Bazinga in China

Well, I didn't know this:  The Big Bang Theory is popular in China.  According to the New Yorker:

After seven seasons, the subtitled Chinese version of the show had achieved iconic status—all without the remotest involvement of the government’s vast media apparatus. By the time the show was banned, Chinese episodes had been watched online no fewer than 1.4 billion times. When the actors, such as Johnny Galecki, visit China, they are mobbed by fans. In Beijing, any tall, slim, dark-haired American male is likely to have been told once or twice that he looks a bit like Sheldon, the most Spock-like character on the show.

The article goes on to note the following:

Young Chinese, who have grown up in an age of prosperity and stability, are typically the most passionate defenders of the Chinese political and economic way. When the government, for instance, breaks up demonstrations in the name of defending China’s stability, or blocks Web sites to protect China’s honor in the long-running divide with Japan, it is often the self-described “angry youth” who rise in defense of the flag. But in this case, the ban hit a nerve. In the city of Wuhan, in central China, student members of the Center for Protection for the Rights of Disadvantaged Citizens of Wuhan University issued the rough Chinese equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act request, demanding to know why they had been deprived of their favorite show. 

And it then reaches this interesting conclusion:

It is a remarkable state of affairs: at the very moment when the U.S. and Chinese governments are moving in a direction of greater conflict, the slow, steady accretion of foreign pop culture on the Chinese Web has given people on both sides of the Pacific more in common than ever before. 

Let me be clear: sitcoms are not policy. The point is that the U.S. and China are in the curious position of facing a deepening rivalry at the very moment when their own citizens are sharing ever more of the same tastes, jokes, preoccupations, anxieties, and pleasures. The United States has never faced a rival whose ordinary people lead lives that have so much in common with ours in America. (The Soviets did not get Carson.)

[As an aside, I had not watched the show for a year or so, as the last time I had seen it I thought it showed signs of a sitcom in terminal decline.  But I recently did watch a couple of new season episodes, after reading about its extraordinarily high ratings in the States, and I did feel it had improved.]