel you are releasing today will resort to the same trick?’ shouted a young journalist at the press conference.
Treated by a thunderous look from the star director sitting on the stage, this impetuous question was a breath of fresh air to her senior colleagues and was followed by resounding applause. The next day, her question was widely used as the title of the press release in the many newspapers that carried it.
The practice of handing out free cinema tickets to students and public sector workers and making them watch certain films during office hours has a long history in China. Called ‘assembled viewing’, its cost is usually covered by the unions, and those who are allocated a ticket are warned that they must have an exceptionally good excuse for not showing up at the film. In the early nineteen-nineties, a new series of films which were generously subsidised by the government and which aimed to promote patriotism by depicting the ‘great achievements’ of the Communist Party, became huge box office successes thanks to the practice of assembled viewing. It is no secret that this is the only way to get people in the street to endure long hours of propaganda.
While it is well-known that box office figures in China are unreliable, I heard something that even an experienced and cynical journalist found incredible: in order to attract their paid audiences to the latest propaganda movie, some cinemas gave it the title of the latest film in the Harry Potter series. By this means the box office revenue of the propaganda movie would ‘steal’ that of Harry Potter.
‘Is this really true?’ a recently retired colleague asked in slack-jawed amazement.
‘Yes, it is’, my senior journalist friend confirmed. This blatant swindle was another trick to boost the box office revenue of propaganda films.
In order to continue to do her job, my friend always tries to look on the bright side of life, and her great consolation was that the fresh-faced journalist who dared to upset the star director by putting a question that was on everybody’s mind was her intern. She is not sure if such courage was a symptom of the intern’s relative lack of experience or derived from her elite family background: she was none other than the granddaughter of the former chief regulator of films. But she gave hope to my friend in the apparently endless drive to get at the truth.
31 October 2011
27 October 2011
An ideal husband
‘So how is Paul?’ I asked my friend at lunch. Paul is an artist whose business portfolio ranges from graphic and interior design to landscape architecture, ladies’ boutiques and, more recently, bars. Married with two daughters, he is regarded as an ideal family man thanks to his clean-cut image and commercial success.
‘Oh, doing business as usual, I would say,’ my friend responded with a glint of wickedness in his eyes. Amused by my puzzled expression, he continued: ‘It’s just that I’ve learnt something out of the blue about him. I shouldn’t tell, though.’
‘My lips are sealed.’
‘Well, whenever I visit Beijing,’ my friend readily offered, ‘I make a point of accompanying my business partner Raymond to the gay pubs. One day, we bumped into Paul and his boyfriend: it turned out that they had been together for a long time.’
‘Hmm,’ that was the only response I could make. Over the course of our long lunch, it emerged that Paul was the third high-profile friend of ours to have come out of the closet, albeit, in his case, in a city thousands of miles away from his family. I am not sure, though, whether it is mere coincidence that they are all freelances-turned-entrepreneurs who are working in some area of media or design, exceedingly well-off, and giving off a slightly hippie aroma to their numerous clients and followers. As my friend proudly claimed, they form ‘the bricks and mortar of Chinese society’, with overarching power – financial, ideological and aesthetic – thanks to their creative business influence.
Discussion about lifestyles has been a favourite topic of conversation in China. As early as the beginning of the nineteen-nineties, there was widespread gossip that my friend was the boyfriend of his business partner Raymond, and that his marriage was largely to disguise his ‘unusual’ sexual orientation. Celibacy, among men or women, warranted speculations about their private lives.
However, I found in my recent conversations that what is new is perhaps that if someone is perceived as ‘different’ it will no longer make them a social outcast, at least not in the cities. Indeed, it has not only lost a lot of its power to shock but can even add to one’s social capital.
‘In the Japanese television programme I told you about, I was categorised as “bi-sexual”,’ the father of two said. ‘I like it – it gives me an interesting edge, making me stand out and appear less dull.’
‘Oh, doing business as usual, I would say,’ my friend responded with a glint of wickedness in his eyes. Amused by my puzzled expression, he continued: ‘It’s just that I’ve learnt something out of the blue about him. I shouldn’t tell, though.’
‘My lips are sealed.’
‘Well, whenever I visit Beijing,’ my friend readily offered, ‘I make a point of accompanying my business partner Raymond to the gay pubs. One day, we bumped into Paul and his boyfriend: it turned out that they had been together for a long time.’
