Chinese-ification: Please Tell Me Why

So there's this song here that I've been hearing lately. I knew that I recognized it, but I couldn't put my finger on where I had heard it before. I looked it up and it's a song by Wilber Pan called "Bu De Bu Ai" which translates to Have to Love or Gotta Love, I guess. I thought remembered there being more English to it, but I wasn't sure. Something about song I was hearing in China didn't seem quite right.



I let it go thinking I was just going crazy and probably just heard it during drunken KTV or something.

Then I figured the song I heard before is actually by a Korean band named Freestyle, called "Please Tell Me Why." I don't know how I knew about it in America, but I had heard it a while ago there. The two are exactly the same except the Chinese one is in Chinese!



Oh, China. Apparently this is a "remake" of the song - except the word remake here tends to mean blatant violation of copyright laws. I don't think I could find anything authentic here if I tried - say I wanted to buy something Disney or Sanrio. Or maybe a DVD. Nope. They're all copied and Chinese-ified. And by this I mean something is just a little off that tends to make the characters or product look bizarre and creepy. For instance, I bought a Totoro plush doll here and something about the measurements are just off enough so that its face looks really creepy. Not like the cute Japanese child-stealing monster that I know. Same with Hello Kitty. The Chinese always copy Japanese things, but instead of cute...it just looks weird.

I went out to a club last week with some Americans to make a toast for Obama's victory, and the club was really strange, too. It was jungle themed, but again, something went wrong in the costumes and decor that just made it creepy. It was sort of child-like, but not really, because it was a club. All the bartenders were in cartoony cavemen outfits and there were plush monkey dolls hanging from the ceiling. Then there were girls dressed in Indian saris dancing to Bob Marley.

Now that I've started writing about this, I realize I could just go on for days about this. Like how pizza here has corn and broccoli on it and the pasta has eggs and chili sauce.

I don't really know what to say about this, other than Chinese-ification needs to stop. Other than the more serious copyright violation thing and being insulting to the original products, it's downright creepy. Stop it. This is why I boycott anything that is marketed to the youth population here, opting for a more...um, mature look now. I'd rather dress like a little old Chinese lady than wear a Chinese-ified Mickey Mouse sweater lined with rhinestones.


= CREEPY