The Appeal of Fakes

I don't understand the point of this post. People go to these shows in order to see something different.

The word is "different", not "fake", because the latter implies a certain prejudice. Fakes of what? If these transsexuals and transvestites consider it fine the way they are, then they are true to their nature.

Therefore, who can say they are fakes if he is prejudicial.

Well said, Sed.

Elegant wrote: "But Hong Kong has one attraction for mainland tourists where a little deception is the whole point: the transsexual show."

Fake= (Webster's Dictionary)to create or render so as to mislead (an opponent). To pretend.

Are transsexuals & transvestites faking it or is Simon Elegant and too many like him, pretending to understand anything that don't fit into their Eurocentric moulds?

Is this post a Schtik for the racists, sexists, archaic moralists and whatnot?

Is Elegant a satirist mistaken for, or rather faking as a journalist whose job really is to scorn anything Chinese?

Can we call this fake journalism?

Hey moron commenters on the china blog, Austin Ramzy wrote this, not Simon Elegant. It might help to actually read a post before wasting our time with your idiotic screed. How this short understated narrative on attending a lady boy show betrays some pernicious Eurocentric attitude is beyond me. Such categories are pointless and seem to mean much more to you Chinese, living under a quasi-fascist regime that has to cultivate such monolithic ideas of the world. If you want to play that game, at least European/Western countries wouldn't lock up their gays or quarantine their AIDS patients like lepers.

Why do these threads always disintegrate into "You hate China!" "No, you Chinese are fascists"?

The shows are meant to be fun, Austin's piece simply plays with that. And gay people are not locked up in China.

The mainlanders get used to “different”, whereas outsiders call it “fake” veracity, such as fake doctors, fake hospitals, fake police, fake documents, fake rice, fake pork….. and, fake communist.

“The Appeal of Fakes” is not sick journalism, but to satirize the massive mob suddenly let free from the floodgate seeking for the next ultimate connoisseur of fakes.

In a very sick society, the mob, deviant from a puritan socialist ideology, will show the Hong Kong 14K gangs they are nothing compare to the fake, or “different”, 24K mafia in the mainland.

It is obivous that the Time Mag China Blog reporters do not miss any chance of bashing China.

But instead, the post reveals the prejudice of the reporter.

And it seems this blog attracts anti-Chinese morons who hate anything Chinese and they suck up to every anti-Chinese reporter.

It's real sad.

Sex changes among homosexuals could be a novel way for all of the unmarriable men in China to finally get some satisfaction without having to resort to violence or pedophilia to get their jollies.

Even the PLgay could get in on that action.

Starting from communism is faked, the mass of one fifth of humanity waste no time in the relentless pursuit of ultimate fakes, including fake IPR, all under the banner of getting rich fast by all means.

The entire world will be drowned and wiped out by this “not-so-fake” China Tsunami without a single shot being fired.

The one on the right is really hot, except she is a little too tall for a girl. The one on the left looks like a Uighur whore that my friend used to be a frequent patron of.

China Tsunami:

Still have to use a Japanese word?

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_china.html

Our "Anonymous" commenter's hollow response reflects precisely his lack of understanding of anything, thus further qualifying the typical reactionary ignoramus eurocentricity with regard to Chinese and its culture that he possess and naturally is so offended with. So who cares if it was Austin Ramzy, Simon Elegant or Winston Churchill who wrote the article, the familiar supremistic stench is identifiably foul and pernicious to those whom they carelessly and persistantly slander.
Of course a lot of what we say are beyond you because you are exactly what you may think of us - moronic.

Nevertheless I stand corrected with regard to the author but not the rest of the comment.

Well said, Sed.

Austin Ramzy wrote: "But Hong Kong has one attraction for mainland tourists where a little deception is the whole point: the transsexual show."

Fake= (Webster's Dictionary)to create or render so as to mislead (an opponent). To pretend.

Are transsexuals & transvestites faking it or is Ramzy and too many like him, pretending to understand anything that don't fit into their Eurocentric moulds?

