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More than any other province, Henan in central China is the butt of everyone’s jokes. Others around the country look down on Henan as the home of liars, lunatics, and thieves who will even steal the covers off manholes. Now, one Henanese lawyer has had enough.

Lawyer Zhang Huashan has filed a lawsuit against the TV station, actors, and scriptwriter responsible for a sketch in which a criminal sports a Henanese accent, local newspaper Chinese Business View reported Wednesday.

The sketch, titled “A Cash Withdrawal,” was broadcast during Beijing TV’s Spring Festival gala program on Jan. 28, the first day of the lunar year. It depicts an old woman receiving a phone call from someone who tells her she needs to transfer her money to another bank account — a common telephone scam technique in China. What annoyed Zhang is that the caller spoke with an obvious Henanese accent.

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Henan native Zhang, 39, works at a law firm in neighboring Shaanxi province. After watching the sketch, he drafted a lawsuit against the TV station and those involved in the performance, requesting an open apology to the Henanese people, and compensation of 1 yuan ($0.14) for each of the province’s inhabitants — more than 100 million people.

In Zhang’s view, the sketch implied that Henan natives are often swindlers, and he explained that this characterization could strengthen public prejudice against the province.

“As a Henan native, I have often faced situations where my identity is scoffed at by others, some of which constitute blatant discrimination,” said Zhang in the Wednesday news report. “I hope that because of the lawsuit, people will pay more attention to intentional and inadvertent discrimination.”

The team behind the gala show could not immediately be reached for comment by Sixth Tone, but the writer of the sketch posted an apology on his Weibo microblog. Scriptwriter Wei Xin, who hails from Shandong province — which borders Henan — apologized to the public for the misunderstanding. “I dubbed the sketch with my hometown dialect,” he wrote. “It sounds similar to a Henanese accent.” 

China abounds with stereotypes about people from every area, whether it’s the image of folks from northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as permanently astride a donkey, or of northeastern men as gruff, burly blokes. Meanwhile, Guangdong province natives in China’s south are presumed to eat every creature under the sun or sea. 

But Henan still struggles to shake off its reputation as the nation’s number-one laughingstock. To rehabilitate its poor reputation, the province even launched a 60-second promotional video that it broadcast in New York’s Times Square, introducing the province’s rich history and majestic landscape.

Several other Henanese people complained online about the Beijing TV sketch. “Why is the swindler speaking our Henanese dialect? I feel so wronged!” wrote one Weibo user.

But others from the province didn’t see what the big deal was. “They’re making a fuss,” Zhang Bo, who hails from Henan’s Xinyang City, told Sixth Tone. “It met the needs of the performance. If people take things too seriously, performers won’t be able to use any accent.”

(Header image: A screenshot from the sketch ‘Cash Withdrawal,’ which appeared in the 2017 BTV Spring Gala broadcast on Jan. 28, 2017.)

A hit TV show has become embroiled in a drama of its own, following accusations that it employed people to leave positive write-ups on a review site but did not pay them for their services.

On Monday, the official Weibo microblog of period drama “General and I” was suddenly inundated with comments coming to the defense of the “water army,” or shuijun — slang for click farm-like companies paid to carry out menial tasks online on an industrial scale. “They got the shuijun to leave good reviews on [review site] Douban, but they have not paid the debt,” wrote user6086340700, before going on to tag the Weibo handles of various producers and companies associated with the show. Similar comments abounded from other profile picture-less users with numerical usernames.

Both Croton Media and Send Joy Media, two of the show’s producers, could not immediately be reached for comment when contacted by Sixth Tone on Friday. But earlier in the week, online outlet Sina Entertainment quoted producers as saying that they never employed anybody to bolster the show’s critical reception, and had “no idea what all the comments on the official Weibo page were about.”

But the story was kept alive when a public account on messaging app WeChat called “TVWatching” published an interview on Tuesday with a member of staff from a company claiming to have both provided the paid-for reviews and orchestrated the protest on the show’s Weibo page when payment was not received.

