China's Communist Party condemns trend of giant inflatable ducks

Giant ducks!
Commies!
China!
Is the world as we know it threatened by this inflatable avian onslaught in the far east?

The government in China appears to worry about its traditional culture and future creativity slipping away amid a morass of...yellow rubber duckies. Well, as long as it keeps their minds off stuff like invading the Senkaku Islands or dumping US bonds, go for it, sez I.

China's ruling Communist Party has condemned an outbreak of giant yellow ducks across the country as "kitsch and unoriginal", after imitations of an artwork in Hong Kong landed in several cities....

...In an editorial the People's Daily, China's most-circulated newspaper, condemned the imitators for betraying what it said was [the orignal artist's] own message.

The duck, it said, was a symbol of "humanity's shared culture and childhood memories, pure art and anti-commercialisation".

Copycat ducks were merely "kitsch" and such unoriginal behaviour "will ruin our creativity and our future and lead to the loss of imagination eventually" it said.

More at source:

www.telegraph.co.uk...

reply to post by silent thunder


As long as they don't have the Rubber Avian Flu...what's the problem here?

reply to post by silent thunder


I just don't get China sometimes.

Claiming that the imitation of art will somehow destroy the fabric of all things artistic is dishonest to say the least.

And how does a giant inflatable duck symbolize anti-commercialism? Am I missing some key part of Chinese Communist culture concerning the depiction of ducks?

I had to read your article to the end to catch what the big deal was. For some reason, I was thinking cute little rubber duckies or maybe stuffed animal sized ones. I wasn't thinking about ducks big enough to dwarf full yachts in a harbor. Err...

One company, KK Inflatable, is selling ducks in multiple sizes, one of them even larger than Hofman's creation, on Taobao, China's biggest shopping website.

A two-metre one costs 2,800 yuan (£299), one of the size of Hofman's is 118,000, and the biggest bird of all, a 20-metre monster duck, costs 149,800 yuan.

Sour ce

I guess I could start to see how BIG ducks might become a bit of an eyesore, if not a navigation hazard...depending on where they show up and how they are 'deployed'. I wonder what a giant duck like that would do, going down a wide river? Lesser bridges may not fare well for the outcome?

reply to post by silent thunder
I need one of the yacht sized ones! I want to throw a deflated one through my neighbor the peeping Tom's window with a compressor hose attached so I can inflate it inside his house. Get a good look at that peeping Tom!

Heres an irony. The article quotes a chap on the scene there in China as saying that cultural identity is important and that China should be proud of what it has and confident in it, and goes on to say that showing that confidence ought not be done by embracing new trends.

If one marries a person, and is confident in thier own fidelity, one does not stop hanging out with members of the opposite sex. One WOULD consider not being around members of the opposite sex, if one was unsure about ones ability to be faithful however. Well, until thier inherant weakness as a human being caught up with them, at roughly the same moment as thier underwear became involved with lampshade in a hotel room, after a hasty removal on the way to the bed that is.

China shows NO confidence in its cultural identity by giving the cold sholder to new ideas. Nations which HAVE strong cultural identity accept ALL manner of madnesses, some of them not entirely healthy, because they know thier culture can withstand thier influence. Look at Japan. Many people believe that Japan is somewhat insular, and people who have visited there tell me that one can sometimes feel a little alienated in certain locations, simply by not being Japanese. But they have embraced much of the western culture there, and yet retain pride and confidence in thier history and culture.

Hell, some of thier biggest festivals revolve around traditions that are beyond ancient, and yet, Japan is one of the most advanced nations on the entire globe! Thier confidence in thier cultural traditions is vast, even amongst those who are not particularly socialy upwardly mobile! Even the subversives and non conformists there respect the lessons taught by the past, even when they do it subconciously!

And yet, China has a problem with rubber ducks? Brain implodingly dense of them if you ask me.