Beware teenage dramas that portray mainland China as a cool, admired “big brother” to youngsters from many ethnic-Chinese backgrounds.
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskserials, cranking up their jingoistic fervour offers two ways to profit. First, it pleases Communist Party ideologues, who demand works filled with “positive energy” and that follow the “main melody”, a musical term borrowed by propaganda officials to describe political lines that creative types should adopt.
Yet it would be a mistake to focus too narrowly on tales of derring-do by servants of the Chinese state. For that risks missing another trend, one that involves the success of teenage dramas which portray the mainland as a cool, admired “big brother” to youngsters from many ethnic-Chinese backgrounds.
Playing up stereotypes about bluff, crude but wise-cracking north-easterners, Wang Hu is shown scorning southern food. He complains when locals do not understand his Mandarin Chinese or, worse, speak Cantonese, though that language is the mother-tongue of 80m southern Chinese, including most Macau residents. His half-Chinese schoolmate from Thailand, Li Jiangang, is given a thick accent and a cringing, effeminate manner, and offers the strapping newcomer from Shenyang his puppy-like devotion.
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