When contacted by Sixth Tone on Thursday, Yang Jinpeng, who described himself as a “mid-level employee,” said he could neither deny nor confirm that the interview with TVWatching took place. He declined to comment further on the case because the company was being swamped with media requests.

In TVWatching’s Tuesday article, an unnamed employee said that requests by Hangzhou Tongming Culture for the show’s producers to pay for their services went unanswered. “We were at a complete loss,” he said of the decision to turn their own troops against the company that had sought their services in the first place. “In the end we were led to choose this manner with which to defend our rights.”

But the action does not seem to have broken the standoff, with the show’s producers posting a message to Weibo on Tuesday asking the shuijun to lay down its arms: “Quiet down, we don’t want to go viral.”

“General and I,” a star-studded, 62-episode wartime romance set in ancient China, currently has a ranking of 3.6 out of 10 on Douban, and over 41,000 reviews. Lin Min, from Douban’s public relations department, told Sixth Tone that combating click-farmed reviews is part of the platform’s daily work. “Douban has a complete anti-shuijun system, making it impossible for them to leave reviews,” she said.

Lin declined to comment on the particular case of “General and I,” but said that any reviews that were deemed to be “abnormal” would not count toward a work’s overall score.

This week’s debacle is only the latest in a series of blunders to befall the show, which was previously slammed for its shoddy green-screen backdrops and for paying its lead actors, including mega-star Angelababy, too much money.

The most recent controversy has provided a level of entertainment for online spectators that has rivaled the show’s less-than-favorable critical reception on Douban, with many Weibo users siding with the shuijun in their fight for justice. “Let’s go, shuijun,” cheered the author of a comment that received over 1,300 likes. “Get back the money you earned with blood and sweat.”

Others came to the show’s defense, arguing it had been unfairly targeted since it first aired in January. “It’s clearly a great TV drama, but it’s always taking hits,” wrote one commenter of the show, whose episodes have been watched over 18 billion times on video-streaming site LeTV, its online distributor. “These critical idiots can’t live a day without criticizing someone. I give ‘General and I’ a thumbs-up!”

(Header image: A still frame from the TV period drama ‘General and I.’ VCG)

20th Century Fox’s “Logan” has become the first film in China required by law to feature an age-restriction warning in its marketing material, even after the film underwent significant cuts for the world’s second-largest entertainment market.

The film’s producers have been instructed that all online and offline points of sale for the film should prominently include the warning “Elementary school students and preschool children must be accompanied by parents or guardians,” according to local reports.

Major cinema operators have received the notification, as have popular movie ticketing apps, according to those reports.

Students at Chinese elementary schools range in age from 6 years old to around 12 years old. The film is restricted to viewers over the age of 15 in the U.K. and received an R rating in the U.S., which requires under-17s to be accompanied by an adult guardian.

The requirement comes as China’s first film industry law came into practice on Wednesday. Article 20 of the law states that for films that “might attract minors or other audiences that are physically or psychologically inappropriate, a warning should be given.”

The warning represents the most significant step toward what might become a more comprehensive and restrictive rating system, which parents and film industry lobby groups have been advocating for years.

“Logan” is the ninth — and likely final — time Hugh Jackman has played the role of Wolverine in the X-Men film franchise. The two previous Wolverine movies screened in China in 2009 and 2013, but unlike the darker third installment, they were rated PG-13 in the U.S.

Chinese censors cut 14 minutes from the film’s 137-minute run time, citing violence and perhaps also the “brief nudity” indicated by the Motion Picture Association of America’s own R rating, state media reported.

In 2016, Mel Gibson’s war drama “Hacksaw Ridge” became the first film in China, imported or domestic, to assign itself a default but voluntary rating of 12 years old and up. However, only 30 seconds were cut from that film.

