O jogo das apostas e* proibido (dai os valores astronomicos obtidos pelos casinos de Macau) e assuntos relacionados com sexo, metrosexualidade, fashion, etc, continuam a ser tabu para a maioria dos chineses. Revistas como a FHM nao sao bem vistas pela sociedade e geram muita polemica em torno das suas publicacoes.
No contacto diario com os Chineses, noto cada vez mais este vazio de informacao sobre o mundo que os rodeia. Vida familiar e trabalho ocupam os dias deste povo. Pessoas mais velhas que eu, demonstram uma grande ingenuidade/infantilidade perante certos aspectos da vida, o que vai contra as caracteristicas a que estamos habituados a ver.
Texto e* longo eu sei, mas leiam ate onde vos apetecer so para terem uma ideia.
China sex mag: They read it for the articles
By Sunny Lee
BEIJING - Beijinger Wang Yixun regrets that he didn't buy a magazine that he saw the other day at a newsstand. When he returned a few days later, it was all sold out. Initially, that didn't bother him much because there were two other newsstands nearby. However, he soon found out that there were none left at the other places, either.
Wang, 28, an engineer working at China's Silicon Valley, Zhongguancun, wasn't ready to give up.
The next day after work, he deliberately walked past the bus station where he usually takes his home-bound bus hoping to spot a copy of the magazine at a kiosk there, but to no avail.
The buttoned-down, soft-spoken Wang bashfully and regretfully says the reason he didn't buy the magazine the first time was because he "didn't have enough courage to carry the racy magazine in a public bus where it would be seen by other people".
The magazine Wang was referring to is Nanren Zhuang, whose Chinese name literally means "men's attire". But for its English title, it uses For Him Magazine (FHM), the same name of a British publication with which it cooperates and from which it borrows some content.
The magazine targets young white-collar metrosexuals like Wang, who are well educated and economically fit enough to buy "a fairly expensive magazine" that deals with mobile gadgets, cars and girls, says Jacky Jin, 41, the editor-in-chief.
FHM is a commercial success in China. It sells nearly half a million copies each month, which outstrips most other magazines sold in China. This is also an impressive commercial achievement in that it is priced at the equivalent of US$2.60, expensive in a country where a daily newspaper sells for only one-20th of that.
The magazine is credited as having blazed a trail for the men's-magazine market in China, which had long been neglected. "It turned out to be huge," said Jin.
However, some critics say what it proved most successfully was that sex and sexuality sell in China just as they do in other countries. In fact, the magazine puts pictures of scantily clad models on the cover and, of course, a lot more inside.
"We offer content that will interest men," said Wang Xiaofeng, the executive editor. "Most of the staff are men. And they know too well what content they want."
To a Westerner's eye, the magazine looks very much like a toned-down version of Playboy. One clear difference is that the models pose with at least some clothes on or their private parts covered with carefully placed objects. This is important in China, where outright porn magazines are banned.
The magazine also tries things that are "novel" in China. For example, a recent special edition became a smash hit when it carried pictures of "100 urban single girls". To make the event look more real, the magazine also listed the girls' e-mail addresses next to their pictures.
It seems to have been a big success for the magazine and for the girls as well, who apparently volunteered to send revealing pictures of themselves in, for example, swimsuits or sexy nightgowns. Wang Di, a personal trainer at a fitness center, was one of the three girls to appear on the cover. She says she doesn't even remember how many e-mails she has since received. Obviously, a lot.
Leading the sexual revolution in China?
With pictures that are considered quite "bold" by Chinese standards and with such topics as "having sex while standing up", the magazine's editors know too well that they ought to be careful. "We censor ourselves in terms of how far we can go," said Jin.
BEIJING - Beijinger Wang Yixun regrets that he didn't buy a magazine that he saw the other day at a newsstand. When he returned a few days later, it was all sold out. Initially, that didn't bother him much because there were two other newsstands nearby. However, he soon found out that there were none left at the other places, either.
Wang, 28, an engineer working at China's Silicon Valley, Zhongguancun, wasn't ready to give up.
The next day after work, he deliberately walked past the bus station where he usually takes his home-bound bus hoping to spot a copy of the magazine at a kiosk there, but to no avail.
The buttoned-down, soft-spoken Wang bashfully and regretfully says the reason he didn't buy the magazine the first time was because he "didn't have enough courage to carry the racy magazine in a public bus where it would be seen by other people".
The magazine Wang was referring to is Nanren Zhuang, whose Chinese name literally means "men's attire". But for its English title, it uses For Him Magazine (FHM), the same name of a British publication with which it cooperates and from which it borrows some content.
The magazine targets young white-collar metrosexuals like Wang, who are well educated and economically fit enough to buy "a fairly expensive magazine" that deals with mobile gadgets, cars and girls, says Jacky Jin, 41, the editor-in-chief.
FHM is a commercial success in China. It sells nearly half a million copies each month, which outstrips most other magazines sold in China. This is also an impressive commercial achievement in that it is priced at the equivalent of US$2.60, expensive in a country where a daily newspaper sells for only one-20th of that.
The magazine is credited as having blazed a trail for the men's-magazine market in China, which had long been neglected. "It turned out to be huge," said Jin.
However, some critics say what it proved most successfully was that sex and sexuality sell in China just as they do in other countries. In fact, the magazine puts pictures of scantily clad models on the cover and, of course, a lot more inside.
"We offer content that will interest men," said Wang Xiaofeng, the executive editor. "Most of the staff are men. And they know too well what content they want."
