Animal activists in China say a now-famous magic trick that showed goldfish swimming in sync for the Lunar New Year is abusive and are asking the state broadcaster not to show it again.
Hundreds of millions of people watched the magic trick during a China Central TV (CCTV) gala on the Jan. 30 eve of the Lunar New Year festival. The gala is China’s most watched broadcast of the year.
Goldfish are a symbol of wealth in China, but the image of six of them swimming in perfect sync under magician Fu Yandong’s (傅琰東) direction alarmed some Chinese, who worried that magnets were implanted in the fish or that they were controlled by electric current.
Fifty-three animal rights groups and other groups have sent a letter to CCTV asking it not to let Fu perform the trick again during today’s broadcast of the Lantern Festival, which ends the Lunar New Year events.
“We should stand for nonviolence, harmony and tolerance, but to my great surprise CCTV, the state broadcaster, tells the public we can use animals for entertainment. I think this is just wrong,” said Qing Shaona, director of the Capital Animal Welfare Association.
Fu won’t explain how his trick works, but has defended his actions, saying on his -Twitter-like microblog that the goldfish are “living happily.”
Like many Chinese, the animal rights groups want to know how the trick is done and have asked for a group of independent experts to examine the fish.
The letter warns against the “potential torture or injury to animals resulting from audience members trying to imitate performances.”
China has been working on a draft animal protection law, but it’s unclear when it will be passed.
It was not clear whether the magic trick was to be performed again today, as the animal advocates feared.
The Beijing Times on Tuesday quoted Chen Linchun, the director of the CCTV Lantern Festival show, as saying plans for broadcasting the show again were only a rumor.
However, Fu’s agent, Liang Ming, said yesterday that a repeat of the trick has been planned, though a final decision has not been made on whether it will be included in the Lantern Festival broadcast.
“It’s not convenient for me to say anything now. Just wait and see,” he said in a telephone interview.
Liang has said Fu will continue to perform the goldfish trick. He denied that the fish are abused, but said he agrees with the animal rights groups’ concerns that the public might harm fish while trying to copy the trick.
The agent refused to explain how it’s done, though.
“It’s absolutely not possible to make it known to the public how it works, because this isn’t just one person’s trick, it’s a whole profession’s,” Liang said.
CCTV referred any questions yesterday to its office that handles the Spring Festival and Lantern Festival broadcasts, where the telephone remained busy.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion