Repackaged Movies

My local DVD shop has a new strategy. They've began making their own box arts for movies in order to boost sales.

The first example is easily spotted if you know what you are looking for. They add various film festival winner logos on to the regular box art. This results in some fun, if improbable combinations. I'm talking about a "low-budget B-movie about an alien probe fighting marines in the desert winning the Cannes festival" level of obviousness.

The second method is more insidious. They take an old action movie and create a new boxart. Nothing wrong with this, especially since the art guys are pretty good. Last time I was unable to distinquish between the release date and quality of Defence of Firebase Gloria (IMDB) and Hurt Locker (IMDB) because the 80's Vietnam movie got a makeover making it look like a '08 blockbuster.
A second example of this was Red Heat. When I saw the cover I actually had to turn it over and see if Arnold had made a new action movie. He hadn't, but damn if the box wasn't good enough to almost make me buy it.

This could hurt the sales of movies in the long run, but I'm not completely certain the local customers will really care which foreign war movie they picked.

OP Out.

Fashion of Sorts

All right, I can't really go "her pashmina was so 2008 it was unreal!" here, the fashion mistakes I've pictured are in a league of their own.

I've previously mentioned how in the summer men roll up their T-shirts to show their bellies, but the women of Taizhou have their own unique winter clothing. It's not very unusual to see people with their pyjamas on here. Women at times decide it's fine and proper to wear a pyjama outside and go do whatever daily activies they wish. The pictured example came to the largest supermarket in the city to show her stuff.

The second pic is from the airport. Perhaps she thought going out in a pyjama wasn't fitting, but she still decided to drag along a little piece of warm fluffy home with her. And yes, even if I don't have a pic to share, I've seen women wear the pyjama and the "shoes" as a set.

OP Out.

The Airport River

The three images above are from the small river at the local airport. It's not even an international airport and you're boned if you're headed to anything futher than Shenzhen. The airport itself is the least interesting thing to post about, so I'll cover the river.

The first image is from the last summer. The river was covered with this thick green algae, which covered all the local waterways. The growth was very smooth and made the whole river look like a slice of golf green riddled with junk and empty bottles half buried in the grass.

The river then changed outlook drastically, and got covered with green plants with occasional little flowers on them. This was in autumn and made the river look like an intentional garden. You couldn't see any water then, either.

The last image is from my last flight here. The plants have died and turned to an awful brown, with bits of black brackish stinking water peeking from the edges.

You are welcome to make your own commentary on the state of the environment as far as these images are relevant. I'll try to take the next picture in the spring to show you the whole circle of life at the Taizhou Airport river - should I still be here.

OP Out.

Central China Drought

If you've followed the China news carefully you've come across the drought already.

Perhaps it's not worth it to share the full statistics again, but there are 200 million farmers suffering from a lack of water for crops and drinking. The image I dug up should cue you in on how large a piece of China we're talking about. You can find the rest from any site offering more complete news coverage.

I wish I could offer more valuable insight to this, but I've never been to these areas and I recognize I Don't Know that part of China. However, potable water is in my opinion the one issue which could cause severe unrest in China. Healthcare has improved in less than 10 years significantly. Human rights are on their way up and people are less impoverished - all these contribute to the stability. And at the moment China is stabile. However, these do not mean much to people who have no water to drink.

China is working on it, and we will need to wait and see if the efforts are effective. I hope the millions of hectars of wheat affected are not a sign of worse to come. They plan to cut the amount of water used per dollar of GDP significantly by 2020. It's a lofty goal, but perhaps not impossible.

OP Out.

Music Choices

One of my favorite things in bars and restaurants here is commenting on the music. Commenting, or more truthfully ridiculing.

The Chinese restaurants catering to the westerners make it easy. Actually, I think establishments fall in to two distinct categories, the fist one being the group where the music is mostly fitting but include a few odd songs here and there; the second group is far more interesting, and unfortunately, far more numerous.

A prime example is from stopping for a pint after dinner in Hong Kong. Lasse and I found a comfortable, mood-lit little establishment and ordered our drinks. The service was good, the decorations were fitting and everything spoke of upper middle class. Well, everything except for the playlist. I pointed out the disco beats to Lasse, and we listened a little further. They started playing Crazy Frog.

I'm sorry, I can't continue that thought further, but rest assured it's not the only example of unfortunate music here. The Irish bar in Guangzhou looks the part, except you can't really hold a conversation inside due to the disco built to an adjacent hall. Turn left from the bar, walk past the Guinness tap, through an opening and there's a mirror ball hanging over head.

These unfortunates are extreme examples though. Most restaurants just have a partially English menu riddled with typos and unclear expressions and a CD playing in the background. The DIO Cafe I used to go to actually always played the same music back to back. The selection was so narrow I caught on the second time I went there for lunch.

The menus in restaurants I will leave as a topic for another day.

OP Out.

Ineffective Advertisements

Last time I was driving towards NingBo, during the last quarter of the journey the car had to stop at the lights. A guy walked up to the door and slipped a card to the window crack - not inside the car obviously, just outside the car. I didn't bother to remove it and we drove on.

The next set of lights come up and the driver has to stop again. Another guy walks the row of cards, comes to our car, takes away the other card and replaces it with one of his own and walks away.

