Netflix Denies “Midnight in Peking” Adaptation Starring Jiang Wen

Update: Seems someone jumped the gun and got us all excited without due cause. Netflix has now denied reports that it will turn Paul French‘s true crime novel Midnight in Peking into its first-ever China-set original series, or that it has tapped legendary Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen to star. Hopefully that’s in the works though — we’d watch it.

In the opening of Jiang Wen’s comedy action film Hidden Man, set in 1930s Beijing, police chief Zhu Qianlong tells surgeon Li Tianran of a disturbing case involving the murder of schoolgirl Pamela Warner, the British ambassador’s daughter. The case, which actually happened at the time, was subsequently lost to the current of history, forever left unsolved. Now, Netflix is turning a fictional crime novel based on the murder, Midnight in Peking, into a full-blown series starring none other than Jiang Wen as the lead detective.

At a time when Netflix is streaming more and more Chinese movies and TV shows, including sci-fi blockbuster Wandering Earth which was put up just last week, Midnight In Peking will be the streaming service’s first original series set in Mainland China — casting a Chinese actor-director as distinguished as Jiang Wen seems fitting for the occasion.

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The decision makes even more sense given that Jiang has a working relationship with Paul French, the author of Midnight of Peking, who spoke about grabbing meals with Jiang in a recent interview with Chinese news outlet The Paper. Jiang originally approached French about using details from the novel for his 2018 film and China’s pick for the Oscars’ foreign language category Hidden Man (the source of the opening scene mentioned above, and the cinematic cover image up top).

Jiang, who French said has been practicing English three hours everyday to prepare for his role in the show, isn’t a newcomer to English language film and TV. Though far from well-known outside of China, many Western viewers may recognize him as the heroic soldier Baze Malbus who sacrificed himself for the resistance in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, his English language film debut.

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Hidden Man was the third part of Jiang’s “Bullets” trilogy, which started with the action-packed Let the Bullets Fly and was followed by Gone With the Bullets. But he’s long been renowned for his work both behind and in front of the camera in China. He starred in Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou’s debut film and an adaptation of the Mo Yan novel, and helmed iconic pieces of Chinese cinema with In the Heat of the Sun and the controversial Devils on the Doorstep.

In China, besides being known for his movies, Jiang is also famous as a purveyor of the Chinese slang term tamade, literally his mom’s, but which is probably better translated as “fucking” (as in that’s fucking crazy, or it’s fucking hot outside). It’s not surprising then that many Weibo users have been lacing their comments about the news with the term — or its abbreviation, TMD — to express their approval.

“Netflix is really TMD great,” one said, and another, “Can something this awesome tamade be real?” From us at RADII: yes, it tamade can be.

“The Dress” Resurrected: Color-Changing Shoe Breaks Internet

Remember the blue and black dress (or was it white and gold?) that broke the internet in 2015? Now a pair of women’s sneakers is reigniting the color debate.

The picture, which first appeared in 2017, was recently rediscovered and has been spreading like wildfire across WeChat and Weibo.

While some see a pink shoe with white laces, others see gray with teal accents. In true internet fashion, both camps are adamant that their side is correct.




On the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, the hashtags “Gray and green or pink and white” (#灰绿还是粉白#) and “Actually, is this really related to left and right brain” (#其实是不是真的和左脑右脑有关呢#) garnered 1.1 million and 1.19 million impressions respectively, and elicited both confused and exasperated responses:

“What color is this shoe? It’s obviously pink and white, but many people say it’s gray and green! Turns out everyone’s vision is very different!”

“Are you serious? This is gray and green. Is there a problem with my eyes?”

“Bro, this picture is from years ago.”

Some tech-savvy netizens even turned to Photoshop to prove their stances:

“Actually, this picture originally appears gray and green. There is no difference in color perception or whatever. Those who see pink and white have mentally processed the picture. The color picker in Photoshop tells us which colors are truly in this picture.”

What color are the shoes? Turns out, Team Pink-and-White has full gloating rights. According to Vans, the skate classics are “mahogany rose and true white.” (If you’re in denial, try tweaking the white balance of the original picture.)

Besides being a neat optical illusion, this meme is also fronting as a psychological test: many wrote that if the right-half of your brain is dominant, you’ll see pink and white; if the left-half is dominant, you’ll see gray and green. Those who fall into the former category tend to be emotional and creative, while the latter are more analytical and rational.

However, science journalist Erin Biba pointed out that the premise of dominant brain sides is a “pseudoscience myth” and that circulating such false information is “highly irresponsible” for a news organization.

The real reason for the difference in colors comes down to how our brain interprets light, eye experts say. “Basically, your visual system is constantly trying to color-correct the images projected on the retina, to remove the color contamination introduced by the spectral bias in the light source,” Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist at the National Eye Institute, told The Guardian.




“Everyone has a very strong prior belief that shoelaces are white. So when your visual system sees the manipulated photograph, where the shoelaces are a weird turquoise, it then subtracts that color from the rest of the scene, restoring the canvas of the shoe to pink,” he added.

Wǒ Men Podcast: How the China Expat Experience is Changing

The Wǒ Men Podcast is a discussion of life in China hosted by Yajun Zhang and Jingjing Zhang. Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men Podcast can be found here, and you can subscribe to Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

In recent years more and more people from all over the world visit, study and live in China.

