Haibao’s buttcrack

Does he have a butt? Does he have a buttcrack?

Bad boy author and racing car driver Han Han recently posted a Q&A with himself to blog, about the Shanghai expo. Here is the first part of it, translated by Julian Smisek:

Lately, reporters want to interview me about the World Expo. This puts me in a spot – if I praise it, I’ll have a guilty conscience, and if I criticize it, I’ll lie awake at night worrying. However, seeing that the Expo is about to open, I’ve decided to answer every question about the Expo and Shanghai on this blog. My thoughts are below. After this, don’t ask me any similar questions.

1: What do you think the World Expo will bring to Shanghai and to China? What metaphor would you choose to describe the World Expo?

A: I think the question is not what the Expo will bring to China, but what China will bring to the Expo. Because, originally, the World Expo actually wasn’t that big of an exhibition. It has been getting gradually smaller and less important as it’s become easier to share news and information. It’s China that has given the Expo a promotion. If you really want me to use a metaphor, I’d say that the Shanghai World Expo is a little like some popular name brands in China that, through commercials, have convinced you’re awesome and high-class if you wear them. Then you leave China and ask around, only to find that they’re second rate.

2: How would you assess the World Expo’s mascot — Haibao?

A: Haibao has given people a really bad headache. I’m not even talking about his image, just his design. Haibao’s original two-dimensional design has created a really difficult problem for those tasked with making him three dimensional: what should his backside look like? Does he have a tail? Does he have a butt? Does he have a buttcrack? These are all unknown. That’s why we can see towering Haibao statues whose fronts are all the same, but whose backsides, you will discover, may or may not have buttcracks. But recently, there are more without buttcracks because the buttcracks have already announced that they’re leaving China [in Chinese, buttcrack sounds similar to Google].

3: When the World Expo is over, the Expo Hall and other venues will be torn down. Do you think this is a waste?

A: I don’t think it’s a waste. Our country built the Expo Hall by itself and it helped other countries build their pavilions. To do so, all sorts of government ministries spent a lot of money. After the Expo, these venue halls won’t have any use — they can’t be government offices. So the government will knock them flat, and sell the land to real-estate developers. That way, in the end, the World Expo isn’t financed by the government or industry, but by those enslaved to their mortgages.

4: If that’s the case, why does the government want to preserve a few pavilions?

A: Of course you can’t tear them all down. If you knocked them all down you wouldn’t be able to call the land “the World Expo block” and sell it for a good price.