Sally and I have finished watching Beautiful Cooking (Mei Leui Chufong lit. Beautiful Women Cook), a game show in which various HK ingenues cook for a variety of HK male celebs, who pass judgement on them.
So far, so sexist, but as usual with Asian cultures, it's entirely harmless. The cooking challenges tended to involve contestants being presented with live exotic animals (usually arthropods, molluscs, echinoderms plus the odd shark), which they mush first murder then chop up. I've found it's best not to consume dinner while watching a Beautiful Cook trying to dispatch a cuttlefish, who tend to express copious quantities of ink while dying. And who could not feel a twinge of something as a half sobbing contestant took to a sea cucumber with a cleaver only to find it bounced off.
[The real waterworks was turned on by A-list string-bean Gigi Leung, who broke down when trying to off a... I forget the species, but it wasn't plesant. Judge Alex Fong had to step in and do the honours.]
Judging was also hazardous work, as various uncooked, over salted dishes were presented for tasting. Although much was spat out, only doe-eyed crooner Edmond Leung actually had a chunder. In this respect, the show had a distinct element of Survivor and Fear Factor thrown in. You can be sure that the end result was high-charisma, good natured, family entertainment, despite the gore and histrionics.
What hasn't been good-natured and certainly not family-oriented is the recent revelation about the boudoir antics of Edison Chen, the Canadian raised HK 'singer'/'actor', perhaps best known here as the 'flashback Andy Lau' in the Infernal Affairs films. Edison took in his laptop for repair, and the repairman found copious quantities of pics of Edison getting it on with half a dozen well known HK actresses (er, but not at the same time). Beautiful Cooking indeed. After building much steam in the media for most of February, Edison decided to retire from the HK entertainment biz and flee to North America.
In the West, this would all be seen as career-enhancing, but Chinese culture does actually have a sense of values and decency (and a prurient streak a mile wide, natch), so press, police, and general public behaviour has been bad all round. One of the 'victims', Gillian Chung of the 'Twins', had already had the indignity of paparazzo changing room pics of her splashed across the papers (HK people put even less stock in celebrity privacy than poms or yanks do); so this was even more torture. Even worse still, Cecilia Cheung, an actress who, unlike Chung or Chen, actually has some talent, was also involved, and her appearance in the Olympics opening ceremony has already been axed.
My take on it all is that it's just stupid. There will be commentary in HK about how western influences have ruined Chinese youth; there will be commentary in China about how western values have debased Hong Kong, and several careers have gone down the toilet. I'll forbear to comment on the morality of collating and retaining sex pics of your exs* (or the foolishness of allowing the photos to be taken), but the whole business is truly lamentable.
* Other than to say, cad!
Posted by stuart at March 16, 2008 9:49 PM