Mocking Mao Backfires for Chinese TV Host
By Chris Buckley

Mao Zedong famously said a revolution is not a dinner party. Nor, it seems, is a dinner party in China an occasion to mock Mao’s revolution.

In the past few days, some tipsy gibes by a Chinese television celebrity, Bi Fujian, have been enough to inspire tirades from the state media and imperil Mr. Bi’s career.

A crooning, avuncular regular on state-run China Central Television entertainment programs, Mr. Bi apparently thought he was amusing a few guests around a banquet table when he sang some lines from a Mao-era opera and peppered the lyrics with sarcastic asides. But shaky video of the performance lasting a minute or so leaked onto the Internet in recent days, and now Mr. Bi stands accused of political sacrilege, which cannot be good when your job depends on echoing party propaganda themes.

“His comments in this Internet video have serious social consequences,” the state broadcaster said in a statement Wednesday night. “We will conscientiously investigate this and sternly deal with it according to the relevant regulations.”

News reports said on Thursday that Mr. Bi had already been suspended from appearances on China Central Television for the remainder of the week.

Later in the day, Mr. Bi broke his silence with an apology that amounted to a plea for clemency.

“I feel extremely remorseful and pained,” Mr. Bi said on his page on Sina.com’s Weibo, a popular microblog site. “I sincerely offer my deepest apologies to the public. As a public figure, I will certainly heed the lessons and exercise strict demands and discipline over myself.”

Mr. Bi’s public mortification is a symptom of the times, Zhang Ming, a historian at Renmin University in Beijing, said by phone.

Since Xi Jinping, the Communist Party leader, took power two years ago, he has demanded that citizens, especially artists and writers, uphold party orthodoxy, and has warned against “historical nihilism,” or bleak depictions of the past that undermine the party’s stature. Mr. Xi has taken particular umbrage at critics of the party who live off the party’s largess.

“Nowadays, officials are all quite sensitive ideologically, and they’re afraid of being accused of not responding when something like this comes out,” Mr. Zhang said. “It’s clearly more sensitive than a few years ago.”

“There wouldn’t be much of a fuss if an ordinary citizen said this,” he added. “But Bi Fujian is a big deal.”

Something like an older, Chinese version of Ryan Seacrest, the smooth host of “American Idol,” Mr. Bi has been the host of a long-running talent show, “Avenue of Stars.” He was also one of several hosts of the variety gala that hundreds of millions of Chinese people watch on Lunar New Year’s Eve.

Mr. Bi’s sin was to offer his own interpretation of a song from “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy,” one of the eight “model” operas and ballets that Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and her artistic underlings developed in the 1960s to replace traditional performances with revolutionary content. Mr. Bi grew up under Mao, and he knew the lyrics by heart, but his improvised asides put a wicked spin on Ms. Jiang’s libretto.

“The Communist Party! Chairman Mao!” Mr. Bi sang, adding, sotto voce, “Uh, don’t mention that old son of a bitch, he tormented us!”

“Leading us forward, a red star on our heads and revolutionary red banners planted either side!” he went on, adding: “What kind of costume is that?”

“The red banner points to clouds dispersing! The people of the revolutionary region overthrow their landlords, free themselves!” he sings, adding, “Huh, what did the landlords do to offend you?”

“The people’s army, sharing suffering and woe with the people, have come to clear Tiger Mountain!” he concludes, ending with a salty, dismissive expression that can’t be printed here.

The people at the table giggled as Mr. Bi threw out his quips, and they burst into laughter and applause at the end. The presence of two Western men and a Western woman has magnified speculation, rich in conspiracy theories, about who was present and how the video became public.

Liu Dawei, the chairman of the China Artists Association, felt compelled to deny rumors that he was among the guests, according to the China News Service.

“This is a case of political entrapment using rumors and slander to engage in personal attacks,” Mr. Liu said.

Like quite a few Chinese celebrities, Mr. Bi seems to have combined a politically wholesome public persona with an irreverent sense of humor in private. And the reaction to Mr. Bi’s brief performance has illustrated the divide in China between Mao’s sacred official stature and public opinion, which is much more mixed between reverence and revulsion.

Commentaries in the state media and on the Internet reviled Mr. Bi as a traitor and heretic for making fun of Mao, but online, some people defended his right to his opinions and welcomed his satirical take on Mao’s grievous mistakes.

