{"id":46482,"date":"2015-04-09T22:46:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T22:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=46482 "},"modified":"2015-04-09T22:46:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T22:46:00","slug":"46482-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=46482","title":{"rendered":"Mocking Mao Backfires for Chinese TV Host"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>APRIL 9, 2015 4:53 AM April 9, 2015 4:53 am<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2015\/15\/2015490.jpg\" alt=\"2015490.jpg (480&#215;360)\" \/><br \/><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>The television host Bi Fujian&#8217;s performance of a song from the Mao-era opera &#8220;Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy,&#8221; with irreverent asides, was captured on video.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>HONG KONG &#8212; 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&#8217;s revolution.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>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&#8217;s career.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>A crooning, avuncular regular on state-run China Central Television, including as the host of the long-running talent show &#8220;Avenue of Stars,&#8221; 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.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;His comments in this Internet video have serious social consequences,&#8221; the state broadcaster said in a statement Wednesday night. &#8220;We will conscientiously investigate this and sternly deal with it according to the relevant regulations.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>News reports said on Thursday that Mr. Bi had already been suspended from appearances on China Central Television for the remainder of the week.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Later in the day, Mr. Bi broke his silence with an apology that amounted to a plea for clemency.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;I feel extremely remorseful and pained,&#8221; Mr. Bi said on his page on Sina.com&#8217;s Weibo, a popular microblog site. &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Mr. Bi&#8217;s public mortification is a symptom of the times, Zhang Ming, a historian at Renmin University in Beijing, said by phone.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>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 &#8220;historical nihilism,&#8221; or bleak depictions of the past that undermine the party&#8217;s stature. Mr. Xi has taken particular umbrage at critics of the party who live off the party&#8217;s largess.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/04\/09\/joking-about-mao-lands-tv-host-in-hot-water\/?ref=asia&amp;_r=0\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;A crooning, avuncular regular on state-run China Central Television, including as the host of the long-running talent show &amp;#8220;Avenue of Stars,&amp;#8221; 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.&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}