Chinese couch potatoes love American TV drama - they just don't watch it on a couch. Whether out of necessity or out of choice, the Chinese way of receiving video content may well point to how people receive information and entertainment in the future.
When Netflix made all 13 episodes of House of Cards available for streaming online earlier this year, it created somewhat of a revolution in the viewing habits of the American public. Some binged on the Web-only drama series about Washington politics, while others complained about the glut of spoilers revealed by those already ahead in the story. The lament about the end of the collective experience of TV viewing reached a mini-crescendo.
This would not have raised a single eyebrow in China. On this side of the Pacific, television drama has never been consumed in weekly morsels. Even before the advent of online video, television stations were prone to daily broadcasts, sometimes airing as many as three episodes a day. A 60-episode series regularly runs for three weeks or less, accounting for the abundance of such programming throughout the nation.
While habits vary from place to place, the shift from so-called "appointment viewing" to the on-demand kind may reflect a larger trend, that of instant gratification. People do not want to wait a week for the next installment of their favorite show. They want to watch on their own terms, which usually means several episodes in a sitting. Some of my friends have formed the habit of finishing a season's worth of US programming in one weekend.
And naturally, they take to an online platform to discuss what they have just watched. As a matter of fact, so many people in China have forfeited their television viewing that, according to one survey last year, the use of the dominating TV set in Beijing homes has dropped to below 30 percent. In my home, the three sets are rarely on, and even when they are on, they are used as monitors to play videos. A friend of mine at LeVision gave me a set-top box so I can plug my computer into the TV so I am able to watch online videos on the big screen. But my four-year-old sets are too ancient for - and therefore incompatible with - their new gadget.
TV is not dead yet, but it's obvious that China is way ahead of the curve in moving away from this moribund platform of regimented information and entertainment. If you can be your own programmer, why endure the slings and arrows of annoying commercials, same-old opening and closing credits, and endless fillers? You can filter out anything you don't like and go straight to the parts that take your fancy.
If you are an American futurist, it may make sense to take a look around the Middle Kingdom and see what is happening. The "unimaginable" Chinese behavior today may well become commonplace across the Pacific tomorrow. In many ways, China is catapulting itself from a backward position to one of the trailblazer, leaving behind developed countries with their entrenched practices and ideas.
I first noticed this over a decade ago when the mobile phone was still a status symbol in the US. My American friends were flabbergasted when they saw every Chinese carrying a cellphone, "even the migrant workers," as they said. "Especially the migrant workers," I countered. This young demographic was extremely fashion conscious. They wanted to blend in with their urban counterparts. They could not really afford high-end models, but the ready availability of knockoffs solved their dilemma. And they would whip out their chic-looking devices on more occasions than necessary.
I'm not being judgmental about the great leap forward in the area of consumer electronics and mass entertainment. It is definitely fast forward, but not necessarily in the right direction. Floating around China's cyberspace are two sets of photos showing what people read on Beijing's subway vs commuters in New York. New Yorkers tend to read books and newspapers, which would make them look like aliens in the Chinese capital. Over here, everyone is glued to a smart phone and leafing through jokes and soap operas. In the thousands of subway rides I have taken in China, I have never seen a single serious book other than a textbook, in which case the reader was apparently preparing for some kind of test.
That does not bode well for books that enrich the mind rather than amuse it. A comparison of the best-seller lists in both countries will yield similar results. Shorter attention spans have moved us from knowledge absorption to so-called fragmented and light reading - of tidbits of information that go down easy and rarely challenge one's preconceptions.
There is no doubt that dumbing down is a worldwide phenomenon. Because we have run to the fore, we are more mired in the morass of tech-enabled factoids and populist pursuits. I once mentioned the origin of Christmas in a college lecture and met with a rejoinder of: "We know. It's in an episode of The Big Bang Theory". Well, it's certainly a positive thing that the entertainment we watch embodies educational elements. But should all useful knowledge be repackaged as sitcom material to make it stick with the target audience?
I guess I'm showing my age when I ask such questions. I used to criticize the old, rigid way of imparting knowledge. I still do. Both teaching and learning should be more fun. But not every Shakespeare play can be transformed into a 15-minute "webisode" rich with up-to-the-minute slang and cyber phrases. Some parts of learning will never be as enjoyable as tabloid news and celebrity gossip.
Compared to the self-programmed slate of Web content, American TV series hold a high standard of professionalism. They are more grounded in reality and, as such, are more enlightening than most Hollywood franchise movies - to a typical Chinese college student, that is. Shows like The West Wing and House of Cards are inadvertent textbooks - albeit exaggerated for dramatic purposes - of the American political system. Although they are not supposed to be the single source of knowledge, they can be invaluable as companions to academic study.
Consciously or not, many Chinese have always looked to the West for a roadmap in terms of social development or economic growth. When something goes wrong in China, experts will write about how the Americans have done it. If China's education is a minefield of dashed hope and shattered talent, the system in the US must be a miracle, so goes the public assumption. Little do people know or care that America's educational system has its own unsolvable headaches, which happen to differ drastically from those in China and therefore are not relevant as a precedent.
There are indeed many things an advanced nation can be a role model for, but China has leapfrogged, for better or for worse, in many areas. Yet, we are not in a position to judge what developments are good and what are bad. We tend to swing from self-intoxication to despair in one fell swoop, often depending on the breakout news of the day. Just look at the news, never verified, that a "mainstream" US television company is acquiring the rights to China's most popular palace drama. It's invariably interpreted as American recognition of the excellence of Chinese soap opera. Guess what? Even if it turns out to be true, one swallow does not a summer make.
China may produce tens of thousands of TV episodes each year, but in quality and salability we are far behind the US. Of the things we can emulate, creativity should probably be the top priority - and everything associated with it. Whether the content is spoon-fed or gorged is really beside the point.