“The epidemic of sneers, crude words and obscenities is by no means a blessing for the Internet,” said a commentary about Mr. Bi issued by Xinhua, the main state news agency. “Even less is it a symbol of free expression.”

By contrast, one comment on Weibo read: “Totally support Bi Fujian. Everyone has the right to free speech, not to mention saying that Mao was a big dictator who brought calamity to China, ruined China’s literary heritage and starved tens of millions of people.”

Mr. Bi, 56, came of age during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Mao’s tumultuous bid to cleanse the party and society of ideological deviance, and spent three years “sent down” to the countryside as part of Mao’s program, noted one online commentary.

“The core evidence used to condemn Bi is his comment that Mao Zedong ‘tormented us,’” it said. “Was that comment really so wrong?”

That commentary and other defenders of Mr. Bi noted that even official assessments of Mao have been ambivalent. The party’s decision on history, which Deng Xiaoping oversaw in 1980-81, in an effort to shore up Mao’s battered status, nonetheless noted that Mao had brought on calamities during his later years, including the Cultural Revolution.

Under Mr. Xi, though, the party has imposed even tighter censorship on public discussion and research about Mao’s era. Party publications have also dismissed as lies the conclusion, shared by many historians in China and abroad, that tens of millions of people, possibly 30 million or more, died because of the famine and other suffering brought on from the late 1950s by Mao’s Great Leap Forward, when his attempt to catapult the country into Communist abundance crashed disastrously.

Unlike the intellectuals of Mao’s era who dared to question the party’s policies, Mr. Bi appears unlikely to spend time in prison for his performance. But his days in the limelight could be over, for now at least.

春晚主持人罵毛 節目立馬被拔

多次主持央視春晚的大陸名主持人畢福劍，因私底下調侃文革樣板劇，還以髒話挖苦前中共領導人毛澤東；前天才換新任台長的央視，昨立即決定停播畢福劍在央視所主持節目至少四天，並發聲明強調，畢的言論造成「嚴重社會影響」，將依規定嚴肅處理。

央視名主持人畢福劍日前與友人聚餐，酒酣耳熱之際，唱起大陸文革樣板劇「智取威虎山」裡的「我們是工農子弟兵」選段，邊唱邊戲謔，不時引起同桌友人哄堂大笑。

畢福劍唱到「改地換天幾十年，鬧革命南北轉輾」時，調侃「哦，夠辛苦的」，唱到「人民鬥倒地主把身翻」，畢福劍說「地主招你惹你了」，唱到「共產黨毛主席指引我們向前」時，更加了句髒話，「哎可別提那個老Ｘ養的了，可把我們害苦了」。

餐敘暖場影片意外在網上曝光，有人批評畢福劍是「吃共產黨的飯，砸共產黨的鍋」，有人認為這只是茶餘飯後的玩笑話；有網友力讚，稱「從此成為老畢粉絲」，認為官方別「說了點實話就受不了」。

中共黨媒人民日報旗下的環球時報前天發表評論認為，公眾人物應謹言慎行，影片造成轟動「自己應負很大責任」，直言「大眾明星作為公眾人物，與主流社會價值觀保持和諧，比嬉笑怒罵地顯示『才華』更為重要。」

影片引起軒然大波，也驚動央視高層。央視內部員工透露，事件嚴重影響央視形象，前天高層為此召開會議，決定嚴厲治理工作作風，從八日到十二日，停播四天畢福劍在央視主持的所有節目；十二日後是否恢復播出，該員工表示「暫時還沒有接到相關通知。」

昨晚央視發出最新聲明回應稱，「畢福劍作為央視主持人，在此次網路視頻中的言論造成了嚴重社會影響，我們認真調查並依據有關規定作出嚴肅處理」，並未否認停播傳聞。

央視新任台長聶辰席，身兼大陸廣電總局副局長，前天剛履職，一上任就大動作處理此事，有陸媒認為，這是聶辰席新官上任的「第一把火」。

原文參照：
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/joking-about-mao-lands-tv-host-in-hot-water/

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20150410/c10tvhost/zh-hant/

Video：畢福劍唱大陸文革樣板劇「智取威虎山」
http://youtu.be/6MH76LtZEWA

2015-04-09．聯合報．A12．兩岸．記者陳君碩