Based on the “Old Man Logan” comic book series, “Logan” finds Jackman as an aging Wolverine forced to look after a young girl who has a lot more in common with him than he first realizes.

Jackman actually took a pay cut in order for the film to have a budget 20th Century Fox would be comfortable with as an R-rated release, according to director James Mangold.

Speaking after an out-of-competition screening at the Berlinale film festival in Germany last month, Mangold said“Logan” was “not a movie for kids — it’s that simple … We cannot explore questions of violence and children and fatherhood without making [adult-oriented] movies.”

“Basically, if you’re on the make for a hyper-choreographed, gravity-defying, city-block destroying CG f—kathon, this ain’t your movie,” reads a page from the script, which Mangold shared last year. “In this flick, people get hurt or killed when shit falls on them. They will get just as hurt or just as killed if they get hit with something big and heavy, like, say, a car. Should anyone in our story have the misfortune to fall off a roof or out a window, they won’t bounce. They will die.”

This is an original article by China Film Insider, and has been published with their permission. The article can be found on their website here.

(Header image: A still frame from the movie ‘Logan.’ IC)

A Chinese internet celebrity recently found out that fame has its price — especially when your phone number is leaked to millions of idolatrous fans.

His days were soon filled with his phone’s incessant ringing. Annoyed, he decided to reclaim his calm and patch his fans through to 110, the emergency number for China’s police. But he got more peace and quiet than he bargained for when the authorities detained him for six days, provincial broadcaster Zhejiang Satellite Television reported Wednesday.

The suspect, a 19-year-old man identified only by his surname, Wang, has 7 million fans on live-streaming app Kuaishou who regularly tune in to his channel. According to a statement by local police, the trouble started on Feb. 18, when Wang unknowingly tapped on a malicious link sent to him via messaging app WeChat that ended up posting his phone number online.

When Wang’s fans found out about the leak, his phone started to ring more than usual — and didn’t stop. “One call per second made me totally unable to live-stream,” he said during the TV interview.

When Wang routed all calls from unknown numbers to the police hotline of Jinhua City in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, the emergency department was bombarded with 1,000 calls in just half an hour. Upon discovering the source of the calls, police called Wang in for questioning on Feb. 24.

Wang told the police that he “just wanted to stop them from calling me,” according to the statement. “When [the police] came for me, I started to realize the severity of the issue.”

Wang is far from the only live-streamer to have found himself in hot water. Last November, a female broadcaster was sentenced to four years in jail for a lewd video, and a man was detained for pretending to take drugs on his live stream. Then in December, another broadcaster was detained for live-streaming himself making an insulting phone call to police in Wenzhou, another city in Zhejiang.

Wang was served an administrative detention for disrupting the unit’s order, based on the rule that harassing police with intentional false alarms is a punishable offense. The authorities say they receive enough phone calls that don’t lead anywhere as it is. Last year in Zhejiang province, some 13 million emergency calls— more than half — turned out to be false alarms.

On Thursday morning, Wang posted on his Weibo microblog account, “Finally, I am out.” Many net users who had seen the news on TV left him unsympathetic comments. “Six days of detention is too little — you should stay there forever,” said one Weibo user.

Editor: Kevin Schoenmakers.

(Header image: Emergency hotline operators take phone calls at a dispatch center in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Jan. 7, 2015. Zhou Jianshi/VCG)

A blockbuster that chronicled a rural Chinese woman’s fight against injustice has come up against a real-life legal challenge of its own. Citing defamation, 60-year-old Pan Jinlian from southern China’s Guangdong province is suing the director of “I Am Not Madame Bovary,” a film known in Chinese as “I Am Not Pan Jinlian.”

In the 2016 satirical movie directed by renowned filmmaker Feng Xiaogang and starring megastar Fan Bingbing, protagonist Li Xuelian pits herself against the country’s legal system to clear her name after she is wrongfully accused of infidelity and divorced by her husband. The film’s title is a reference to her argument that she is no “Pan Jinlian,” a character from ancient Chinese literature who has become synonymous with sexual debauchery.

