Roasted as a subversive symbol and chopped from a video streaming Web site in China, it seemed Peppa Pig, the loveable, but imperious British cartoon character, faced a bleak future in the Chinese Communist Party-led country.
However, her popularity has risen unabated, and now just months after state media slammed her as an emblem of the counterculture, she is playing a starring role as the country ushers in the Year of the Pig tomorrow.
A new film titled Peppa Pig Celebrates Chinese New Year is being released on the first day of the holiday.
Photo: AFP
It shows Peppa celebrating Lunar New Year with two new friends — “Jiaozi” (餃子, dumpling) and “Tang yuan” (湯圓, glutinous rice ball) — named after popular delicacies.
The animation, which follows the daily adventures of a bright pink piglet, her brother George and her parents, is hugely popular with Chinese children.
Last year, five-year-old twins Mi Ai (米艾) and Mi Ni (米妮) made a video asking to meet Queen Elizabeth II after seeing their porcine heroine visit her in an episode.
The clip garnered more than 9 million views and made such an impact that the pair were invited for tea by the British ambassador to Beijing and promised a tour of Buckingham Palace.
“It is really fun and the language is easy to understand,” their mother, Bella Zhang, said of the girls’ obsession with the show.
The series was popular with Chinese parents because it teaches “the importance of love and cooperation,” she said.
The cartoon’s focus on family values has resonated with Chinese parents who strictly monitor their children’s TV time, said Li Xin as she bought a Peppa toy for her four-year-old at a Beijing store.
Peppa Pig first broadcast in China in 2015, but in May last year about 30,000 clips of the cartoon were removed from a popular video streaming site, following criticism from state media.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-affiliated newspapers wrote harsh columns about Peppa Pig being hijacked by gangsters and subversives to create videos that reject mainstream values.
Memes featuring the beloved children’s character had also started to take on dark undertones at the time, occasionally veering into violent or pornographic territory.
“No matter how gangster Peppa Pig becomes, it cannot be allowed to destroy children’s youth [or] break rules,” the People’s Daily said in an editorial in April last year.
The shows have been watched about 60 billion times on China’s largest video streaming sites since it first launched in China, said Jamie MacEwan from British TV analysts Enders.
“This figure is up from 24.5 billion by May 2017, showing how China’s appetite for Peppa has only increased,” MacEwan said.
Now Entertainment One — the Canadian media company that currently produces the series — is banking on her popularity translating to the big screen.
A trailer for the movie, directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Dapeng (張大鵬), has gone viral with the hashtag “Who is Peppa” being viewed more than 1.6 billion times on Weibo, a spokeswoman for Alibaba Pictures Group said.
The promotional clip shows a rural villager’s quest to find out what his city-dwelling grandson wants when he asks for “Pei Qi” (佩奇) — Mandarin for Peppa Pig — in a bid to create the perfect Lunar New Year gift in time for the boy’s annual visit.
The trailer struck a chord with Chinese audiences because it “showcases the same values highlighted in the movie — family, reunion, harmony and love,” Zhang wrote on Weibo.
The film has already earned 12 million yuan (US$1.8 million) in presale tickets.
In a country where the pig is a symbol of wealth, Peppa merchandise is in high demand. There are even themed attractions — Peppa Pig World of Play opened in Shanghai last year with another set to open in Beijing this year.
However, the success of the Peppa brand has also brought headaches for the cartoon’s creators. Copycat merchandise — from cookies to pencil cases — can be easily found in corner stores in Chinese cities.
A spokesman for Entertainment One said that in the last year more than half a million fake Peppa Pig items were seized and tens of thousands of online sale posts taken down.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
The Philippines yesterday slammed an “irresponsible” Chinese state media report claiming a disputed reef in the South China Sea was under Beijing’s control, saying the “status quo” was unchanged. Tiexian Reef (鐵線礁), also known as Sandy Cay Reef, lies near Thitu Island, or Pagasa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday said that the China Coast Guard had “implemented maritime control” over Tiexian Reef in the middle of this month. The Philippines and China have been engaged in months of confrontations over the South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its
RSS