The Voice of China Goes Ballistic

Posted by on Oct 8, 2015 in Academic Life, Chang'anjie Media Notebook, China, Media, University of Westminster | No Comments

■ 13:10 (UTC±00:00 +DST), 08 OCT 2015 | GBR LONDON
■ ITEM PART OF CHANG’ANJIE MEDIA NOTEBOOK SUB-BLOG

This show just went epic nuts at the Bird’s Nest. Tracy and I were watching reruns of the grand finale of The Voice of China.

Obviously, I was in the main room, so I only caught the last parts. But those last parts made it all the more worthwhile. They also formed a very heated debate with other academics in a meeting just a few hours after we watched it at home.

Advertising is all the rage in China — and as long as it’s not “unhealthy” or seriously political, chances are, they’ll let it run. The super-expensive spot — played just before they announced the nationwide winner — tried to really “suck it up” to Jay Chow and his rap. It was basically a rip-off of a Jay Chow kung-fu (?) rap — plugging in a car site, Xin.com.

We saw it — and the whole wide Web went bolonzos.

Mad Ad 1

Mad Ad 2

A sampling, then, of reactions to this — online as well (they actually were able to transpose this onscreen in the rerun):

  • Ha ha ha…
  • Okkie, I’m drunk…
  • Devilish…
  • Laughing till I burst with indignation!
  • What a game!
  • My heart is about to explode!
  • I was about to get ticked off when Jay Chow [and his group] lost — but now this ad made me laugh!
  • This is nuts! Xin.com!
  • This ad has no enemies.
  • They’ve played it and ruined it!
  • What a massive waste of money.

As you can kind of expect from “our kind of folk” (academics), everyone had a field day in the conference room lambasting it — until I reminded everyone that Heng Yuan Xiang, earlier one, did an even more annoying ad featuring the repetition of Chinese zodiac animals ad infinitum.

Meanwhile, the fact that Zhang Lei won was the last straw. #OMFG was everyone ticked off…

Mad Ad 3

  • F**k off!
  • Na Ying’s gonna get rich again! [Hint: Zhang Lei was in Team Na Ying.]
  • No reaction…
  • I hate Zhang Lei.
  • I don’t like Zhang Lei at all.
  • This is fake.
  • This guy can’t sing right — and he wins?
  • Old ladies! Zhang Lei now belongs to you!
  • He’s not going to be popular now that he’s the champion.

(FWIW, yours truly is totally hopeless in front of the Karaoke machine.)

Reality shows have taken China by storm — Super Girl back in 2005 was the start of all of this — and the crooning looks like it’s not abating any time soon, even after a full decade… ■ ■ ■