Kept for My Occasional Nostalgia

Saw Transformers 3 just now and loved it! It was some pure and awesome entertainment.

A lot of people in China are blasting the seemingly out-of-place and awkward product placements of Chinese brands - why can’t they have blended in just as smoothly as other big labels? 

I admit that the Chinese-branded “Shuhua Milk”, or the low lactose milk, is a little funny and strange to see, and Lenovo being the favorite brand of computers for fancy offices in Chicago is still hard to believe, but maybe at least part of that feeling comes not from its obtrusive effect, but from the fact that people just aren’t used to seeing Chinese-made products, which have born the reputation of shoddiness and cheap for some period now, presented on anything as up-scale and, for lack of a better word, “international”, as a Hollywood movie, and I guess being Chinese makes any such still fresh appearances a hyper-sensitive and self-conscious experience.

Although the debuts of these Chinese brands are less than perfect, the fact that so many Chinese people are making such a fuss out of them and being worried about how they would look to people outside of China in the movie is something like a parent (or an Asian parent to push it a little bit) whose kid is going to make a debut at a violin recital. It’s a wonderful mix of feelings. On the one hand there’s the apparent anxiousness and over-criticism, but also one cannot deny that there’s that other side of pride, confidence and preparedness.