For Sale On Taobao: Sick Notes

And we don’t mean those notes that will send you to the loo, vomiting, or notes that have graphic content of two moths doing — well, what they’re supposed to be doing.

We’re talking about sick notes as in notes you’re supposed to present when you’re off on a sick day. When your inner self hyperventilates at 104°F, nobody in China in the biz world will buy that unless you get a signed note from the doctor that you’ve been “officially sick”. That’s what we mean by a sick note.

They’re a way to be legally at home — so to speak. There won’t be cops knocking on your door forcing you to work unless you’ve been playing biz truant for a looong time — but there’s your money down the loo. If you play around and don’t work, well, you’re paid less and might even get the hated pink slip. Unless you can fake your way in with a sick note.

Which is precisely what football maniacs around town are doing. CNNgo reports on the phenomenon: Taobao, essentially the eBay of China, is offering sick notes — at CNY 280 a pop. That’s about USD 41 — a fair price to pay for three days of freedom, which is what most notes go for in terms of validity.

Not sure if local firms have gotten in on the act yet — by requiring more “supporting documentation” in terms of the day off (real or otherwise) — or if the bosses here are soccer fans anyway…

Forced Into World Cup Mania?

The year 2009 was the year the innocent Chinese populace were forced into all kinds of things — the year when the average soul in a nation of 1.3 billion were coerced into doing one thing or the other that they probably wouldn’t have done if left to their own devices. The biggest news of the year: someone being forced into employment (被就业 in Chinese; in essence, being forced into a job with the paperwork done in secret, behind the backs of the victim without him or her ever knowing about this); the next biggest bit of “bad news” was the Railways Ministry, always a synonym here for poor service and bureaucratic arrogance, forcing people to high speed trains by cancelling regular service on railway lines where high speed lines already ran. (The few that were left in service — as in the regular lines — obviously weren’t enough to satisfy demand, rhetoric would have it.)

Those were cases of brutal leaders “up above”, but it seems like, with the action happening in South Africa, the average next-door (or next-bunk; read on) comrade seems to have just gone into “Force Others” mode as well. Twelve years ago, the France ‘98 theme song was a mere question — Do You Mind If I Play? Today, in China, it’s a command — as in there are now reports that university students have turned on the TV volume so much that others who prefer to sleep and not watch have no choice but to tune in to the action — like it or not. The new hot-button word: “forced into watching football” (被看球).

While not exactly the latest cutting-edge bit of Web 2.0 news here, your tech blogger just wanted to let you in on a bit of the Bei (被) or by-force world here in China — remember, the Bei biz was coined by a buzzword on the Chinese-language interwebs.

Censors Hone In On Chinese TV Dating Shows

Are You The One? That’s the name of a TV dating show (非诚勿扰 in Chinese) which has exploded in popularity on Chinese TV. Lest you think this is totally offline, the rhetoric and the controversy surrounding this show have gone online and have earnt it the attention of the censors based at the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). It’s early to say that this sounds a death knell for that show itself, but with the show taking on an übercapitalist stance (girls going: “only my boyfriend can hold my hand; for everyone else, it’s CNY 200,000 every time you touch it), the censors are honing in this show and other TV dating shows like vultures zeroing in on their prey.

Worse, a fair number of these people on the dating shows are in the so-called 90s generation (90 后), a generation that many people prefer not to associate themselves with. Whereas the market economy “stunned” those a decade ahead (those born in the 1980s; the 80s generation or 80 后), making them the rather “lost” generation, the generation a decade later has grown up to be not only Web-centric, but downright arrogant, vain, selfish to the extent that they believe that feeding off their parents for as long as possible is considered “an honor” and “the norm”.

But to fully “tick these shows off”, so to speak, would also not be a good idea — at least it wouldn’t give folks an objective view of Chinese society (especially with the youths) this day and age. The show features one bachelor in front of 24 girls, who decide whether or not she wants to go out with him by pressing a switch; lights change from neon blue to pink if a girl disapproves of the bachelor, to the tune of one of the weirdest sound effects ever. These votes of confidence (or no confidence, rather) showcase a China where “things” matter more to singles than “pure love”. Girls exclaiming that they would rather cry in a boy’s BMW than be taken on a bike ride reveal the unfettered arrogance of the Chinese youth today.

These shows can, indeed, be censored — for promoting materialism in a nominally communist society (ideologically) or for showing the “bad / money first” side of Chinese society (in reality). But what can’t be censored is the problems that these stories (chock-full of arrogant language, more often than not) speak of — in the real world in China this day and age. At least, there’s one silver lining to all this: uncensored in those shows are the increasing presence of materialism and consumerism in today’s China.