Is this post a Schtik for the racists, sexists, archaic moralists and whatnot?

Is Ramzy a satirist mistaken for, or rather faking as a journalist whose job really is to scorn anything Chinese?

Can we call this fake journalism?

走中国人的路，让老外猜去吧 ---

Chinese culture ? What Chinese culture, after the cultural revolution when all Chinese culture was totally destroyed by our beloved party ?

Trashing China and Chinese is fully justified after reading all the posts here by Chinese. These so called people have no understanding of Chinese culture and tradition, and certainly don't know what is really going on in China. It helps if they wake up once a while to smell all the "aroma" of China.

E Arden,

Instead of a blanket statement, some facts might give your argument some credibility. Since you accused that they “have no understanding of Chinese culture and traditions”, care to elaborate what “Chinese culture and traditions” is? I bet you don’t have a clue either.

Some people’s rhetoric here might be too extreme, but using them to justify Chinese-trashing just seems too immature to me.

U.S. leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past five decades, democratically elected governments—guilty of introducing redistributive economic programs or otherwise pursuing independent courses that do not properly fit into the U.S.-sponsored global free market system—have found themselves targeted by the U.S. national security state. Thus democratic governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Syria, Uruguay, and numerous other nations were overthrown by their respective military forces, funded and advised by the United States. The newly installed military rulers then rolled back the egalitarian reforms and opened their countries all the wider to foreign corporate investors.

The U.S. national security state also has participated in destabilizing covert actions, proxy mercenary wars, or direct military attacks against revolutionary or nationalist governments in Afghanistan (in the 1980s), Angola, Cambodia, Cuba, East Timor, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Fiji Islands, Grenada, Haiti, Indonesia (under Sukarno), Iran, Jamaica, Lebanon, Libya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Syria, South Yemen, Venezuela (under Hugo Chavez), Western Sahara, and Iraq (under the CIA-sponsored autocratic Saddam Hussein, after he emerged as an economic nationalist and tried to cut a better deal on oil prices).

The propaganda method used to discredit many of these governments is not particularly original, indeed by now it is quite transparently predictable. Their leaders are denounced as bombastic, hostile, and psychologically flawed. They are labeled power hungry demagogues, mercurial strongmen, and the worst sort of dictators likened to Hitler himself. The countries in question are designated as “terrorist” or “rogue” states, guilty of being “anti-American” and “anti-West.” Some choice few are even condemned as members of an “evil axis.” When targeting a country and demonizing its leadership, U.S. leaders are assisted by ideologically attuned publicists, pundits, academics, and former government officials. Together they create a climate of opinion that enables Washington to do whatever is necessary to inflict serious damage upon the designated nation's infrastructure and population, all in the name of human rights, anti-terrorism, and national security.

A Chinese who criticizes the Chinese government is a hero.

A Chinese who trashes China is a scum of the nation.

"In a capitalist “democracy” like the United States, the corporate news media faithfully reflect the dominant class ideology both in their reportage and commentary. At the same time, these media leave the impression that they are free and independent, capable of balanced coverage and objective commentary. How they achieve these seemingly contradictory but legitimating goals is a matter worthy of study. Notables in the media industry claim that occasional inaccuracies do occur in news coverage because of innocent error and everyday production problems such as deadline pressures, budgetary restraints, and the difficulty of reducing a complex story into a concise report. Furthermore, no communication system can hope to report everything, hence selectivity is needed.

To be sure, such pressures and problems do exist and honest mistakes are made, but do they really explain the media’s overall performance? True the press must be selective, but what principle of selectivity is involved? I would argue that media bias usually does not occur in random fashion; rather it moves in more or less consistent directions, favoring management over labor, corporations over corporate critics, affluent whites over low income minorities, officialdom over protestors, the two-party monopoly over leftist third parties, privatization and free market “reforms” over public sector development, U.S. dominance of the Third World over revolutionary or populist social change, and conservative commentators and columnists over progressive or radical ones."

