Jianjun's Blog

The first Boomtown Beijing（北京沸腾）screening was presented on April 20 at Yugong Yishan（愚公移山）in Beijing. I am honored to have the opportunity to interview the awarding-winning Singaporean producer, the director of the documentary, Tan Siok Siok. She was talking about the screening and music used in the film.

Boomtown Beijing is arranging a screening in the USA this June. For the latest information visit Boomtown Beijing web site.

Enjoy the trailer:

Interested in helping organize a local screening? Please contact: boomtownbeijing [at] gmail.com

The ideal venue should have:

1. A capacity of 80-120 audience;
2. Good sound facility;
3. Ready marketing database to help publicize the screening;

Examples are:
1. Popular club, theatre or arts cafe;
2. Universities and colleges;
3. Business associations and clubs;

Today I saw an ad for a ‘high intelligence community’ on Facebook.

The pictures it used to attract attention are Dalai Lama and Ma Ying-jeou (current Taiwan ‘President’ and Nationalist Party leader). The advertisement uses the following text to go with the pictures:

• East China or West China, which region has better IQ? (title)
• Take our survey and raise the average IQ of the East region. (Tagline)

Obviously the ad indicates, although not necessarily intentionally:

1. There’s an IQ difference between people living in the East China and the West China;
2. The IQ of the East is lower (at least before you take their survey);
3. Dalai Lama is representative of the West, while Ma Ying-jeou is of the East.
4. Dalai Lama’s intelligence could be higher than that of Ma Ying-jeou’s, while Ma Ying-jeou is cleverer than most people living in the East of China.

At this sensitive time, using such culturally and politically sensitive pictures and insulting title/tagline to target the Chinese community shows the advertiser doesn’t have much intelligence, do they?

According to the site’s Chinese ‘About’ page, of the three guys behind the site, two of them are very clever.

I don’t think people should mix politics with the Olympics. It’s also not right to associate the Olympics with certain hosting countries. By boycotting the hosting country, you are boycotting the Olympics.

I am a supporter of freedom of speech but violent protests are out of my taste. By trying to extinguish the torch, you are destroying the holiness of the Olympics spirit.

You may voice your disagreement with the Government, but associate yourself with the Chinese people. The cultural thing is, as long as you get support from outside China, you lose the support from the masses. We Chinese people do hate guys who are backed by foreigners.

Further resources of this discussion:

http://debate.chinaontv.com/index.php/chinaontv/inpage_debate_d