介绍:
Michael Butterworth: Tomorrow is Halloween, which for many means haunted houses and spooky decorations. But is there such a thing as going too far? One house in the US has received much attention over its Halloween decorations, which are highly realistic and feature gruesome fake dead bodies. In other news, there are haunted houses so frightening that you have to sign a waiver before you can even experience the horrors or even abuse, that you might be subjected to in, indoors. So what do we think guys: is this all just a bit of hijinks and fun and games, or have things gone too far, and if they ha ve, just where do you draw the line here?
Brian Kopczynski: Well, I mean obviously the point of all this is to have fun, right? But when you get to the point where you can't distinguish between if something is a, a real dead body or a fake one, I say you’ve, you've crossed the line there, which, and that's, that's what we've seen.
MB: Wu You what do you think? I mean, like, Halloween does seem to be gaining traction, gaining popularity in China. [Wu You: Yes.] I mean, how, I mean how, how recently has this, has this been a case. I mean ten, fifteen years ago did people celebrate Halloween, or is this quite a new thing in big cities here?
WY: I think it is quite a new thing in the first-tier cities, especially during the recent years, we can see more and more western culture and western festivals has been better adopted in China especially among the young people. Both of the Halloween and also the Valentine's Day and for Christmas. We can the young people are always taking this opportunity to go on the streets to celebrate. Maybe it's just been a chance for them to have fun, and for some shopping malls, especially, and some theme parks, they are taking this chance to do the better promotion.
MB: Yeah, it’s obviously a good way to tie in with several promotional activities. I was actually in a restaurant last night, and, at the table next to me, about four or five of the waiting staff were, you know, busy carving pumpkins, obviously to put outside for this weekend. So, it obviously, you know, is somewhat pervasive throughout, well, Beijing and I would imagine throughout other, other big cities in China. But, you know, do people dress up Wu You? …Do you, have you ever celebrated Halloween in that manner, you know dressing up?
WY: Last year, last year I dressed up and especially around Sanlitun area we can see we go to the bookstore and there has been a lot of interesting lectures, people would read books and talk about the history of Halloween. And also some other people would directly walk on the streets and dressed up a costume of white clothes and then put on some fake blood on it, and then they suddenly come to the passers-by to scare them, and said I have a good excuse because today is Halloween.
MB: It seems like it's certainly gaining traction here but I'm not sure if China ready for one of those, you know, haunted houses where you have to sign a waiver before you enter. I can't imagine that just yet.
BK: Right, no, I think there's been similar sorts of things like, I think there are haunted houses here in China now, like you have those escape the room sorts of challenges, which isn't quite a haunted, that’s usually not a, that's usually not necessarily a Halloween sort of horror thing, but I think there’s a bit of a crossover and there are some things now. Because, this horror stuff is clearly not just a western thing. There's a pretty strong and, well, strong tradition of, of horror in East Asia as well, you know China, Japan, and Korea. There's all these kind of very interesting sort of ghost or supernatural stories, in Chinese culture that are shared throughout the region, that provide the basis for that.
MB: And Wu You, is there – you've obviously grown up here in China, when you were growing up did people tell ghost stories and things like that?
WY: Exactly, I just wanted to mention that, because in China we have the similar history or culture about that because we the ghost stories collection, we call it Liaozhaizhiyi （聊斋志异）, in history, it is a famous collection of sort ghost stories, more about the foxes, immortal ghost devil, to summarize social relationship reflects the seventeenth century Chinese society.
MB: So whether you're simply throwing a bedsheet over your head, or whether you're signing a waiver going to a haunted house, or whether you're just snuggling up with a scary movie, we'd like to wish everybody a very happy Halloween.
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