Sunday Times 2
China gets egg on face with racist blackface Dog Year parody of Africans
Africa-loving China welcomed the dawn of the Year of the Dog on Thursday night with egg on its face when the Communist state’s national broadcaster, CCTV, staged a racist parody of Africans that was supposedly humorous. Except, it turned China into an object of mockery on the day of its biggest cultural celebration.
Racist parody: New Year TV show backfires
The civilised world was not laughing at the ugly TV act featuring an actor as a monkey carrying a basket on its back, a blackface Chinese woman with a large, protruding fake backside and oversized drooping breasts, portraying the stereotype of the large-bottomed, heavy-breasted African woman.
This “African’’ woman is seen swooning over the great Communist lender funding and building Africa’s railways. “I love China, I love China,’’ the “African’’ woman in blackface exults in Putonghua, arms spread out like a preacher, to the audience to loud applause and cheers. The broadcast was live.
The Chinese actress in blackface is believed to be Lou Naiming, also a playwright. Users of Chinese social media Weibo and WeChat are among those who have felt and ashamed, alarmed at the racist portrayal of the dark skins by the Chinese.
The TV act also features an African woman pleading with the besuited TV show’s young host to pretend to be her boyfriend so she could avoid her big-bottomed, big-breasted mother’s pressure to go on a blind date. A Chinese man courting/marrying an African woman, is as rare as finding pandas in Africa. But, farcical as the skit is, the host is then presented with a modern Chinese bride, western veil, and gown. The racist message appeared well concealed.
According to CCTV the act was about Kenyan railway workers celebrating the 480-kilometre Nairobi-Mombasa rail line (from the capital to the port city) built with Chinese aid. The stage backdrop featured on its right side, a stage floor-to-ceiling photo of the locomotive and carriages.
China is estimated to have funded 90 percent of the US$3.8 billion project (Rs 589 billion). In comparison, China Communication Construction Company has promised to invest just US$1.4 billion (Rs 217 billion) in the controversial, reclaimed-land project, Port City in Sri Lanka.
The Chinese envoy to Kenya, Liu Xianfa, and executives of the contractor China Road and Bridge Corp were on hand at the November launch of the railway last year. Chinese State Councillor Wang Yong, boasted it to be “an exemplary project of China-Africa cooperation on the construction of roads, railways, aviation networks and industrialisation’’, as cited by the Communist news agency Xinhua at the time.
Xinhua News Agency and Enjoy Culture & Media Co., are also publishing “My Railway, My Story,” an offshoot of the state mouthpiece’s documentary on the railway.
The Kenya railway-inspired racist show was broadcast live on China’s national broadcaster CCTV as a part of the massive, annual Spring Festival Gala. The disgraceful skit, about sharing joy and happiness, was meant to be funny, although the Chinese are not known for their sense of humour.
Earlier this year, the Japanese comedian Masatoshi Hamada blackened his face, donned a curly wig, and a Detroit Lions football jacket, for a new year’s eve TV show that was roundly denounced as racist. In the Netherlands at Christmas every year, white Dutchmen in wigs, blacken their faces to portray Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) in a street fest defended and lambasted in equal measure. Some say it evokes slavery, while the Dutch say Black Pete, the sidekick of Saint Nicholas, gets blackened by climbing in and out of chimneys to deliver Yuletide presents.