"we hear about political repression perpetrated by officially designated “rogue” governments, but information about the brutal murder and torture practiced by U.S.-sponsored surrogate forces in the Third World, and other crimes committed by the U.S. national security state are denied public airing, being suppressed with a consistency that would be called “totalitarian” were it to occur in some other countries.

The media downplay stories of momentous magnitude. In 1965 the Indonesian military — advised, equipped, trained, and financed by the U.S. military and the CIA — overthrew President Achmed Sukarno and eradicated the Indonesian Communist Party and its allies, killing half a million people (some estimates are as high as a million) in what was the greatest act of political mass murder since the Nazi Holocaust. The generals also destroyed hundreds of clinics, libraries, schools, and community centers that had been established by the Communists. Here was a sensational story if ever there was one, but it took three months before it received passing mention in Time magazine and yet another month before it was reported in the New York Times (April 5, 1966), accompanied by an editorial that actually praised the Indonesian military for “rightly playing its part with utmost caution.”

Over the course of forty years, the CIA involved itself with drug traffickers in Italy, France, Corsica, Indochina, Afghanistan, and Central and South America. Much of this activity was the object of extended congressional investigation — by Senator Church's committee and Congressman Pike’s committee in the 1970s, and Senator Kerry's committee in the late 1980s. But the corporate capitalist media seem not to have heard about it."

"Like all propagandists, mainstream media people seek to prefigure our perception of a subject with a positive or negative label. Some positive ones are: “stability,” “the president’s firm leadership,” “a strong defense,” and “a healthy economy.” Indeed, not many Americans would want instability, wobbly presidential leadership, a weak defense, and a sick economy. The label defines the subject without having to deal with actual particulars that might lead us to a different conclusion.

Some common negative labels are: “leftist guerrillas,” “Islamic terrorists,” “conspiracy theories,” “inner-city gangs,” and “civil disturbances.” These, too, are seldom treated within a larger context of social relations and issues. The press itself is facilely and falsely labeled “the liberal media” by the hundreds of conservative columnists, commentators, and talk-shows hosts who crowd the communication universe while claiming to be shut out from it. Some labels we will never be exposed to are “class power,” “class struggle,” and “U.S. imperialism.”"

Lost in all this is the fact that US leaders have been the greatest purveyors of terrorism throughout the world. In past decades they or their surrogate mercenary forces have unleashed terror bombing campaigns against unarmed civilian populations, destroying houses, schools, hospitals, churches, hotels, factories, farms, bridges, and other nonmilitary targets in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, the Congo, Panama, Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and numerous other countries, causing death and destruction to millions of innocents. Using death squad terrorism US leaders have also been successful in destroying reformist and democratic movements in scores of countries. Of course hardly a word of this is uttered in the corporate media, leaving Bush and company free to parade themselves as the champions of peace and freedom.

D word:

And what kind of nonsense has China been up to for the past 5000 years? Conquest, destruction and pain.

@E Arden: "Trashing China and Chinese is fully justified..."

It looks like it is TIME, America, the West that are being justifiably trashed and nakedly exposed here. Ha ha!

Excellent post by The Great D word!

Pretty easy to cut and past, ain't it D word?

http://www.michaelparenti.org/MonopolyMedia.html

We see the revival of century old “boxers” here sparing in all directions. A decade ago, these boxers wandered in tourist spots dredging 老外’s foot to practice their oral English. Today they practice their English writing in this Blog.

As the China Tsunami gathers momentum and height, in the pitiful yet helpless words of John Feffer “Will the China Century succeed the American Century? Not if the tide keeps rising. In the pitiless gaze of nature, we are all quite dispensable”.

“The Appeal of Fakes” is the ultimate reality of this Tsunami of “fakes” collapsing on top of everyone, which keeps all Sinologists guessing, and TIME backpakers correspondents being employed, as to when this tidal wave of fake communism, fake burgeoning economy, fake nationalism, collapse onshore.

The tsunami always looses against the shore as the tsunami is completely destroyed and the while the shore sustains damage, it is recoverable.

Foolish, cheap, copycat china.

