Panda vs. Ninja

[GeneChing]

China Japan relationships are no laughing matter right now, but the CGI cartoon of this is worth the view. Click the link below.


* September 23, 2010, 7:28 PM HKT
China vs. Japan = Panda vs. Ninja? (http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/09/23/china-vs-japan-panda-vs-ninja/)

With leaders in Tokyo and Beijing engaged in an excruciating war of pronouncements over the detention in Japan of a Chinese fishing boat captain, Taiwan’s NextMedia has decided to reimagine the conflict.

In the most recent of its signature animated news videos, NextMedia has Japan, represented by a ninja, and China, in the guise of (what else?) a panda, solving their differences in flat-out hand-to-paw combat. Who needs pursed-lip statements about rule of law and vague threats of “further action” when you can have an exchange of ninja stars and body slams?

If only real diplomacy could be this entertaining.
Japan China relations sour over island dispute: 釣魚台爭議衝擊日本與中國關係 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_gPr33SuI4)

[GeneChing]

At first, I was going to add this to the Kung Fu Panda (http://kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39752) thread, but then I decided this thread needed a little more poo.


* October 1, 2010, 2:31 PM HKT
Modern Art: Japan vs. Kung Poo Panda? (http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/10/01/modern-art-japan-vs-kung-poo-panda/)

Throughout an international career spanning almost two decades, Beijing-based artist and self-styled ‘Pandaman’ Zhao Bandi has been no stranger to controversy. Using media ranging from sarcastically captioned photographs of himself posing with stuffed pandas to panda-themed fashion designs for the catwalks of Shanghai and Paris, Zhao’s ‘panda-mania’ artworks have lashed out at a variety of social and political ills, earning him a controversial reputation as either an avant-garde genius or vulgar sensationalist—depending on your taste.

Zhao is probably best known in the West for petitioning fellow Chinese to boycott Dreamworks box-office smash “Kung Fu Panda” after its release in China in the summer of 2008—a campaign he said was aimed at defending Chinese culture and endangered fauna from exploitation by Hollywood, but which some dismissed as a crude publicity stunt.

Now Zhao is at it again, and this time the provocation is decidedly more “fresh”: A sculpture of a surrendering Japanese soldier, gun held above his head in a gesture of submission … crafted from Chinese panda excrement.

The poo sculpture was part of a collection of 17 created under Zhao’s direction by a group of local children in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

The sculptures are the latest in a series of philanthropic art projects across China that Zhao is pursuing under the title “Trading Creativity for a Nursing Home.” The aim is to involve children in the creation of the artists’ signature panda-themed work to raise money for the construction of an aged-care facility in Henan Province. Zhao’s only rule: Don’t depict pandas eating bamboo, which would be too predictable and mainstream.

In one installment of the project (in Chinese) last month, Zhao photographed 27 boys aged nine to twelve, faces smeared with black panda-eye face-paint, dashing nude across the muddy banks of the Yellow river near Zhengzhou in Henan. The artist claims he later sold the photographs to a foreign collector for 30,000 yuan, or about 4500 dollars.

Since the “Nursing Home” project was announced in May, participants have produced more than ten thousand works of panda-art, including photographs, drawings, dance and scrap-metal sculpture. Five-hundred finalist entries will be displayed and auctioned at the Henan Art Gallery on November 14 this year.

The panda poo sculptures were displayed last Friday at Chengdu’s “K Gallery” as part of an event co-organised by prominent Chengdu-based sculptor Zhu Cheng. “When I went to the [Chengdu] Panda Base I heard the staff talking about all the ways in which a useful waste product like panda excrement could be put to good use, such as paper-making,” Mr. Zhu told local reporters (in Chinese). “Then and there I struck upon the idea of ‘turning trash into treasure,’ using artistic skill and panda faeces.”

Detailing the day’s proceedings on this blog earlier this week,however, Zhao seemed to be thinking less about philanthropy and recycling than capitalizing on the latest diplomatic flare-up between China and Japan.

In a post titled “Children use panda poo to create sculpture of surrendering Japanese devil” (in Chinese), Zhao drew particular attention to the sculpture of the Japanese solider. “It’s panda excrement that the children of Sichuan used to create these sculptures!” he wrote. “The following panda poo sculptures deserve special attention: Kung Fu Panda, a Koala … and one particularly captivating item, a Japanese devil in surrender.”

