Today's Rojak Timeout features Tianni in Beijing, who muses about what lies behind the Shanghai Expo mascot.
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Tianni says:
Of the countries I’ve lived in, China must be one of the most difficult to comprehend.
Its vastly complex politics and a civilization that goes back 5,000 years render it an impenetrable fortress to an outsider like myself, even though my ancestors lived here as recently as two generations ago.
And for someone who makes her living as a scribe, it also means little of what she reports on a daily basis scratches beyond the mere surface.
But surely, some things should be simple to understand!
Like why Haibao, that blue ugly humanoid with a cowlick that stands up, a la There’s Something About Mary, was ever selected as the mascot for the World Expo 2010 held in what is possibly China’s most sophisticated city.
Haibao, meaning Treasures of the Sea in Chinese, resembles Gumby, a giant condom and Cameron Diaz’s hair among other things
Surely if organizers were as concerned about image as to spend US$44 billion to put on such a glitzy showcase event, they should at least have the cow sense not to mar it all with as unimaginative a cartoon mascot as this.
But like the rest of China, the reason for the choice of Haibao to represent an international event remains incomprehensible. Making it all the more baffling, there were also the allegations that its creator plagiarized the design (wh..??) from a longtime American TV cartoon character, Gumby.
I mean, if you really wanted to rob an idea….
Anyway, that wasn’t the story I wanted to tell. What I wanted to let on is the question raised by China’s most famous blogger, the one about whether Haibao had a behind, a derriere.
Yes, you heard it right.
Han Han, who made the top 100 list of Time magazine’s World’s Most Influential People, pondered the cheek-y question on his impossibly popular blog -- 300m hits since 2006! -- and had me all cracked up:
As translated by China Smack site: "When everyone saw that he was flat, it raised a big problem for those who were trying to make three-dimensional Haibaos: what should his back look like? Does he have a tail? Does he have a butt? Does he have a butt crack?”
"No one knew, so when we saw statues of Haibao in the city, the front sides were all the same, but some Haibaos had backs without cracks, and others had cracks. But recently, because the Haibaos without butt cracks were more numerous, the butt crack (in Chinese, this also sounds like Google's Chinese name) has been announced officially as having left China.”
What Han Han didn’t also mention was the observation made by many others that Haibao resembled a giant blue condom.
But I really don’t mean to denigrate the Shanghai Expo. In all fairness from what I saw while covering the Expo opening in May, it was very well-run for the massive number of visitors it expected, and some of the pavilions (Denmark, for instance) were pretty inspiring models for future living.
In fact, I managed to pause long enough from my search for 3-D Haibaos to take this one photo from the Expo…the Singapore pavilion! (Yay!)
The King of Fruits-inspired Singapore Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, proving once again Singaporeans durian-obsession
I did not attempt to brave the long lines of visitors waiting to enter it, but I did visit on several occasions the food stalls behind it that sold Singapore food like rendang and curry chicken. The food would have been only passable back home, but to a starved Singaporean, they were a godsend.
Anyhow on my final day in the city, I did eventually run into a towering sculpture of Haibao and stole a quick glance at his behind (mind you, I was with colleagues), hoping to catch a glimpse of literal buns of steel.
All I saw was a smooth behind.
Perhaps organizers finally put some thought into this whole mascot debacle and decided that a blue condom-shaped creature exposing his butt cheeks on street corners will really do nothing for the theme of “Better City, Better Life.”
(Some pictures taken from the Internet)
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