With the authors of those works — “Jin Ping Mei” and “Water Margin” — long gone, Pan, the plaintiff in the recent legal case and a resident of the city of Zengcheng, has turned her attention to the people and production companies behind last year’s highly successful movie, including director Feng, producer Huayi Brothers Pictures, and Liu Zhenyun, author of the 2012 novel on which the film is based.

A statement appearing to have been issued by Pan claimed that the film had caused her significant emotional distress, and that trailers and other forms of promotion had only compounded the defamation against her.  “Not only did the plaintiff become severely depressed and vexed,” her statement, cited by news portal Sohu, read, “but the esteem of her relatives and other people with the Pan surname has also decreased drastically in the eyes of society.”

During her argument in the court case’s opening session, held Tuesday at the Chaoyang People’s Court in Beijing, Pan took particular exception to the film’s opening narration, the Chengdu Economic Daily reported Wednesday. The narration, spoken by director Feng, said: “Ever since the Song Dynasty, people have used the name Pan Jinlian to refer to improper women.” She also argued that the film did not stipulate that any semblance to reality was mere coincidence.

In an interview with the Chengdu Economic Daily, Pan’s younger brother said that his sister’s suffering caused by her fictional namesake has been going on for years, with her two children and husband also bearing the brunt. But with the release of “I Am Not Madame Bovary,” circumstances have worsened, said her brother, who was not identified by name. “She can’t sleep for much of the night, and her health is deteriorating,” he said, adding that elderly neighbors in her housing estate now openly mock her.

The case was originally scheduled for the end of December 2016, but the absence of some of the defendants’ legal representatives meant it was delayed until March 21 — the same day the film took three awards, including best film and best actress, at the 11th Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong. The defendants refused to settle, and an unnamed legal representative was quoted by the Chengdu Economic Daily as saying, “The historical figure and the person in real life share the same name, but they are two different matters entirely.”

Pan is unlikely to succeed in her case, legal specialist Li Junhui told Sixth Tone. “There really is no direct connection between the character in the film and those with the Pan surname, nor does the film violate the ‘right of reputation’ of a particular person,” said Li, a researcher at China University of Political Science and Law’s Center of Intellectual Property Rights Studies. “It’s an interesting case, but it would be difficult to define it as infringement.” 

Pan’s battle to clear her name is not the first time “I Am Not Madame Bovary” has come under fire. In November of last year, a judge called the movie an insult to her profession. Li Xiaomei, a judge in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, criticized the protagonist’s decision to petition the government and appeal to officials rather than pursue legal justice through the courts.

A verdict for the recent legal challenge is expected on April 19.

This article has been updated to reflect comments by legal expert Li Junhui.

Additional reporting: Wang Lianzhang; contributions: Yin Yijun; editor: Kevin Schoenmakers.

(Header image: A still frame shows Fan Bingbing’s character in the film ‘I Am Not Madame Bovary,’ directed by Feng Xiaogang. IC)

Three hundred twenty-six cinemas were named, shamed, and punished for box office fraud on Tuesday as China begins to enforce its new film law that went into effect on March 1.

China’s media watchdog released a full list of the offending theaters alongside steep fines and suspensions related to the extent of their fraud.

Box office fraud is rife in China and typically involves cinemas and distributors buying up tickets or counting some of the earnings of one film as those of another.

Sixty-three cinemas were found guilty of box office fraud of around 1 million yuan (about $145,000) in 2016 and will be closed for 90 days starting March 27 as punishment.

Zhejiang province in eastern China is host to another 63 cinemas that will be closed for at least 60 days as punishment for fraud of between 500,000 yuan and 1 million yuan. Another 110 cinemas face fines of 200,000 yuan, while the rest, which were involved in fraud of less than 100,000 yuan, received warnings.

Offending cinemas have been ordered to repay any lost income to the producers of any films involved and report the amount publicly.

