On Chinese TV, what's cool is no longer correct
By Edward Cody (Washington Post)
Updated: 2005-09-30 09:21

Masters of ceremony on state television's seemingly endless roster of variety shows, the regulations said, should avoid vulgarity, dress modestly and uplift their young viewers.

Li Yuchun sings and dances at the 2005 Super Girl contest finals in Changsha, Hunan Province August 27, 2005. Li got more than 3.52 million votes in support of her. Zhou Bichang, the second place winner, and Zhang Liangying, the third place winner, received more than 3.27 million and 1.35 million votes respectively. [Xinhua]

"Hosts and hostesses represent the image of radio and TV stations and therefore have an unshakable responsibility to spread advanced culture and national virtue and to safeguard the country's interests," the authorities decreed.

But also in the latest set of rules, published Sept. 10 by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, was a less obvious stipulation: Masters of ceremony should always use standard Mandarin Chinese and should stop affecting Hong Kong or Taiwanese slang and accents.

To millions of Chinese, particularly boys and girls in the provinces who constitute the main audience for pop-oriented variety shows, Hong Kong and Taiwanese speech has come to mean being cool. The reason is simple. Most of the music and performers making teenage hearts throb here have long originated in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

As a result, some hosts and hostesses of mainland variety shows have taken to throwing Taiwanese slang words and Hong Kong tones into their on-air speech, associating themselves with the cool radiating from those two centers of the Chinese-language pop industry. Saying "very pretty" with a drawn-out hao hao piaoliang ye as they do in Taiwan, for instance, has been branded more with it than the direct hen piaoliang of standard Mandarin.

But for nearly a year, the government broadcasting authority has been engaged in a purification project, designed to halt what officials feel is the creep of vulgarity and non-Chinese influences into programs offered by the country's 3,000 national, provincial, city and county stations. The campaign fits into a general tightening of government controls over broadcasting and other media, including additional Internet rules banning "unhealthy news stories that will mislead the public."

One producer at Beijing-based China Central Television said official expressions of concern have become so frequent that the latest set of regulations drew little attention within the profession. But one place they certainly drew notice, another specialist suggested, was in Hunan province's satellite television studios.

That official station this summer broadcast a groundbreaking singing contest in which viewers were asked to vote for their favorites by cell phone message, "American Idol"-style. The show, "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest," was such a hit across the country that state media estimated that 20 million people watched the final episode and that millions happily paid special fees to submit their votes via cell phone.

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