A few months ago I took a long trip to China. I saw, heard, touched, smelt and tasted a lot of strange things. Mention Stephen Colbert, and it gets weirder.
The Good
Imagine that you are a solitary voice, surrounded by people with minds not yet open to ideas that you espouse. You envy ethnic Tibetans because at least they have angry hippies half a world away fighting and having indignant unbathed political orgies for them. You feel America has turned a blind eye to you as they just don’t feel the need to send you that Colbert swag that you ordered (which is probably made in the next province over anyway), forcing you to resort to crafting your own t-shirts. You try to get The Colbert Report added to the curriculum at your university, but your professor turns and accuses you of spreading decadent and counter-revolutionary ideas. Congratulations, you’re a Colbert fan in China.
I can’t even tell you where this photo was taken. Surely you understand my moral example regarding the protection of a lone, active Colbert enthusiast in a nation gone mad?
The Bad
The government reveals its clear anti-Colbert bias – it builds schools to educate… you’ve guessed it:
And the Ugly?
Well, just wrong. A little clue as to why it’s so hard for Stephen to be voted Time’s Most Influential Man of the Year.
I feel dirty taking pictures of this garbage. I had to take snaps of other places to make it look like I wasn’t trying only to take snaps of a half-naked guy. For the greater good, I guess.
-Jack
Now if we made that one t-shirt 40 feet long and covered up their pagan Korean pop god, we’d have a fighting chance.
The struggle continues. Stay strong.
Tip of the hat to mjkb217 (clearly not his real name) and Jack.
Great post! GIANT tip of the hat to the stalwart Colbert fan in China – stay strong hero!
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i’m thinking a hero with photoshop and mad graphics skills could turn that pic of Rain into a pic of the “biggest” Colbert fan in China…
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No It-Getters in China, eh? I guess not considering they’re educating hordes of Godless Killing Machines.
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And while the photo shop hero is at it, why not put a Tibetan flag in his hand?
Nyah, nyah, ;p
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hmm.
my mad photoshop skills will replace rain!
as soon as I outsource the job to one of my friends whose good with photoshop.
it will come.
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How many bears can they put in such a small area?
This is an amazing story. Stay strong in China Jack! You have lots of support from us Zoners.
I wish we could get rid of that rain advertisement! RAINN!!!!!!
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do u not think mjkb217 loves NFZ and comes here often? for a stalwart fan? I will come back at this , gotta go…
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@ Lisa
Well, there are the TWO.
@ Mike
I’ve lost contact with him. Last time I emailed him, I got one of those cryptic emails where they have some obscure Chinese language code that Windows can’t pick up – probably an automatic reply. Scary.
@ One of the Heroes
Oh, I have more images and footage to be uploaded in the coming days. http://youtube.com/user/thelakeeffect
It seems we all Rain to be photoshopped into a member of the Colbert Nation. If only there was a way to make this into a contest…
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@TheLakeEffect
Sorry for not posting with mjkb217. i’ve been trying to contact you too, I emailed you via your NFZ address once but never got response. and i keep asking your whereabouts and freakishly long disappearance from the site. but none of the commenters reply. and last time you said you were busy fight the bears and bees, i thought you knew it was me. so my apologies.
@photoshoppers
I don’t mind Rain using my torso, but I don’t want to be blacklisted or anything, and i’m not really into that Tibet or not Tibet thing. so don’t you Tibet me….
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And that… is how you coax a walking target out of hiding. I learned that from Bono – remember when he got Salman Rushdie on stage even when he still had that big fatwa over his head?
I suspected it was you Mike, but you know, dissenters have been impersonated before…
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I didn’t realize there were two people: Jack and Mike. I must not have read the blog article carefully enough. I want to send greetings to Mike too then.
@lakeeffect,
I look forward to the upcoming footage.
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@TheLakeEffect
and good news on the curriculum thing. I graduate this upcoming June. I’m getting a job with New Channel, a rather prestigious English training institute in Beijing. I will try to inject Truthiness into my class and be careful not to be handcuffed away. but i’m not very optimistic the students will GET IT
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