‘Hmm,’ that was the only response I could make. Over the course of our long lunch, it emerged that Paul was the third high-profile friend of ours to have come out of the closet, albeit, in his case, in a city thousands of miles away from his family. I am not sure, though, whether it is mere coincidence that they are all freelances-turned-entrepreneurs who are working in some area of media or design, exceedingly well-off, and giving off a slightly hippie aroma to their numerous clients and followers. As my friend proudly claimed, they form ‘the bricks and mortar of Chinese society’, with overarching power – financial, ideological and aesthetic – thanks to their creative business influence.
Discussion about lifestyles has been a favourite topic of conversation in China. As early as the beginning of the nineteen-nineties, there was widespread gossip that my friend was the boyfriend of his business partner Raymond, and that his marriage was largely to disguise his ‘unusual’ sexual orientation. Celibacy, among men or women, warranted speculations about their private lives.
However, I found in my recent conversations that what is new is perhaps that if someone is perceived as ‘different’ it will no longer make them a social outcast, at least not in the cities. Indeed, it has not only lost a lot of its power to shock but can even add to one’s social capital.
‘In the Japanese television programme I told you about, I was categorised as “bi-sexual”,’ the father of two said. ‘I like it – it gives me an interesting edge, making me stand out and appear less dull.’
24 October 2011
A different species
It was one o’clock. We had arranged to meet for lunch a whole hour earlier, yet he was still making calls to arrange a last minute request from a film production company for an interview on a film on one of his radio channels.
Between phone calls, he filled me in: ‘I am devoting more and more time to going through film scripts these days. This indie film to be premiered tonight will do well, I am sure, just like all of my other film projects.’ He then gave me a list of titles. A mixture of mega-productions starring some of the region’s top entertainers and those that aimed to appeal to lovers of ‘art house’ movies, they have all succeeded in expanding not just his personal wealth but a business portfolio that ranges from radio and music production through events promotion to advertising and entertainment agencies, and, in recent years, film making. A-list international stars are among his clients.
The business empire that he has built up within a mere twenty years started with his passion for Western pop music, something barely known in the China of the late nineteen-eighties. He wrote to a radio station offering his collection of cassettes and vinyl to a ten-minute Western music programme, and was soon given his own show. When a hunger for all things exotic and especially Western started to grip the country, his reputation as the sexiest voice on air spread like wildfire. By the early nineteen-nineties, he had garnered such popular power that he quitted his day job as a translator in the state security department and set up a production company. We were then hit by one surprise after another as he coaxed a series of state media organisations into exclusive deals.
‘You know, what I have achieved with my radio production company is totally improbable. ’ He was referring to the ten-year deals it had made with several radio stations on programme and advertising provision, which, in being exclusive to those stations, were against broadcasting regulations.
Yes I know.
While it was a keen desire to engage the audience that launched his media career, he has never shrunk from utilising everything within his reach – charm, personal contacts, business acumen, legal loopholes – in order to build his business empire. One colleague also suggested bullying.
‘I was featured in two separate programmes by Japanese television. The first was to mark fifteen years of Chinese economic reforms by investigating the ‘new species’ like myself that it bred. Three years ago the second one marked thirty years of reform. Remember how tiny my father’s flat was? In the first programme, the cameraman followed me into my home to make me look taller in the tiny, cramped space. In the second, they showed the difference that fifteen years had made by coming to my villa.’
He does seem to be a new and very different species.
Yet on second thoughts, he is not that different, especially in China. He is a mere illustration of what the nation has bred over the short span of thirty years.
Between phone calls, he filled me in: ‘I am devoting more and more time to going through film scripts these days. This indie film to be premiered tonight will do well, I am sure, just like all of my other film projects.’ He then gave me a list of titles. A mixture of mega-productions starring some of the region’s top entertainers and those that aimed to appeal to lovers of ‘art house’ movies, they have all succeeded in expanding not just his personal wealth but a business portfolio that ranges from radio and music production through events promotion to advertising and entertainment agencies, and, in recent years, film making. A-list international stars are among his clients.
The business empire that he has built up within a mere twenty years started with his passion for Western pop music, something barely known in the China of the late nineteen-eighties. He wrote to a radio station offering his collection of cassettes and vinyl to a ten-minute Western music programme, and was soon given his own show. When a hunger for all things exotic and especially Western started to grip the country, his reputation as the sexiest voice on air spread like wildfire. By the early nineteen-nineties, he had garnered such popular power that he quitted his day job as a translator in the state security department and set up a production company. We were then hit by one surprise after another as he coaxed a series of state media organisations into exclusive deals.
‘You know, what I have achieved with my radio production company is totally improbable. ’ He was referring to the ten-year deals it had made with several radio stations on programme and advertising provision, which, in being exclusive to those stations, were against broadcasting regulations.
