Chinese lit fans protest Japanese sex slave game

Via Wired :

A Japanese-developed, adult-themed computer game has incensed some of China's online gamers who deem it a bawdy slur on the classic Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber.

Slaves of the Red Mansion, a fantasy game about girls sold into sexual slavery, has been denounced as "blasphemy" by some Chinese who have called for the game's designers to apologize and halt its production.

"Turning Dream of the Red Chamber into a lewd game besmirches a treasure of Chinese literature, and is a desecration of Chinese culture," thundered one irate surfer on web portal Sohu.com. "As a big fan, this is absolutely unforgivable for me."

In the video game, the female character Lin Daiyu (林黛玉）, who is Jia Baoyu's love interest, is portrayed as a girl whose mother dies of drink and disease and is subsenquently sold as a sex slave. We have no idea about how the game works (do you get points for good sex?) or if it's just some kind of x-rated game without any real purpose (as opposed to say, "Grand Theft Auto"). Fans of the novel are demanding a halt to the sales of the game and a public apology from the company that developed it. You can read a Chinese article about it here.

The new television series version of the novel Dream of a Red Chamber (红楼梦）is currently holding auditions (the aptly termed 海选 or hai xuan, meaning choosing a person from a sea of people), and so far there's been a fair turnout of people hoping for a shot t stardom, and heck, given the status of the novel and the cultural longevity of certain Chinese TV shows, virtual pop culture immortality.

Ironically, many of the people auditioning for the lead male character, Jia Baoyu (贾宝玉）are women. If memory serves, he's about fifteen (or slightly older?) in the beginning of the novel, and is one of those sensitive, girly-men types so perhaps it's not suprising that some females feel they could play the role.

Photo from tom.com