"My Private Long March" 我的长征

我的长征-- "My Private Long March " is my translation, the official name of this CCTV program is "My Long March". Somehow it reminds about My Private Idaho, in some remote and totally unrelated sense. Anyway, it is a typical ideology product of CCTV. The whole program is kind of funny. The Long March is a symbolic of victory of the CCP in civial war and has been mystrified by literature and by proporganda. In this program, the big "I" or the collectiveism behind the Long March collapses into many small "i"s and each person experiences his or her own journey. The program podcasts on TV and most of its paticipants also write their blogs. On one hand, I appreciate the good intention of the program and its participants to bring poverty and some other social issues they met during the journey to the big screen and try to call for government and civil society action. On the other hand, there is a lack of reflection on the fundamental root of poverty, inequity, and depression they encountered. This is also my comments on most recent Reality Show or documentary in China. Producers and directors coming from middle-class background choose a touching point to cut into the life of lower class, to show their ignorance, their poverty and their suffering. They show how the poverty erodes people's mind, eat out their environment, and corrupt their children. But they never answer the tough question of "why" and "how to change it", they never criticize the unequal distribution of power and monty. Instead of uncover the veil of ignorance, the TV helps the mainstream media to create a vision of progressive society with minor deficiency. However, there are some quite interesting figures involved in this program. For instance, somebody called Dong Feng, a 42 year old male from Beijing, writes beautifully. His personal account of the trip is fancinating and fun to read. Here is his blog about the Long March: http://df-longmarch.blog.sohu.com/ This reality show becomes a personal challenge for him and he intentionally avoids the ideological part of the program and makes it a chance to know himself. As a typical middle-class professional, DongFeng's account makes the trip more like an physical adventure rather than political proliferation. I don't know what people want from a personal long march of this kind. But in order to participate, they must have good health, money, and soical connection to begin with. Poor people can not donate one year of their lives to participate a reality show, who else will feed their babies? Just a quick read of some blogs from those participates, you will find they can easily spend $500 to buy 2 horses to release the heavy burden of their friends. What a heroic action! They discuss new bags they brought for the trip, which easily costed $350 to $400. Ok, I am tired of being an observer of a group of rich people to squander their wealth on their personal journey. Please show it as what it is, not as a heoric action to save Chinese spirit or EDUCATE our generation of young people. IT CAN NOT SAVE THE MORAL CORRUPTION OF THE SOCIETY, AND PLEASE DON'T ASK IT SO. I remember to read a blog about World Cup. Because the players are so rich, so when you watch a game between Brazil and Italy, you basically wath 22 milionnairs warm up in a same field.