Cinema managers were also punished for their role in gaming the system, according to local reports. An official with the media watchdog called the box office a “chronic disease” that was hampering the development of the industry.

This is an original article by China Film Insider, and has been published with their permission. The article can be found on their website here.

(Header image: Film audiences attend a screening at a movie theater in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, March 7, 2017. Wang Zhicheng/VCG)

China’s hit mobile game “Honour of Kings” was criticized by a Party newspaper article for misrepresenting historic figures.

Empowered with fantastical skill sets, more than 60 figures from China’s long and illustrious history have been adapted for the game’s virtual battle field. But for a journalist at Guangming Daily, equipping a Tang Dynasty poet with swords is tantamount to “subverting history.”

“Honour of Kings” is developed by internet giant Tencent, and is similar to another runaway success title owned by the company, computer game “League of Legends.” As in that game, players in “Honour of Kings” fight each other in teams and try to destroy their opponent’s base. The game has 50 million daily users and ranks first on Apple’s iOS App Store in China.

But even though the game has been a massive hit, the Guangming Daily journalist was less than excited, writing in an article on Tuesday that while the game’s characters were named after historic heroes, their depictions were a far cry from historical accuracy. Consequently, the article argued, the game could have a negative influence on its youngest players, leading them to confuse fantasy and history.

Though Tencent recommends that only people over 16 years of age play “Honour of Kings,” according to its own figures, more than 30 percent of the game’s players are in primary or middle school.

The Guangming Daily article listed several examples of the game’s chronological transgressions. Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai is depicted as an assassin; Jing Ke, the man who in 227 B.C. tried to kill the first emperor of China, is a scantily clad female character; and China’s first known physician, Bian Que, doesn’t just cure people but now also poisons his enemies.

The Weibo microblog of Party newspaper People’s Daily also wrote a “micro-commentary” on Wednesday saying that the game developer was misleading teenagers and not properly respecting history. “Not everything can be a game,” it said. “When developing a mobile game, some responsibilities are more important than profits.” The post has since been deleted but can still be found in Google’s cache.

In a statement to Sixth Tone, Tencent said “Honour of Kings” was designed to inspire an interest in culture. By choosing poems and songs related to the characters in the game and inviting voice actors to dub the lines, the game endeavors to arouse players’ interest in and understanding of history, the company said.

In 2011, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television, China’s media censor, said it would strengthen inspection of historical TV dramas, saying that some made-up stories misled younger viewers.

Earlier this month, a Chinese language textbook for primary school students became mired in controversy because some of its texts placed historical figures in made-up anecdotes. For example, one story said George Washington cut down a cherry tree and bravely admitted his folly to his father. Another said inventor Thomas Edison saved his mother’s life when he was 7 years old by using mirrors to perform a surgery with reflected light. The book’s publisher announced that they would remove the stories for the book’s new edition.

Online reactions to the Guangming Daily article have been split, with some agreeing and others saying the journalist had overreacted. Teng Li, 39, told Sixth Tone she thinks the game can still help children learn about history. Her son, a third-grade student, is a fan of the game. “He must know that Li Bai is a great poet instead of an assassin,” she said. “But for other figures that he doesn’t know yet, he may get confused.”

Lu Yifu, 25, started playing “Honour of Kings” two months ago. He told Sixth Tone that it’s easy for students to differentiate between the characters in the game and the historical figures in their textbooks. “It’s just a game,” Lu said. “Why do we have to be burdened with so many concerns while playing a game?”

Additional reporting: Yin Yijun; editor: Kevin Schoenmakers.

(Header image: A poster of the character Li Bai, a well-known Tang Dynasty poet, depicted as an assassin in the controversial video game ‘Honour of Kings.’ From the game’s official website)

From among a group of red-clad game avatars, a voice calls out in Mandarin: “There’s a foreigner; the guy in the black shirt is a foreigner! Kill him!” A bugle sounds, and the foreign gamer is immediately surrounded by a group of Chinese players before uttering his last words to a teammate: “It’s the Red Army, dude!”

