How ya goin to keep them down on the farm, after they've got Daisy Mae's?"
Posted on 11/06/2016 6:24:06 AM PST by bert
An allegory about China
The popular TV program Office Girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Girls ran in 2011 on Taiwan TV. It is available now on DVD and on NetFlix Stream. The audio is in Mandarin but there are English subtitles. The translation is stilted with no vernacular. There is a much visited web site and the various musical themes are very popular and downloadable and on DVD. (I think…. The Web Site is in Mandarin and the Google translate rendering is often comically un understandable)
Who cares? Who cares about a Chinese TV program that has subtitles? Good question.
It is after all a mushy soap opera about the love lives of virtually all the characters. The fact they are heroes or villains matters not, their romance is the apparent main subject. What’s more, what would motivate an old white man ten thousand miles away to watch?
The show about young Chinese has a strong moralist undertone. It is a show with strong conservative values. It is teaching the audience of young Chinese women that it is possible to escape the poverty of the villages and go to the city world, get a job, work very hard, be thrifty, and actually achieve the life seen on TV and in magazines of people in the West. That life includes all sorts of stuff, foods from vending machines, boxed drinks, Noodles cooked in a microwave in wonderful packages. The clothes….. wonderful sexy shorts, sleek dresses and skirts, shoes. One can obtain their own motor scooter and drive it themselves. The young women can learn to pair up and rent a run down apartment that can be transformed into an IKEA like wonder, all while thrift fully saving for the much wanted house of their dreams.
The lessons taught include how to interact to the challenges of dealing with colleagues and bosses in the work place. Many lessons are given about possible events both good and not so good, Some guidance is given on how to act and react. The setting is in a department store that is actually a large Galleria like mall that gets mistranslated as department store. Although the mall company’s administration is quite complex, the focus is on two departments, Operations that looks after the day to day tasks of operating a mall and Leasing that deals with keeping existing retail tenants happy and negotiating new leases. There is a Chairman that runs the whole shebang and his trusted aid.
The 26 year old son of the Chairman, Qin Zi Qi, returned from America where he earned his MBA. He had turned in to a decadent and pretty much worthless spin thrift playboy with no regard for money or how much he wasted. The old man said he could not come into the company unless he spent a year on his own, working, actually working, in the Mall as an entry level employee and living on his earnings. All his credit cards and bank accounts were frozen. His Ferrari was to be parked, he could have his clothes. Auntie, Ms Feng, the Chairman’s aid who apparently raised the son was charged with enforcing the sentence and assuring the terms were not broken.
In Operations, there is Sheng Xin Ren, a very modest, moderately attractive, hard working and thrifty to extremes, twenty something young women. She we learn, has come from a distant village where she lived with her mother in rather modest means. Not abject poverty but a quantum extreme from life in the city. She becomes team leader which is a mistranslation of a foreman or some supervisory role above minion. She did this by nose to the grindstone application of her good morals and native intelligence.
Into this comes Qin Zi Qi , said to be the son of parents that run a mom and pop corner store in some distant small town. He was provided an apartment by Auntie but has to pay rent. The apartment is downstairs from that of Xin Ring. He is at first very resentful of his new situation, he can’t eat because he has no money, he doesn’t have a clue about cooking or laundry or cleaning up or anything having to do with ordinary living. Shen Ring sees he is helpless and agrees for a fee to feed him. He learns to eat broccoli and noodles translated as pasta but believed to be Lo Mein.
Qin Zi Qi is the future of the current allegorical rulers of China. He is smart and has an American MBA. He is presented as a useless playboy spend thrift. His father the chairman insists that to rule he must go to the bottom of the ladder and learn from experience with the people, the office staff. Among the thoughts presented is that of a customer who is wronged by the inadvertent act of Xin Ring. Zi Qi makes an all nighter calling 380 phone numbers to find the wronged clearly American customer to set it right. The American woman had purchased an I phone and Shen Ring by shaken by her inability to speak English and have a normal communication with the American put the wrong phone in the box. Zi Qi finds the woman and personally apologizes on behalf of the Mall for the egregious error. The American it turns out is a journalist and writes a glowing report of his effort and that of the Mall. He gets a real promotion for his action. America is presented as something special to be well taken care of.
