Spring Festival gala skit features Chinese woman in blackface declaring ‘I love China’
The sketch was apparently aimed at promoting China-Africa ties
While pretty much everyone agrees that the annual CCTV Spring Festival gala only gets worse each year, the event may indeed have hit a new low this time around with a state-sanctioned skit using blackface.
The gala is the world’s most watched show with as many as 900 million people tuning in to watch as dancers twirl, stars lip sync, and comedians crack lame jokes. This year, producers apparently tried to use their platform to promote Chinese-Africa relations with a skit titled “The Same Joy, the Same Happiness,” which appears to have backfired… just a bit.
The sketch featured a number of African performers dancing, singing, and speaking in Mandarin, including a group of young women dressed up as conductors on Chinese-built train lines. There was also a costumed, inflatable giraffe, along with a black actor dressed up as a monkey with a basket on its back. Yeah…
However, the skit’s racism was really put to the forefront with the introduction of an “African mother,” apparently played by a Chinese woman in blackface, complete with a large artificial behind, who ends up declaring: “I love Chinese people! I love China!”as the audience applauds.
Watch for yourself below:
Ever since it aired, the scene has been making waves on both Weibo and Twitter where many can’t help but be shocked by the obvious racism that apparently went unnoticed by the show’s producers, performers, and much of its audience.
However, that apparently wasn’t the only problem with the skit.
This is far from the first time that China has displayed a rather stunning ignorance toward racism against Africans. Last year, a museum in Wuhan opened an exhibit featuring photos of African people framed alongside those of animals sporting similar expressions.
The racism of the pieces was apparently not picked up on until an African student visited the museum and uploaded a video of the photos, causing shock and outrage around the world, which caused the museum to close the exhibit early.
The year before that, an ad for a Chinese laundry detergent brand also shocked the world, showing a black man being shoved into a washing machine for a thorough rinsing, only to emerge a short time later as a pristine young Chinese man.
UPDATE: What’s on Weibo has said that the Chinese woman in blackface is Lou Naiming (娄乃鸣), a “renowned actress, playwright and producer.”