Scenes like this one have become common in “H1Z1: King of the Kill” — a popular online “deathmatch” survival video game — ever since 32-year-old gamer Gu Wenlong began leading the virtual militia of fellow Chinese players into battle against foreign enemies two years ago.

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“In real life, I don’t think that we Chinese are particularly unified because of cultural differences among regions,” says Gu, who lives in the suburbs of Shanghai and goes by the name EMOQQ in “H1Z1.” “But when it comes to the game, we’re all speaking Chinese,” he adds. “Your followers can understand you; they can help you.”

The game sets up a doomsday scenario in which each player must fight for survival, using weapons to rob and kill others for their resources. When Gu first began playing “H1Z1” shortly after its release in 2015, he played alone. He recalls being captured and punished by non-Chinese gamers, who forced him to say swear words in foreign languages or sing foreign national anthems before killing his avatar.

After three months, as the number of Chinese players on the gaming platform gradually increased, Gu found a way to fight back against hostility from foreign players: He created his own so-called Red Army of Chinese gamers. Against the backdrop of grassroots nationalism that has proliferated online in recent years, Gu’s group quickly amassed followers. To differentiate themselves from foes, members of the Red Army dress their game avatars in red shirts with no pants, and they use certain swear words and slang as a code language to root out impostors.

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Gu broadcast the game on Chinese live-streaming platform Douyu and posted clips on his Weibo microblog, but the Red Army’s name didn’t reach beyond the online gaming circle until July 2015. That month, a U.S. gamer with the username ANGRYPUG provoked Chinese players during a live stream on video platform Twitch when he shouted “Taiwan No. 1!” after being killed by Gu’s Red Army. In a video posted on YouTube, Chinese gamers gather around ANGRYPUG’s avatar, retorting “China No. 1, Russia No. 2, U.S. No. 8!” along with a barrage of curse words.

The video has garnered nearly 3 million views on YouTube, which doesn’t take into account the large number of viewers watching reposts of the clip on Chinese mainland video platforms.

Gu’s Red Army is not the only Chinese group known to take out foreign enemies on the virtual battlefield of “H1Z1.” During Chinese New Year, a team of Chinese gamers called TGx retaliated after a sneak attack by Japanese gamers. Several articles on Weibo praising TGx’s fight against the “sneaky Japanese” during the national holiday were shared and gained widespread support on social media.

“The foreigners are never friendly when they see someone Chinese,” says Zhang Chuangdi, one of Gu’s followers in the game. Zhang says he was angered by ANGRYPUG’s comments: “It’s just a game; you shouldn’t mix politics into it. That was definitely behavior aimed at provoking Chinese people.”

The gamer behind ANGRYPUG has continued to play up the incident, launching a video series in which his game avatar wears a red shirt and infiltrates the Red Army to mock the group. Fans can pay $4.99 to subscribe to the channel and receive 19 custom-made virtual stickers, including one that features the “Taiwan No. 1” message.

Meanwhile, the Red Army’s “China No. 1” slogan has been printed on real-life red shirts that sell for 99 yuan ($14) each on Douyu. “When a foreign live-streamer comes after me, it’s actually to kill me,” says Gu, who now has over 800 thousand followers on Douyu. “But I don’t resent it; I feel happy. He comes to kill me, and my followers come to protect me. It’s such good entertainment.”

Back on the battlefield, the foreign gamer trapped by the Red Army shouts “China No. 1!” in surrender. Alongside a video of the action posted later on Weibo, Gu writes: “Look at the power of the Chinese people!”

Editor: Jessica Levine.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the number of users who follow Gu on Douyu. He has 800 thousand followers, not 8 million.

(Header image: Gu Wenlong plays ‘H1Z1’ at home, Shanghai, March 30, 2017. Tang Xiaolan/Sixth Tone)