China didn’t show Ang Lee thanking people in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. They cut that part of the speech because he is seperating Taiwan and China. Yikes.
Why bother calling him the pride of China? He was born here. Ajooooooajaaaa 
I noticed that Star World here in Taiwan translated it as 兩岸三地, which is a phrasing that’s politically acceptable in the mainland as well, I believe.
His family is of WSR origin. I wouldn’t go reading into this much further, because I really doubt Ang Lee is of the TI leaning.
The last few seconds of his speech was Chinglish. “Taiwan, HK, China xie xie nimen guanxin”
I mean really would a “Chinese” director make Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for a Chinese audience. Where in the world were Michelle and Chow contracted Mandarin voice actors? Who approved the script using both Classical and Modern Chinese for a period peace?
Ang Lee is considered an outsider in Asian entertainment industry. He is really more a product of the USA film industry.
CTHD was a piece of crap designed to fool Westerners into paying to read subtitles, thereby distracting them from the atrocious performance and robotic delivery that is actually the movie.
Motion picture is always better when read through subtitles, because your imagination makes up for the deficiencies in a way that is optimal for you. Those saccharine Korean dramas? Better with subtitles that turn them into some sort of passable literature from the vulgate original.
If you’re looking at the same English-language report that I was… the same report also said they censored out the part of his speech where he thanked the “gay cowboys”. (Implication: everything Beijing doesn’t approve of was censored out.)
Here’s another way of looking at the ‘glass half fun/half empty’ question at hand… rather than telling us what was censored, what was shown on state TV? (I don’t know, by the way, I didn’t watch the darn thing.) Did they leave in the part where he thanked his wife + kids, while cutting out the part about Taiwan? Or, could it be that what they just showed the part of his speech where he spoke in Chinese… as opposed to broadcasting the entire speech, in English, when few in China could understand it?
Here’s an article from the People’s Daily. No sign of “censorship” here, as the entire speech is in the caption:
ent.people.com.cn/GB/4169417.html
… although it does show a creative translation (good thing the US State Department doesn’t care about this one). “Thanks to my compatriots in Chinese Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.”
That’s not what he said either. It is total Chinglish that only the bilingual could sort of make sense of. When I heard him say “Taiwan” with an English inflection, I though he was going to go TI nutty on us too.
But it was an apolitical statement in terms of the Strait Issue.
My interpretation is that he wanted to acknowledge that his fans in Greater Chinese Community that supported him through the years so that he could rise through the USA film industry and win the highest accolade in his industry.
Maybe a trigger happy censor got jumpy when they heard the word Taiwan and editted it out. It not too hard to do since it was the last sentence in his speech. As to how one would editted out the gay cowboy reference in the middle of the speech, I would need to see the actual broadcast.
This should be a happy occassion for Chinese at large, the West is acknowledging that this individual was the best at his job for the year. A non-sterotypical job for Asians in the USA. Quite a feat in a society that sees Asians in entertainment as 1 dimensional kungfu, me-so-horny, gangster cookie-cutter characters.
I can’t believe there are haters out there that want to spin this as some sort of political message.
I don’t think the Oscar’s at a whole were broadcast in China. I think the “censorship” in question is just about news coverage about the speech, which I assume just showed the part where he said “xiexie dajia de guanxin” and left out everything else in front of it. Which is why I speculate it was just a matter of showing the CHINESE component of his speech and leaving out everything English, rather than some sort of a political statement.
I don’t think that the OP was suggesting that Ang Lee was making a political statement, but that it’s a shame the Chicom censors are petty enough to censor a gesture of thanks. It’s not like he said “I’d like to thank the great and independent democratic nation of Taiwan whose environment of freedom allowed me to flourish as I never could in the totalitarean prison-state that menaces to the west.” He said thank you to the people of Taiwan (his home), and that’s all.
It’s funny to see ac_dropout, cctang, and zeugmite all leap to the defense of the PRC at every chance. If you like it so much move there and be happy. They should get their own forum.
Woah woah woah, wait a second. Where did I say anything about the PRC in this post? I don’t believe I did and indeed I did not.
Now, in the general case, who cares if anybody stands in a position that shares some aspects with what you suppose to be the PRC position, whether it is or it is not, as long as said person argues said person’s position in a not unreasonable way. We don’t live in a Cultural Revolution or McCarthyist era. Guilt by association just doesn’t work.
Trust me, TI nutjobs like Japan much better than any of us likes the PRC, but since they never move there, I think you should work on their case first. Many TI nutjobs also urge war in the Taiwan Strait – from the US. Funny how they won’t move there to fight the war they are drumming up.
~scratches his head~
Redmenance sure knows a lot about what the Chicom censors did, for someone who hasn’t even watched the censored result (or apparently looked at my link).
But I guess if a cold warrior like him can paint all 3 of us with the broad brush of being a ‘PRC defender’ (also known as pinko, commie, red) and call for our exile on the basis of what was said here… well, heck, I guess I shouldn’t expect any more than ignorant, uninformed ramblings from the man.
Probably safe to say much of his political “knowledge” is derived similarly from third-party hear-say. Maybe some day, I’ll tell you what I heard about his momma.
Oh, and as long as we’re talking about “Brokeback Mountain” and misleading, malicious rumors that pass for truth in the Western media… let me also address the various reports that the movie has been “banned” in China (see link) with one word: bull$hit.
The movie isn’t banned. It’s widely available on any street corner, and no one has or will ever be detained/prosecuted for distributing or selling the movie.