The extent to which the controversial sculpture resembles a disarmed Japanese soldier is open to debate—one might just as easily guess it is a rock star mid guitar smash—and it’s not clear which of the children sculpted it, or whether it was intended to be provocative. Local media failed to mention it, instead focusing on the inspiration behind the exhibition and the mechanics involved in drying out the panda droppings.

Chinese Internet users, meanwhile, responded in varying ways:

“They just returned our ship captain,” commented one anonymous reader, in reference to the recent release by Japan of a Chinese fishing boat captain arrested after his boat collided with two Japanese Coast Guard vessels near a set of disputed islands in the East China Sea. “Japanese people simply are crap! To depict them using panda crap is to elevate them!”

Another commenter calling himself “Orchid Prince” likened Zhao to Ah Q, the pathetic main character in a satirical story by Chinese writer Lu Xun who is obsessed with face-saving and the scoring of empty “spiritual victories”: “It looks like Mr. Lu Xun was absolutely right, Ah Q never died, but has many descendents. Ah! This nation really is [expletive] sick!”

Exactly what the connection is between the night soil solider and elderly people in Henan, Zhao didn’t say.

–Will Sima

Must add pic
http://online.wsj.com/media/zhao_****soldier_G_20101001020402.jpg

[GeneChing]

What can I say? I like panda vids. I like ninja vids. This is like the reeses cup of vids for me.

Sep. 22 2010 - 7:38 am | 3,141 views
China Takes On Japan? Watch Ninja Take On Panda Instead (http://blogs.forbes.com/gadyepstein/2010/09/22/china-takes-on-japan-watch-ninja-take-on-panda-instead/)
By GADY EPSTEIN

I have resisted making a big deal about this month’s escalating dispute between China and Japan over the East China Sea, because it is hard to envision a scenario where it spirals out of control beyond nationalist chest-thumping and diplomatic brinkmanship. At this point, this row is still, for me at least, safely at a stage where we can laugh at it, and you should too, by watching this brilliant animated confection from Taiwan’s Next Media Animation (hat tip to Danwei, which beat me to the title “Ninja vs. Panda”).

I think you’ll enjoy the David Caruso CSI spoof, complete with removed sunglasses and bad pun. You can say you’re keeping up with the news because this actually sums up the story to date pretty well, including the absurd coincidence of a panda death in Japanese custody at a Japanese zoo:

Now what is the real story here? Naturally, there is some money to be made from underneath the waters around the islands whose name must not be spoken (the Chinese call them one thing — OK, Diaoyu islands — and the Japanese, who actually have a military presence there, call them the Senkaku islands). Long before the Japanese arrest of a Chinese fishing trawler captain this month that started this tussle, CNOOC and Sinopec were jointly exploring the Chunxiao undersea natural gas field, with their operations just on the Chinese side of the disputed boundary.

Japan and China had agreed in principle in 2008 to jointly develop the gas fields in the area, a compromise that looks increasingly fragile this month. Premier Wen Jiabao’s remarks in New York Tuesday night — that “the Japanese side bears full responsibility for the situation, and it will bear all consequences” — don’t bode well for a climbdown by either side anytime soon. The rhetorical and literal at-sea broadsides follow a summer of increasing tensions in the other seas around China, something I have noted is welcome news for Pentagon contractors like Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

But it is in both China and Japan’s interests to put relations back on track, and thankfully, the situation isn’t nearly as bad (yet) as in 2005, when Chinese rage over Japanese history textbooks fomented on the Internet into violent protests and riots in several cities. Beijing learned then that it doesn’t have an interest in its anti-Japanese protests getting out of hand — aside from turning ugly, demonstrations can also turn against the government, becoming an excuse to vent all manner of domestic grievances.

And Tokyo doesn’t have an interest in riling the nation that is now, sort of officially, the number two economy in the world ahead of Japan. Chinese factories churn out Japanese goods, from Honda cars to Sony electronics, and Chinese consumers buy Japanese products. The ways these two “sides” are economically integrated don’t begin or end there. Eventually they will find a way to keep doing business together.

That argument gives you permission to watch the Japanese ninja take on the Chinese panda. That, and the fact that today marks the beginning of a three-day Chinese holiday. While you’re at it, take a look at a few other animations from Next Media, which may have first caught your attention last year with its simulation of Tiger Woods’ fateful night in his driveway that led to the unraveling of his personal life. Below are amusing animated takes on the Wall Street Journal’s war with the New York Times and on one of Next Media’s favorite targets, Steve Jobs.

[MasterKiller]

http://pics.livejournal.com/apraksina_img1/pic/00142w9g

[GeneChing]

http://vimeo.com/108765164