APRIL 9, 2015 4:53 AM April 9, 2015 4:53 am
The television host Bi Fujian’s performance of a song from the Mao-era opera “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy,” with irreverent asides, was captured on video.
HONG KONG — 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, including as the host of the long-running talent show “Avenue of Stars,” Mr. Bi apparently thought he was amusing just 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 brief performance lasting a minute or so leaked onto the web, and now Mr. Bi stands accused of political sacrilege.
“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.