Yes I know.
While it was a keen desire to engage the audience that launched his media career, he has never shrunk from utilising everything within his reach – charm, personal contacts, business acumen, legal loopholes – in order to build his business empire. One colleague also suggested bullying.
‘I was featured in two separate programmes by Japanese television. The first was to mark fifteen years of Chinese economic reforms by investigating the ‘new species’ like myself that it bred. Three years ago the second one marked thirty years of reform. Remember how tiny my father’s flat was? In the first programme, the cameraman followed me into my home to make me look taller in the tiny, cramped space. In the second, they showed the difference that fifteen years had made by coming to my villa.’
He does seem to be a new and very different species.
Yet on second thoughts, he is not that different, especially in China. He is a mere illustration of what the nation has bred over the short span of thirty years.
19 October 2011
Tax evasion of the charitable
‘So when are you going to sell your apartment to me?’ Fey asked her high school friend Simon in a café. It was well known among friends that ten years ago, Simon sold his apartment to an elderly couple at a price well below the market rate. In addition, he had allowed the couple to pay him in instalments with zero interest over the span of twenty years. It was an act of charity, and owing to surging inflation and strong growth in the housing market, Simon was not getting the value of his investment.
A computing engineer by trade, Simon is the sort of person who will do anything to have a good conversation, including bringing out his best wine and tea. He seems generous and carefree. It came as a surprise, therefore, when Simon asked for a receipt for the lunch we had just had at an exclusive restaurant, with two bottles of fine wine brought from his proud collection at home. ‘My brother-in-law can reclaim it,’ he said, as if that was the most natural thing on earth.
But perhaps I should not have been surprised.
A few years ago I was asked for help by a friend of many years’ standing.
‘Fire away,’ I said. Over the years, my family and I have been on the receiving end of her kindness and generosity. Her help comes in many forms, including giving red packets of ‘lucky money’ to my parents at festive seasons, gifts which are not supposed to be turned down. And while she was studying in Sunderland, she was not only an active volunteer for her local church but donated money regularly, even though she was living on an extremely tight budget.
‘You don’t have to say yes, and whatever your decision I will fully understand it,’ my friend reassured. ‘It’s just that I wonder if some of my income could appear under your name so that my tax rate could be downgraded considerably. My accountant has done some research and found that since you do not reside in China and that the income from another country is not taxable in your adopted country, you would not be liable to pay tax for it in either.’
More recently she advised ‘you should try your best to get all your money back from the government pension scheme you used to subscribe to. Otherwise the money will disappear into the dark hole of state bureaucracy. It is better to keep the money in your own pocket than lose it to a system that is corrupt.’
I have a sense that both friends belong to a growing Chinese middle class who are becoming more charitable on the one hand, yet on the other more shrewdly aware that their money might be wastefully swallowed up by the public purse. Some of them would even use legal loopholes to claw some money back from it.
A computing engineer by trade, Simon is the sort of person who will do anything to have a good conversation, including bringing out his best wine and tea. He seems generous and carefree. It came as a surprise, therefore, when Simon asked for a receipt for the lunch we had just had at an exclusive restaurant, with two bottles of fine wine brought from his proud collection at home. ‘My brother-in-law can reclaim it,’ he said, as if that was the most natural thing on earth.
But perhaps I should not have been surprised.
A few years ago I was asked for help by a friend of many years’ standing.
‘Fire away,’ I said. Over the years, my family and I have been on the receiving end of her kindness and generosity. Her help comes in many forms, including giving red packets of ‘lucky money’ to my parents at festive seasons, gifts which are not supposed to be turned down. And while she was studying in Sunderland, she was not only an active volunteer for her local church but donated money regularly, even though she was living on an extremely tight budget.
‘You don’t have to say yes, and whatever your decision I will fully understand it,’ my friend reassured. ‘It’s just that I wonder if some of my income could appear under your name so that my tax rate could be downgraded considerably. My accountant has done some research and found that since you do not reside in China and that the income from another country is not taxable in your adopted country, you would not be liable to pay tax for it in either.’
More recently she advised ‘you should try your best to get all your money back from the government pension scheme you used to subscribe to. Otherwise the money will disappear into the dark hole of state bureaucracy. It is better to keep the money in your own pocket than lose it to a system that is corrupt.’
I have a sense that both friends belong to a growing Chinese middle class who are becoming more charitable on the one hand, yet on the other more shrewdly aware that their money might be wastefully swallowed up by the public purse. Some of them would even use legal loopholes to claw some money back from it.
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