That has got to be the single most uneffective advertisement I've seen here. About as ineffective as posting spam comments on YDKC with a link to your own crappy site. (Rimshot)

OP Out.

No Fireworks Allowed

Firecrackers are perhaps the most traditional Chinese firework. There are more traditional ways to celebrate the New Year, including hanging of the red papers at doorways, but fireworks make more headlines.

I looked back a little and found several separate pieces of news. Like most China news they report a number, a cause and a province. (Quite a departure of Who, Where, When, What -reporting, eh?) The numbers were small, 6 dead, 13 dead and so on, but they all were preventable. Explosions in fireworks factories, some illegal facilities some lisenced.

The most recent reminder of worker safety training comes fresh, last night from Beijing. Monday marked the end of the New Year celebrations. The Chinese traditionally celebrate the first full moon of the New Year with fireworks rivalled only by the New Year's Eve itself. Last night a 44-floor building paid the price.

I'll link the Reuters piece since they have better pictures this time around. (Please note the casualty information in the linked piece of news is wrong.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090209/ap_on_re_as/as_china_hotel_fire

Cause? Workers celebrating. At the top of a construction yard at night, with fireworks. Numbers? Six, five of whom were firefighters. Aside from those the two points I'm interested in whether the higher-ups realize this is something you fix with worker safety training, not fireworks bans, and if the builders still have the money to finish the tower. I assume no and no.

OP Out.

Shenzen Airlines Branding

During my recent Hong Kong trip (and I might infringe on Pekka's turf in a later post and talk a little about arcades or goldfish) I flew from Taizhou to Guangzhou with Shenzhen Airlines.


I noted they had started a push to promote their carrier / brand in-flight. When looking out the window my eye was drawn to the wingtip. It was painted bright red with a golden Shenzhen Airlines logo on it. I thought it was a clever way to associate looking out of an airplane window with a carrier. Actually, considering the cost of the paint job it's an excellent marketing idea.


They followed the act with a little promotional speech and proceeded to sell little gifts. Passengers could buy scale models of the plane, as well as pieces of jewelry and other such miscellaneous items. Nothing wrong with either, and I'm sure the domestic carriers need to extra profit too.

However, the branding did not go all the way. The in-flight lunch was served like usual, and it included a small wet napkin. This was proudly branded Japan Airlines.

I guess they ran out of napkins branded Shenzhen Airlines and bought a similar product just to fill a routine lunch package. I felt it kind of undermined the whole marketing push.

OP Out.

China

How China looks from Finland? At the moment it looks like another planet, because it seems so distant. The news from China have been recently focusing on rather trivial issues, such as talking about how Chinese people spent their Chinese New Year in Finland, or then they talk about tragedies or scandals happening in China.

I don't know why it is like this, because to me China seems like a nation that is going to matter, for example in the world's economical development, a great deal. Well, on the other hand, every country seems to have troubles of their own in this moment, but regardless, I'm sure there are things happening in China every day.

I can't say I could hooray for Finnish media anyways, but still, considering how big China has come, it has struck me when I'm now back in Finland, how small amount of news from there actually reaches here.

More Poor Reporting

One more example of poor reporting:

"BEIJING (Reuters) – China denounced a protester at Cambridge University who threw a shoe at visiting Premier Wen Jiabao, but nevertheless hailed Wen's visit as a success and avoided widespread reporting of the incident."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090203/wl_nm/us_china_britain_shoe

The problem with this piece of news? They say China avoided widespread reporting of a shoe thrown at the prime minister, but later in the same piece of news they admit the foreign ministry included the shoe in a press release on their website. Oops.

Want one more? The issue was even brought up in the main evening news on CCTV, in a nationwide broadcast. They reported the facts as is and proceeded to note the visit still achieved it's goals and that a shoe won't affect UK - China trade relations. Oops again. That piece of China Brand News was brought to you by Chris Buckley and Yu Le; Editing by Nick Macfie and Sanjeev Miglani. They suck. Their reporting had an outright wrong fact in the midst, and using this they drew wrong conclusions.

OP Out.

Simple Pleasures/Businesses

The first sunny days in Taizhou have brought out kites.
It's still holiday for many, and it's not the first time I've seen people fly kites here. It's a simple pleasure, but I appreciate the fact families take the time to go out together and play a little.

Since we're in China, it's a small business too. The local park where kites are flown gathers kite peddlers. The average salesman has about a dozen kites, sold from either the back of a bicycle or laid out on the grass. And there are quite a few. On the first day people were out I counted about 50 kites in the sky. I also saw at least 10 hawkers with kites.

Similar small businesses can be found in most parks around here. The largerst are regular kiosks selling snacks, toys and drinks. These are often surrounded by various other merchants. I've seen fishing games for kids (plastic pool filled with plastic fish,) the usual flower salesgirls, radio-controlled boats for rent, bird seed salesmen and the food stalls. Like other businesses these clump together so that potential customers have an easier time finding them. This is especially true for food - the larger park here will have a minimum of five carts at any time there are potential customers.

This time I'm not going to go on a rant on how everything is made commercial, I'll reserve that for cultural landmarks. Instead, I will say the parks are serviced parks. Actually, last time I was out I made a small detour just to grab a cola from the stalls, since the places are so lively. The small businesses don't detract from the small joys.

OP Out.