China and Japan: cartoon warfare · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

As a celebration of National Day, the CCTV in China is now showing a 36 episodes 3-D Cartoon “Devil soldiers in Mao-er Mountain” (帽兒山的鬼子兵)in October. The cartoon was produced by a company in Heilongjiang and selected by the National boardcast bureau in Dongbei area (North east China) as one of the best cartoon production of the year (see press release on September 30, 2006).
The background of the cartoon is 1930s-40s (during WWII), in a village near a mountain (Mao-er) in Heilongjiang. The story is about the interaction between 3 Chinese kids and 5 Japanese soldiers.
The Chinese science fiction writer Han Song (韓松) comments that the image of Japanese soldiers in that cartoon is the stereotype Chinese imagination, it would certainly irritate millions of Japanese people.
这五个日本人的智商也都被设定得极低，比如，打雷了也不知道摘掉钢盔，还硬往大树下躲…总是占小便宜，又馋嘴，经常为了吃鸡钓鱼就上了小孩的当…
At the end of the cartoon, the lyrics of the song goes like this:
我气死鬼子兵，
我玩死鬼子兵，
我连耍带逗连打带踢，
我搞死鬼子兵！
Why showing this cartoon during the national day's month? When the country is preparing for the Olympic?
可能是为了报复日本人恶搞《红楼梦》，但两国的规格和层次不在一个档次上，我们是批判侵略者呀，又有中央政府做后台。国家广电总局已把《帽儿山的鬼子兵》评为2006年度第二批优秀国产动画片，推荐给全国所有孩子看。也没听说外交部发表意见。
There were no much discussion among Chinese blogsphere yet. But Xu Xiaoping (徐小平) has re-posted a commentary written by Rui Cheng Gang (芮成剛), CCTV international programme host, advising every Chinese, especially the youth, to read more about Japan (zh).
如果是一个美国人，从未来到过中国，没有中国朋友，而只是在媒体上看了一些有关中国的不良言论，就断言中国不好。我肯定不能接受．我会说：没有调查就没有发言权，你对中国人一无所知，你凭什么做这样的判断？
而我们对日本就了解吗？
How about us? Do we really understand Japan?