At first there is total lack of understanding and considerable mistrust. The misunderstanding of Zi Qi of much of life repeatedly leads to the mistrust by Xin Ring. As the year of Zi Qi’s obligatory placement passes, the relationship changes to knowledgeable respect and in fact true love. She learns that although he appears worthless as a living human, he has business savvy and has abilities to really get things done and seeming inexplicably solve real work problems. The allegory describes the growth of the relationship between the protagonists Sheng Xin Ren and Qin Zi Qi and the point, the outcome, of the fictional allegory is a coming together of the young Chines people with a new and educated,understanding government such that the change is the future.
In the back ground of all this is the mall and Taiwanese city and country life. Every thing we have as Americans, they have. The depiction of products and their use is a teaching method for the audience of country girls and young women. The vending machines are present but made differently. The veggies are the same as ours. Who would have thought Broccoli is a staple in Taipei? The Office Girls like clothes and constantly are depicted in different outfits. Xin Ring is modest and on the job almost always wears slacks. At home a favorite is a long sleeved T shirt bearing the SNICKERS logo. Her roommate Lele favors shorts, short shorts that would be inappropriate in the American work place. Ms Kai Ler the temptress from Leasing favors dresses with a belt. Between these three and the other women depicted, the audience learns about dressing. Some seem to be Christian and in fact, the Mall Celebrates Christmas.
Well so what? Back to the original question? Who cares?
Well although the Chairman Qin Mu Bai is old, perhaps 50, he is being taught by these young people that the very future of his company is dependent on their successful activities. His old guard is not capable of producing the change necessary to maintain profitable operations. There are other characters that can be allegorically compared to reality but this short piece is not able to incorporate the complexity of the writers vision.
The program is set in Taiwan with Taiwan citizens that happen to be Chinese. The audience however is much greater. Since the program is widely available, it is certainly seen on the Mainland and with out doubt in Hong Kong. The lessons being taught are directed towards the vast emerging youth population on the Mainland.
There was last month an article in Forbes describing growth of what is known as the Pearl River Delta. Hong Kong is on the eastern shore of the estuary and Macau is on the western shore. To the north is an area said to be as large as Vermont and New Hampshire in which 9 smaller cities within recent time have more or less coalesced into the largest urban area in the world. There are said to be 68 million people now living in that vast urban area. This small area has the 13th largest GDP in the world. Number 14 is Russia.
The Office Girls is directed at those young women living in the Pearl River Delta now and those yet to come from the small towns and villages of China. They are being taught conservative values of thrift and hard work and of dealing with old men and old women, and of the modern world involving the wonders of stuff and a good life.
The Mall is the allegorical communist world governed by the Chairman. His world is changing and out of necessity he is told over and over that his future and that of the Mall, of China, is dependent on the hard work and dedication of the Office Girls in their short shorts and chic dresses. They carry on in spite of him and live their new lives differently, much differently than if they remained in their villages. They point the direction of China.
I accidentally stumbled on another NetFlix program called Atelier that is also a moralistic study. Atelier is set in Tokyo with Japanese audio and English subtitles. Atelier also depicts a generational conflict reflecting the old and new ways of business. Atelier is a wonderful lesson in how to conduct business. It is a primer in business administration set against the values of an old very capable female artisan mentor and a young wet behind the ears girl that becomes her employee. The product of fine art is ladies lingerie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atelier_(series)
My thought has been "how you going to keep them down on the farm after they've got Daisey Mae's?" The Office Girls reinforce that thought in spades.
As we agonize this weekend over the election and the hopeful coming change, A similar process is underway in China.
Ping (no pun intended) for later reading). Looking for something to watch on Netflix.
I have saved off these shows for future watching.
Thanks!