Has anybody come up with any meaningful points refuting Michael's argument? I only see irrelevant rhetorics.

To those naive Chinese who never live, work, study in the West, let me tell you point-blank : US/Western & Chinese interests can never be reconciled, not in a thousand years. The West hates us in so many ways-racially, politically, militarily, economically; in fact, in all respects! US's dominance naturally means suppression of China; conversely, our rise must naturally means riding over the dead body of US/Western hegemony. There is absolutely no two way about it!

Should my fellow countrymen are still not being convinced, let me recommend you guys to read Henry Liu's most recent article in Asia Times online : `China's misguided `experts' on the US', http://www.atimes.com/atimes/china/IE02Ad01.html, (note:the author is a long time scholar on Sino-US relations & has resided long period of time in US).

Correction to previous post: read Henry Liu's article:-

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IE02Ad05.html

Henry Liu is a misguided CCP lover who longs to see white people bow to him.

Great D,

It seems to me that Michael Parenti’s view represents the far left of the American political spectrum. I sense a little anti-American sentiment in his articles as well. He does not represent the mainstream view. So, one should always take it with a grain of salt.

However, his article on Tibet, which included a lot of quotes from reliable sources (such as NY Times and LA Times), is more credible than others. We can always doubt that there is bias in the Western mainstream media, but you have to admit that their fact-checking do have a positive track record (most of the time).

BZ,

I more or less agree with your view.

His view on Tibet history is perhaps a rare, if not the only, one that is not preoccupied with political correctness in the west, but supported by facts, references and reasonable analysis.

His analysis of corporate media does reflect some ultra-left orientation. However, I think it may help some (perhap many) people in the west brain-washed by one-sided rhetorics from birth cool down their heads a little bit. After all, he does provide some legitimate argument about the ignorant and propogandaist tendency of western media (only because they always claim and are believed by many to be independent and balanced), especially with respect to issues where a preassumed, politically correct view is taken for granted and protected from any challenge. Tibet is one of them as far as I can see.

Great D,

I agree.

By the way, regarding facts checking, I think it is reasonable to say that people tend to neglect facts checking or at least not conduct it in a way as rigorous as it should be, if the "facts" are something they have taken for granted for so long (perhaps from birth). On occasions, people may choose not to do facts checking because they fare the truth is something unwanted or contradicts their belief. For example, I believe many and perhaps many many people in the west believe that it is always better to have a "democratic" government than an "authoritarian" one. However, the real world is more complex than a slogan of "OUR values". Their belief could be easily manipulated and used by some people or interest groups to pursue some hidden agenda under the disguise of the shining, holy banners. This is particularly true with regard to international politics and relations.

Good point D!

One of the most glaring examples of western propaganda can be found on the world maps. As we all know, China and India have disputed over their borders for decades and even fought a brief war over it. If you look at a map published by the West, you will find that a region between China and India, next to Kashmir, is marked as disputed or "controlled by China, claimed by India". However, there is another piece of even larger land on the eastern boarder that is disputed. It is claimed by both countries and controlled by India. However, this piece of land, which China calls "South Tibet", shows up as an undisputed Indian territory. Check out the map of China on the "CIA World Factbook" website and many other American websites. Google's world map has both disputed territories marked. We don't even have to debate who is right or wrong. It's quite obvious that the Western media has and continues to LIE about a fact that a dispute on a territory exists. If this is not propaganda, then I don't know what is.

Do only mad people read this blog?

That’s right, CAT

We are all insane!

Backpackers surf the tidal wave seeking for cheap sex, part time job for TIME, or teaching English to those party zealots who practice their writing in this Blog.

Disgruntled BBQ mutton obviously is having some sort of grievance to tell, probably in connection with sklf, the party jerk, frequently molested his Uighur sister.

We are all mad! Aren’t we?

Hahaha! Tsunami,
You are wrong about me. I'm not Uighur, but I know who is though. I think you should say it to nanheyangrouchan. I can imagine how his face lights up with a big grin when you mention his sister.