One of the stereotypical lifestyle of old generations of expats is that they hang out in bar districts, commute on an old fashioned bicycle and live in a traditional neighborhood such as Beijing’s hutong alleyways.

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But how do the younger generation of oversea students and expats live in China and immerse themselves in Chinese culture?

In the latest Wo Men Podcast, Jingjing and Yajun sit down with Katharina Kempf to learn about her amazing journey in China. She talks about how she became fluent in Chinese language in just three years, her passion for Chinese pop stars, and how she brings Chinese culture back to her home country.

Listen below on Mixcloud, or find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

Dragon Boat Races Get the Lego Set Treatment

You’ll soon be able to celebrate Dragon Boat Festival in brick form, after it was revealed that dragon boat races are the latest traditional Chinese activity to get the LEGO treatment.

We realize it’s starting to look a bit like we’re out here shilling for the Danish toy manufacturer, but we promise we’re not — but we also can’t ignore them when they put out special editions like these amazing Spring Festival LEGO sets:

And put on promotional activities like building Avengers Chinese opera masks:

In the company’s latest play for the Chinese market, they’re set to unveil two dragon boat teams, complete with a spectator grandstand and a stall selling zongzi (bamboo leaf-wrapped sticky rice dumplings, a Dragon Boat Festival tradition), according to leaked images from a toy store in Macau:

Not going to lie, this looks pretty amazing.

The sets aren’t on sale just yet, but we expect them to be on shelves soon — Dragon Boat Festival is on June 7 this year. If the Spring Festival sets are anything to go by, you can expect sales to be limited to Asia. That’s not stopped a bunch of retailers on ebay already offering them for shipping to the US for around 160USD each however.

Wondering what Dragon Boat Festival is all about? There’s more to it than just boat races — click through below for a tale of suicide and sticky rice:

Karoline Kan Joins the Wǒ Men Podcast Team

After nearly two years producing the Wǒ Men Podcast, hosts Yajun and Jingjing are excited to announce that author and journalist Karoline Kan has joined the team.

Karoline Kan was born and raised in China. She is the Beijing Editor at ChinaDialogue. Before joining ChinaDialogue, she worked as reporter and writer at That’s Beijing magazine, Radio France International, and The New York Times Beijing office. Her non-fiction book, Under Red Skies, was published in 2019. You can find her on Twitter @KarolineCQKan.

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With Karoline, we are expanding our coverage and our ability to present a China to the world from the perspective of Chinese women. Each of us was born and grew up in China, but we all bring our own perspectives and ideas. Karoline is a member of a small but growing community of young Chinese who write in English and she’s looking forward to sharing stories of China’s younger generation.

The Wo Men Podcast is looking forward to bringing more new stories from a changing China to you. If you enjoy what you hear, join the conversation! Send us your thoughts, suggestions, and ideas to us via Twitter @women_podcast or by email at [email protected].

Listen to a brief introduction to Karoline below on Mixcloud, or find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

China Reacts to the Fire of Notre Dame

Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three may have hit the big time with their 1984 hip hop classic “The Roof Is on Fire”… but it’s all fun and games until the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral actually lights ablaze in Paris. People everywhere scrambled for a response as clips of the burning roof bounced around the globe.

The cathedral, a feat of centuries-old Gothic architecture, burned for 12 hours on Monday as firefighters struggled to put out the national treasure and people around the world looked on aghast. Unfortunately, so much time elapsed that large portions of the roof burned away to ash and the cathedral’s spire collapsed — officials estimate the structure will now take 10-15 years to rebuild.

Still, Chinese netizens couldn’t help but point out that it wasn’t nearly as bad as the intentional burning of the Summer Palace in 1860 by the French and British.

“180 years ago, China didn’t expect its Summer Palace to be burned. And so far, France has yet to apologize or return those relics,” wrote one Weibo user. “It’s not just narrow-minded patriotism.”

“Notre Dame and the Summer Palace are symbols of civilization in human history,” argues another. “Art has no national boundaries. The collapse of any cultural relic is a pity for the whole world.”

The destruction of the Summer Palace at the hands of French soldiers was, admittedly, a tragedy. The master French author Victor Hugo, who of course penned The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in a letter to a Captain Butler who had asked for Hugo’s opinion on the “honorable and glorious” China expedition, summed up his feelings in no uncertain terms:

“Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks, suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building. The slow work of generations had been necessary to create it […] This wonder has disappeared.”

He added, almost prophetically, that “all the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient.”

Meanwhile, in response to the Notre Dame disaster, the National Palace Museum (the organization that oversees Beijing’s Forbidden City) held an emergency meeting on fire safety on Tuesday. Imperial Palace Manager Wang Xudong issued a statement, describing the preservation and safety of cultural relics as a top priority.

baidu notre dame

Tech giant Baidu has put an interactive tour of the cathedral online using panoramic imaging

Tackling preservation in a slightly different way however, is Chinese tech behemoth Baidu. Their Baike encyclopedia arm’s Museum Project was quick to put a “virtual reconstruction” of the pre-fire cathedral online using panoramic 3D-imaging technology and offering readers the opportunity to “visit” the monument in pre-fire condition from the comfort of their phones.

So for Baidu Baike users, at least we’ll always have Notre Dame… on our phones.