Nothing on Chinese television is what it seems. Conservative values in their culture are liberal ideas in ours.
The whole world, except us, is wholly communist. And China leads the pack. The Chinese media would NEVER allow something there that promoted a western idea.
That what she said.
Interesting essay Bert - thanks for sharing.
You say “It is the Office Girls, the youth, that will make the future” and I agree, but it sounds like that “old” chairman is at least trying to shepherd them in the right direction.
I find myself nearing the end of my working life and often wonder if mine was the last of the work ethic generation. I see young people coming into the workplace with their hands out - not to join in the work but to receive the rewards. They spend their days searching for ways to avoid actually working. For some it appears to be a fulltime job! And I see my employers pandering to their sense of entitlement. They are so heavily burdened by the scourge of political correctness they seem incapable of actually holding these kids’ noses to the grindstone. It does give me pause to contemplate who will get anything done if no one will do the work?
My dad was raised on a farm in rural Montana and learned to run a dogsled team in order to get provisions in the winter. He had grit. I had it much better and sought a “life of luxury” as a musician. I was a proficient technician but I lacked the spark of true artistry so I never prospered in my chosen trade. Fortunately I absorbed the work ethic from my mother and father and found ways to keep groceries on the table.
I enjoyed no brilliant successes in my worklife but at least I earned everything I own, which sets me apart from the “gimme generation”. Oh, and I still play - not because I need a paycheck but because I love to play.
What you say is true except it misses the point. We no longer transmit information by morse code or printed books or broadcast tv.
We live in a digital age where the means of transmission are myriad and pretty much unstoppable.
The Office Girls on the mainland will want to see the program will find away to secure it. They are the new age. The Chinese youth are the largest users of smart phones and literally live n them.
The largest IPO in the history of the New York Stock Exchange was a Chinese company and is to global business as Amazon and Ebay are to retail.
What was ...... isn’t
Fascinating to me, because I’m engaged to a woman who is exactly what you are describing. From a rural village, working in the Pearl river delta, upwardly mobile and focused on a better life, aware that her future depends on being able to adopt a more western mindset. She hasn’t heard of this show until I just told her, now I’m interested to see it.
But you can see the same themes in actual shows from Mainland China, like the hilarious Divorce Lawyers, or Tiger Mom.
To Celerity's point, you will never see criticism of the government on any Chinese show, the police are all honest and impartial good guys, and the only evil is found in older members of powerful families, who manipulate corporations and their young people's lives with equal facility. Probably true, as far as it goes, but you will never see the Party's elders get any blame - for anything.
Still, young people in China aren't buying into "old-fashioned" Communist virtues in any way - indeed, they seem to be completely ignoring them. A Confucian form of capitalism is the dominant belief system today, because Communism never succeeded in damaging China's culture as much as it did in Russia and Eastern Europe.
——Confucian form of capitalism -—
I have labeled these folks as Chicaps
They are fundamentally business people managing to operate under the existing governance
“Communism never succeeded in damaging China’s culture as much as it did in Russia and Eastern Europe.”
Oh, I WHOLLY disagree here. Recall that even a 100 years ago, Britain was counterfeiting Chinese goods.
China’s economy was gangbusters until the communist party.
I’ve seen it. It’s directed by Zhang Yimou, who is probably Chinese greatest living director. It’s the journey of a couple of generations of an ordinary family through the madness of China’s 20th century. The filmmaking is excellent, and if you are interested in the subject I recommend it.
—— A Confucian form of capitalism is the dominant belief system today-—
Thanks for that. I now have something descriptive and Chinese to be the root of it all.
One thing that really surprised was the notion of Christianity. In one episode, a grief stricken Xing Ren was actually given a Holy Bible to comfort her as she worried about her mother’s cancer.
How ya goin to keep them down on the farm, after they've got Daisy Mae's?"
It's on Viki, it's free , although with ads. If you want ad free, it's $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year.
The url is www.viki.comviki.com/tv/26602c-office-girlsMore
My wife and I watch Korean, Chinese and Japanese shows here.
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