Letters to the Editor
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none
Oh, fuck off. The smug condescension of this column is unbearable. (even the title: 'How the World Works').
'Globalization is great when it brings other cultures to our ignorant shores, but sucks when we push our garbage on those hapless, naive Chinese.'
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Agreed.
You can dis Avril all you like, but she does have some very catchy songs. And she's reaching out to people who are already fans of hers. How is that wrong?
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ça donne mal à la tête
this is awful. The only part that sounds like mandarin is when she sings your friend (the part about being your girlfriend). The french version is just as bad. The problem with all of this crosslinguistic "singing" is that she her cadence is still the same as it is in english. There's no attempt to adapt the rythm of the language to the song. Also the song is awful.
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Calm down
"fuck off"?
Ease off, guy... Mr. Leonard has a right to his opinion. Especially if I'm in agreement. :-)
And the piece is pretty tongue-in-cheek, so there's no need to go reporting back to the fanclub about how mean the guy at How The World Works is.
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Avril Lavigne, in Mandarin
Damn it. Didn't we just get done apologizing for the Opium Trade?
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Aww, how cute! The wittle glitter-punks bare their nibbly little baby teeth!
Of all the things I was expecting in these comments, half-literate protestations on behalf of fucking Avril Lavigne was not among them.....
Mr. Leonard's dismissive mention of the over-mascara'd forever-teen doll-punk struck just the right tone, "catchy" songs notwithstanding.....
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How do you translate bewbs in Mandarin?
Check out Saaya Irie is you think the Chinese are the least bit interested in how the singing sounds.
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none, cont
I'm the original fuck off poster.
I'm neither her nor there over Avril - it's the tone and bias of this column that's always irritated me and this was the last straw. Of course, I could be just projecting - but it seems everything posted to this column has the theme of 'good for Asia, progressive!', 'good for the West, Imperialist Globalizing assholes!' - when it claims to be non-partisan analysis. It's irrational and hypocritical and a pet peeve of mine.
So fuck you, too!
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me so horny
I'd be happy to just fuck Avril, bad eyeliner and all. Even while listening to her sing in Mandarin. Whatever.
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Like MTV on ACID
No judgements here whatsoever, but the thing about this huge, warp speed macho transformation taking place in China, seemingly between a heartbeat and a blink of an eye, is like a new, pre-teen watching MTV on acid, all filtering mechanisms are turned off, and the kid just soaks it all up. Later on there will be those parameters of taste decisions to be made in art, music, dance, film, food, life style, sustainability, the environment, money, property, religion, democracy, the arms race, RFID, fast food, poverty, the desert, controlling HK and Taiwan, and all else.
Right now it makes perfect sense to hear that April Lavigne is singing in Mandarin and the Chinese can't get enough.
The Beijing Olympics, summer 2008, will be the curtain finally going up for China to show the world they are ready to take over the world. Their taste in all the arts will mature and segments will be fresh and bold and invigorating.
Right now China is one hot boiling cauldron of change. As an example, most of the Chinese learned to drive in the past 10 years - a whole country of more than 1 billion people lacking the hierarchal temporal memory, i.e. the ability to predict the outcome of certain driving maneuvers, let alone enough exposure to Western values on all levels to reach the point of being able to discern and judge and evaluate the subtle and not so subtle shock and awe bombardments of capitalism that is reigning down on that culture and the jarring shift from old to new new new is just too too much. Result: Avril in Mandarin.
Strange how you can get a Katz's-like deli brisket sandwich in BJ but parallel parking should be a reality show.
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anyone hear about Prison Break
So I'm over here in China. I have posted to How the World Works before about my experiences here. As I have two year old, and a 6--month old boys now, I don't keep up on a lot of things around me. I don't think I have heard Avril Lavigne sing in English, let alone Chinese.
About her singing in Chinese...um...so what? She's making money by producing cheesy product (I have not heard it...but I assume it must be pretty cheesy) Nothing new there. Personally, I think if you want to hear cheesy music, China is full of it.
Case-in-point... I just heard a new song by S.H.E - a Taiwanese girl pop band famous for their song "Superstar". They are also famous for the tie-in S.H.E / Pepsi / World of Warcraft commersial in which, after negotiating with a sleazy record-company guy (with Shanghai Pearl Tower outside the window in the background), they all of a sudden change into WoW characters and the music company exec changes into an Orc. Then they fight. Then S.H.E. drinks Pepsi. Anyway, I heard them sing an English version of "Superstar". But the lyrics where nothing like "Superstar"... the song is now called "I am your China girl". So for anyone who has heard "Superstar"... where it goes "Ni shi dian/ wo shi guang/Ni shi wo zhiwei yi xiangfa/Wo zhi ai ni/You are my superstar"...now it goes something like "something something something/ something something something /something / I just love you / I am your China girl". Talk about sickening. I guess you have to hear it though to understand what I'm talking about.
I think what would make a more interesting topic in pop-culture studies is to look at how Japan seems to be an incubator for smaller bands trying to make it big.
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about the subject of my last post
Before I went off about S.H.E, I wanted to ask if anyone there has heard of a show called "Prison Break"? Is it popular in the US? Because it seems that this show that I have never heard of is now one of the popular TV series in China. I have never seen it. I know the main characters are English speaking white-guys (although I suspect they are actually Canadians). And every Chinese guy I meet are asking me if I like this show.