To a Westerner's eye, the magazine looks very much like a toned-down version of Playboy. One clear difference is that the models pose with at least some clothes on or their private parts covered with carefully placed objects. This is important in China, where outright porn magazines are banned.
The magazine also tries things that are "novel" in China. For example, a recent special edition became a smash hit when it carried pictures of "100 urban single girls". To make the event look more real, the magazine also listed the girls' e-mail addresses next to their pictures.
It seems to have been a big success for the magazine and for the girls as well, who apparently volunteered to send revealing pictures of themselves in, for example, swimsuits or sexy nightgowns. Wang Di, a personal trainer at a fitness center, was one of the three girls to appear on the cover. She says she doesn't even remember how many e-mails she has since received. Obviously, a lot.
Leading the sexual revolution in China?
With pictures that are considered quite "bold" by Chinese standards and with such topics as "having sex while standing up", the magazine's editors know too well that they ought to be careful. "We censor ourselves in terms of how far we can go," said Jin.
Added Wang: "We made something of a breakthrough in China's environment. But we keep it at a level that can be accepted by society so that it doesn't become a porn magazine."
But apparently, the self-censorship wasn't enough to avoid the real censors. The magazine has already had two encounters with the government. One of the occasions was when it ran pictures of Playboy Playmate Pamela Anderson.
"We were criticized by the authorities," Jin said. But he quickly added, "They didn't issue any written notice. We were just warned that we should be careful."
Like other publications in China, the magazine has to abide by the rules set by the General Administration of Press and Publications, the state's censorship body. It also has to be careful not to offend readers who are still reluctant to accept sex and sexuality in printed media.
"Chinese people are conservative. We are in the local market, so we have to be careful with readers as well," Jin said.
Yet he said the government is more open than before in adopting a more flexible attitude toward "fashion magazines", a category to which his magazine belongs.
The magazine, like any other in China, is available at virtually any newsstand, bookstore, subway station, hotel or airport. And if it's in a supermarket, there is even a good chance that it is displayed next to a condom rack. This may make China look as if it is going through a sexual revolution.
Certainly, today's China is not the China of Mao Zedong's day. The nation is boasting spectacular economic growth, and people are upgrading their lifestyles to keep pace with the constant modernization. Nonetheless, some observers say the magazine is a bit too much "ahead of its time" compared with China's overall level of openness.
Fang Wen, professor of sociology at Peking University, says publications like FHM are "leading the economically affluent urban middle class to behave radically", adding that despite the rapid changes in urban Chinese people's lifestyles, most Chinese remain conservative.
People in urban areas are more exposed to Western culture and are more willing to express their opinions publicly and thus "dominate the social discourse, giving outsiders a misleading and incomplete picture of a 'liberal' China", Fang said. He cautioned that this shouldn't be seen as reflecting China as a whole.
Pan Suiming, a sociologist at Renmin University in Beijing, says the magazine reflects the overall trend in Chinese magazines toward sexual explicitness. He said the trend has been noticeably evolving and intensifying over the past five years. While acknowledging that Chinese women are more confident today in displaying their physical beauty, the trend is predominantly driven by commercialism, he said.
"On one level, it is 'self-expression', and on the other level, there are those who capitalize on women's value only in terms of their bodies. That's unfair," Pan said.
However, Pan said the government for now won't interfere too much in the matter as long as it doesn't invite a strong public outcry, adding that he expects the trend to continue and even strengthen.
Fang agrees with Pan in that some Western media's analysis that sexual revolution is happening in China is only a "partial view". However, he differs with Pan in that he believes the phenomenon won't be a lasting one.
"There will be a counter-force. For example, the 1960s [were] characterized as a period of sexual revolution in the United States, but it was countervailed by the conservative '80s." Fang also noted that "sexual revolution", if it ever happens in China, still won't occur on a level of magnitude comparable to the US.
"It won't happen in China. Only the economically affluent in urban areas will experiment with it."
In other words, Fang is also saying that something observed in major China cities shouldn't be taken as a reflection of "China", where the majority of the population lives in rural areas.
While scholars have their own take on the issue, average people have mixed responses as well. A reader in Beijing, whose last name is Zhou, says he reads the magazine regularly and likes it very much because it is "very real ... The magazine carries stuff that a young man needs in his 'real' life." He added that its sexual content is a big selling point for him.
But some of the very women who actually appear in the magazine have some different stories to share. For example, Huang Shengyi, who was the cover girl for the magazine last August, suffered a personal setback afterward. After seeing her pictures, many advertising agencies gave her the cold shoulder, citing concerns that her poses were too sexual and had tarnished her image.
Another cover girl, Shao Yuhan, received much media attention because her mother became very indignant about the magazine after seeing her daughter's pictures and wrote an open protest letter, criticizing the magazine for leading a promising singer like her daughter in the wrong direction. That protest eventually earned an apology from the magazine, which said it was not like Playboy magazine.
The editors of the magazine want to emphasize that it shouldn't be seen only for its sexuality and sexual appeal. They try to make that point by explaining the publication's so-called four guiding principles: to be real, funny, sexy and useful.
"That's our slogan, listed in the order of importance," Jin said. He emphasized that the "sexy" part comes only third, not first. "That's important," Jin said. Wang added, "I don't understand why everyone is only interested in sex." She paused for a moment and said, "But I guess it is natural."
Sunny Lee is a journalist based in Beijing, where he has lived for five years. A native of South Korea, Lee is a graduate of Harvard University and Beijing Foreign Studies University.
1 comment:
Um país, dois sistemas.
A coisa vai acabar mal... :s
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