Bringing out the best China

Prince Andrew visited the Formula One motor racing track in Shanghai

11 April 2012

As chairman of ARSEFOP (Acronyms Regularly Supply Easy Formulae for Opening Paragraphs), I've noticed the sneaky way that international businesses frequently disguise their true origins by hiding behind bland abbreviations.

When British Telecom decided to enter the global communications market, for example, it quietly changed its name to the less identifiable BT, and when Kentucky Fried Chicken ventured out of the Deep South, it discovered that healthobsessed Northerners were put off by the reference to "Fried", and quickly became KFC.

Airline abbreviations are equally impenetrable ( although it's rumoured that EL AL is short for Exploded Luggage, Airliner Lost, and DELTA for Don't Ever Leave The Airport).

And who but a complete and utter banker would guess that HSBC has its roots not in the City of London, but in East Asia? Apparently, it was originally formed by a merger between banks in Hong Kong and Shanghai, although to judge from the acronym, shouldn't it therefore be referred to as the Hong Song and Banghai Cank?

At ARSEFOP, we're also asked to adjudicate on the multiple meanings of acronyms like CCTV. To most people, this is clearly "closed-circuit television," but Sinologists know that it's also the abbreviation for Chinese Central Television, based in Beijing and serving the world's largest national viewership.

CCTV-9 (Sky 534) is their English language World Service channel, and features local newsreaders such as Ms Tan Xueming, who speaks English with a slight Oriental twang, but is nevertheless considerably easier to understand than the likes of Sir Trevor Macdonald, with his penchant for alWAYS emPHAsising THE wrong sylLABles.

Of course, Sir Trevor is a national broadcaster, whereas the presenter of Shanghai Today is merely a regional broadcaster, but given that the Jiangsu region has a population considerably larger than the whole of the UK, I don't expect she's eaten away with envy.

As the most affluent and outwardlooking part of mainland China, Shanghai has many of the same preoccupations as any modern Western city, and several of yesterday's reports had a reassuringly familiar ring.

The property market is in danger of overheating, it seems, and so are the citizens, with temperatures of 33 degrees causing hundreds of people to seek hospital treatment for respiratory problems and other heat-related illnesses.

Although I've seen no mention of this in the British press, Prince Andrew has apparently been in Shanghai this week, visiting the new Formula One motor racing track. Why was he there? Perhaps some Chinese official who pronounces English phonetically had asked the Windsors if anyone "would like to inspect my nation's Grand Prix", but in that case surely Prince Edward would have volunteered?

With more than three million tourists visiting the city last year, Shanghai's image is vitally important to the Chinese economy, so it was hardly surprising that the news dwelt mostly on its many virtues, rather than on its plentiful vices.

True, the programme did briefly report on a scandal involving the sale of inferior and potentially lethal baby milk powder ("we will impose severe punishment on the manufacturers"), and on street traders who palm off counterfeit goods on to unsuspecting Westerners ("the authorities are cracking down"), but there was no mention of the recent sharp rise in drug trafficking, a trade that virtually disappeared under Mao, but is now firmly re-established in the city, along with rampant freemarket capitalism.

There were puffs, too, for the Spring of Shanghai Music Festival, which this year is featuring performances of Carl Orff 's Carmina Burana, a title whose pronunciation seems to vary markedly from one country to the next.

Perhaps you know the song: "You say Ca-minna and I say Carmeena, You say Bu-ranna and I say Bur-arna, Ca-minna, Car-meena, Bu-ranna, Bur-arna, Let's call the whole thing Orff."

The proliferation of TV channels has many drawbacks (notably spreading the limited pool of available money and talent far too thinly), but there are advantages, too.

We all know that there's no such thing as impartial news, but it's now possible to view world events through the distorting prisms of a score of national broadcasters (from the inscrutable solemnity of Chinese State TV to the sinister ranting of Fox), so at least we can now inform ourselves from a full spectrum of biased accounts.

Furthermore, I'm seriously wondering about trying to arrange a job swap with the TV critic of the Shanghai Evening Standard, because I hear that there's some exciting mediocrity on Chinese morning television, whereas British daytime dross seems to be withering on the vine.

I mean, with Kilroy gone, and This Morning waiting to be put out of our misery, there had better be some precocious and obnoxious newcomers in the daytime schedules soon, otherwise I'm going to start feeling like Tom without Jerry.

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