What’s really happening is pretty different. The movie is not being released in Chinese theaters. Mainland China, in its attempts to “protect the domestic Chinese film industry”, meets its WTO obligations by only importing a very small number of foreign films for theater distribution (6? 8? 10? I don’t know the exact number at this point). Every year, some mainland Chinese bureaucrat has the job of selecting these X number of movies that will have the best commercial performance at the movie theater. This year, we can probably look forward to the typical commercial crap like War of the Worlds, Harry Potter, King Kong, etc, etc…
We can argue all day whether this policy is wise (or simply irrelevant since such a tiny percentage of Chinese watch movies in theaters anyways)… but describing “Brokeback Mountain” as banned is as accurate as saying “Pink Panther” has been banned in China.
Redmenace,
Did you even read my comment of the link cctang put up. I’m not defending the PRC because the only evidence anyone has is cctang’s link, which is not what was broadcast on cctv, but it does acknowledge in a very loose subjective translational of what Ang Lee might have meant.
Ang Lee is a very talented Chinese-American film director. To referrence him as supporting TI or tarnishing the PRC does him a great disservice. Because that is not what he is all about.
If you want to pick on a director that has been pushing the censorship envelope of the PRC, why not talk about Zhang Yi Mou. That guy has more official bans on his work in the PRC than Ang Lee.
And no Zhang Yi Mou is not a poster child for TI either. He’s probably more patriotic than he cares to admit.
Taiwanese independence supporters on the mainland are probably as common as al-Qaeda sympathesizers in the United States. That’s to say, some percentage might make sympathetic comments out of a dislike of the ruling party… but in all likelihood, only a tiny number of actual supporters exist.
Zhang Yimou is hardly an al-Qaeda sympathesizer. Remember, this is the guy that made “Hero”, the movie that many in the West accused of being a secret propaganda movie for Chinese unification. Let me also add, for those that haven’t seen it yet, that I really enjoyed Zhang’s most recent movie: qianli zou danqi… even if it was a little cheaply sentimental. Another of his very unique movies that presenting a novel view of modern Chinese culture.
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah …
It just never ends with you guys.
That’s because this thread is grasping at straws. Ang Lee a ROC citizen of WSR decent, somehow becoming a poster child of TI and anti-PRC, while climbing the USA film industry…no it is not happening.
Please find another Taiwanese arthouse indie director to forward the TI cause. Unfortunately for TI, most Taiwanese directors with international exposure don’t even find TI subject that appealing.
I found Zhang Yimou “rage against the machine” phase to interesting, which I believe encompasses his works up to “To Live” (Hou Ze). I find his more recent works to be indicator of his change of view of China, especially “Hero”, less critical and more optimistic.
I found the line “Wo song ni liang ge zi” to be one of the classic lines in Chinese cinema. Poor Jet Li…a Hmong sacrificed for Han unity. 
[quote=“zeugmite”]
Trust me, TI nutjobs like Japan much better than any of us likes the PRC…[/quote]
What? Do TIers advocate “reunification” or re-posession by Japan? Do they profess loyalty to the Emperor? Do they want Japanese ideology taught in schools? Do they promote Japanese as the official language? How absurd is your comparison?
No, TI ‘nutjobs’ urge independence, not war. Only China equates TI with war! You can certainly argue that TI will provoke a war and should be avoided, given China’s intransigence. But it stands logic on its head to claim this is desired by TI supporters.
Nobody in this thread has claimed that Ang Lee is “a poster child of TI and anti-PRC”, I think it’s just you and your little PRC circle-jerk friends reading too much into it. Ang Lee simply thanked the people of Taiwan. Having grown up in Taiwan, there is nothing unusual or overtly political about this. I just find it amusing that you guys can get so worked up over nothing.
[quote=“cctang”]
Here’s an article from the People’s Daily. No sign of “censorship” here, as the entire speech is in the caption:
ent.people.com.cn/GB/4169417.html
… although it does show a creative translation (good thing the US State Department doesn’t care about this one). “Thanks to my compatriots in Chinese Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.”[/quote]
Altering what someone said is not censorship?
“Creative translation”=lying
[quote=“Redmenace”]I don’t think that the OP was suggesting that Ang Lee was making a political statement, but that it’s a shame the Chicom censors are petty enough to censor a gesture of thanks. It’s not like he said “I’d like to thank the great and independent democratic nation of Taiwan whose environment of freedom allowed me to flourish as I never could in the totalitarean prison-state that menaces to the west.” He said thank you to the people of Taiwan (his home), and that’s all.
It’s funny to see ac_dropout, cctang, and zeugmite all leap to the defense of the PRC at every chance. If you like it so much move there and be happy. They should get their own forum.[/quote]
There was a piece about it on Starworld News last night . Talking about how China didn’t allow that part of the speech to be aired because of it’s political message. (which is SO silly,you really can’t refer to Taiwan as China…you can’t ignore the watery mass known as an ocean…nothing political in what he said) The rest was about China going on and on about how proud they are of him, but not allowing his movie to be shown.
[quote=“MikeN”][quote=“cctang”]
Here’s an article from the People’s Daily. No sign of “censorship” here, as the entire speech is in the caption:
ent.people.com.cn/GB/4169417.html
… although it does show a creative translation (good thing the US State Department doesn’t care about this one). “Thanks to my compatriots in Chinese Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.”[/quote]
Altering what someone said is not censorship?
“Creative translation”=lying[/quote]
I’m certainly with you there. This is a case of censorship. Luckily, since the PRC embraces IP infringement, the uncensored version is already making money in China.