Beijing Boyce

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A year ago, we were counting down one month until the Beijing Olympics. A dire mood prevailed as people had trouble getting visas, the media pushed a “no-fun Games” theme, the Fuwa were caught in a sex-tape scandal, and questions lingered as to whether China could keep security, pollution, and logistics under control. Then The Games started and were, well, fun.

Over the next six weeks, I’ll post a half-dozen “Olympic flashbacks“. First up: My one and only media monitoring project, which focused on the predictable widespread coverage of Wangfujing snack street and especially that treat known as scorpions on a stick.

From the BBC to ESPN, from The LA Times to Forbes, from The Washington Post to The Age, reporters couldn’t resist “look at the weird food in Beijing” stories, though some realized that the customers tended to be tourists and journalists rather than this city’s citizens (see below for full list of stories). I gave Dave Barry of the Miami Herald the gold medal for best coverage:

The Chinese people I saw all seemed to be buying things like lamb kebabs and fruit. On the other hand, the people gathered around the centipedes and scorpions on a stick were, in almost every case, tourists or American TV reporters doing fun features on weird Chinese food. These people were basically lining up to eat scorpions. A reporter would hold up a skewer of scorpions, and the camera person would get a close-up shot. Then the reporter would scrunch up his or her face, take a bite of a scorpion, chew, swallow, and declare that it really wasn’t that bad. Then, depending on how in-depth the feature was, the reporter might take a bite of seahorse.

The silver went to Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post (“Foreign media doing scorpions-on-sticks pieces is just about the lamest form of journalism imaginable…. So here’s my version”), while bronzes went to Iain Marlow of The Toronto Star and Chris O’Brien of Forbes.

The media monitoring project kicked off with this post and also covered scorpions in a bottle and scorpions on a cracker. Here is a full list of posts:

• Scorpions on a stick: The medalists
• Scorpions on a stick: This post rocks!
• Scorpions on a stick update: Washington Post, NBC, Miami Herald, and more
• Scorpions in a… bottle?
• Scorpions on a… cracker?
• Scorpions on a stick update: Globe & Mail, LA Times, BBC, DNA India, and more
• Scorpions on a stick update: Forbes, Wall Street Journal
• Scorpions on a stick update: NBC
• On a stick? In Beijing? No way!: ESPN, Boston Globe

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Thousands of journalists are leaving Beijing and they have served the world well by informing it about that local delicacy known as scorpions on a stick. But one wonders who will tell the follow-up stories? About the impending unemployment among vendors when the reporters are gone. About rising housing prices due to so much lumber having been used for sticks. About the despondency of scorpions who no longer feel wanted.

In any case, it seems time for this media monitoring project to look back on all those scorpion stories and award a few medals to the best ones.

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GOLD

Dave Barry, Miami Herald

Key performance:

The market was bustling with people. But here’s the thing. The Chinese people I saw all seemed to be buying things like lamb kebabs and fruit. On the other hand, the people gathered around the centipedes and scorpions on a stick were, in almost every case, tourists or American TV reporters doing fun features on weird Chinese food. These people were basically lining up to eat scorpions. A reporter would hold up a skewer of scorpions, and the camera person would get a close-up shot. Then the reporter would scrunch up his or her face, take a bite of a scorpion, chew, swallow, and declare that it really wasn’t that bad. Then, depending on how in-depth the feature was, the reporter might take a bite of seahorse.

I watched as this procedure was repeated with several different TV crews. Then the truth hit me: The Chinese don’t eat scorpions. They feed their scorpions to TV reporters. I would not be surprised to learn that the Chinese word for scorpion is “TV reporter food.”

Barry misses a perfect 10 because he limited his observations to TV reporters. Trust me, Dave, print media are just as fascinated by scorpions.

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SILVER

Dan Steinberg, Washington Post

Key performance:

Foreign media doing scorpions-on-sticks pieces is just about the lamest form of journalism imaginable. It’s hackneyed, cliched, predictable and useless. It relies entirely on the gross-out factor, and is basically Fear Factor on location. It creates an image of life in Beijing that is demonstrably fake, no different than if every visiting journalist in the U.S. sent home pieces on American food, based entirely on FedEx Field concessions or the Texas State Fair. And, on top of all that, it’s just lazy.

So here’s my version.

Steinberg provided a “meta” view and even wrote a second article about the scorpions phenomenon.

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BRONZE (Tie)

Iain Marlow, The Toronto Star

Chris O’Brien, Forbes

Both wrote good pieces – Marlow about street food , O’Brien on the broader scene – and put scorpions on a stick in its proper place as a fringe food.

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Finally, no metal is precious enough to make a medal for this blog’s readers, who broke three huge stories, including The Scorpions on sticks, scorpions in a bottle, and scorpions on a cracker. Thanks to MH and m-dawg.

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See also:

Scorpions on a stick: This post rocks!

Scorpions on a stick update: Washington Post, NBC, Miami Herald, and more

Scorpions in a… bottle?

Scorpions on a… cracker?

Scorpions on a stick update: Globe & Mail, LA Times, BBC, DNA India, and more

Scorpions on a stick update: Forbes, Wall Street Journal

Scorpions on a stick update: NBC

On a stick? In Beijing? No way!: ESPN, Boston Globe

4 comments