A short video clip featuring Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) promoting the Taipei Universiade posted by Internet celebrity Tsai A-ga (蔡阿嘎) garnered 820,000 views in less than one day.
Tsai A-ga, whose YouTube channel has more than 1.47 million subscribers, several years ago began uploading short self-produced videos about current events and for a while produced a series of clips teaching people to speak Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese).
His latest video, released yesterday morning, features Ko sitting on the floor with him and another person wearing a mask, playing a word-guessing game and a translation game in Hoklo.
Ko’s shirt was covered in self-deprecating stickers reading “stupid,” “dumb” and “weak” in Mandarin after the three-minute word-guessing game, because while giving clues, he had accidentally used Mandarin or English, given the answer or made gestures, which were against the rules of the game.
Ko stuck his tongue out when he saw a difficult topic, burst out laughing when he was almost tricked into saying “blue magpie” in Hoklo — the pronunciation of which is similar to that for the word for male genitals — and shook his head, saying that the game was exhausting.
Toward the end of the video, Ko delivered a short slogan saying that the Universide is awesome, and reminded the public that the events are to be held from Aug. 19 to Aug. 30.
After the video was played at a Xinyi District (信義) administrative meeting yesterday morning, Ko said “the Universiade is a sports event for young people, so the promotion should start with communities that young people care about and support.”
“It was a little too hilarious, but it was made to delight people, so it is no problem as long as people like it,” Ko said, responding to a question about whether the he thought the video was a success.
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