There is nothing cool about the WTC ruins

Yeah, it would be really cute if someone used the Nanjing Massacre to market floor wax.

How utterly tasteless.

You would never know that 9-11 was a disaster according to chinese students.

people, relax. It was probably some designer looking for ruins in Google Images, liked that one, took it, Benq's pre-publishing workflow did not include a foreigner for reviewing the work, there you have it.
I work in a media company, it happens all the time, if you don't check what your little sheep do, you end up having something like that.

as far as i know, the media here did not brainwash the people here for months with these images like they did with us in the west, so it's most likely that the responsible people did not know, or remember the pictures or was too young back then to care about it.

me

...p.s.: would it be less bad if it included cartoons of Muhammad as a pig? Selective freedom of speech anyone?

i think Hollywood movies about 9/11 are a more offensive example of gross capitalism

One more thing, I feel very sad that Shanghaiist put such a troll on their blog with absolutely zero background info, zero research and zero editorial work.

It's highly in mature and not something i would have expected from a blog i read daily, nor from somebody who is living here, commenting regularly on the happenings here and overall should have known better.

THE CHINESE CHEERED ON 9/11.

NEVER FORGET THAT.

You know the answer to that. Of course not, but cheering was not uncommon.

@kate

You are dead wrong.

I was in Shanghai at the time, and in fact, it was widely cheered. Even now, if you ask around, locals will confirm it, and I know sophisticated, western educated Chinese who have admitted this to me.

Here is an excerpt from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

It's not generally remembered in the United States that China was one of the few countries where students lit fireworks and celebrated through the night when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred. Many explanations were offered, but the most plausible is the deepening resentment this ancient but wounded nation bears toward the brash superpower of the United States.

China's simmering anti-Americanism is different from Europe's. The protesters who blockade U.S. embassies in European capitals rage against the new America that President Bush molded in response to the attacks, because they see it as nurturing the atavistic forces of mercantilism, militarism and prejudice, which they believe twice ruined Europe.

The Chinese who rejoiced as the twin towers crumbled didn't really find anything objectionable about U.S. power. They just resented the fact that they weren't the ones wielding it, and so they cheered the people who, for that one day, turned the tables on China's strategic competitor.

I have no doubt there were those in China who were deeply saddened or sickened by the attacks, as were people on every continent as they observed the slaughter of innocents. Nonetheless, the popular celebrations of 9/11 in China were notable.

when 911 happened, my first reaction was, someone MUST'VE BEEN KIDDING !!! some kind of special effects ...

but, it was true and it was horrible.

school was cancelled, and we just went home, a lot of people started crying on campus....

those people who call themselves, worriers, why did they pick civilian places to attack except the Pen.

cowards.

@them/@me:

You seem likely a generally smart fellow, so here are a few points of advice:

1) Pick up a good marketing textbook. Kotler and Keller’s Marketing Management is widely considered the standard and is available here in Shanghai.
2) Be more open minded. I’m willing to wager you have entered what old china hands call the “sophomore period”, which is typically someone who has been in China between 1-5 years, may have spent a semester or two at a Chinese uni and now thinks they are China experts. No one is a china expert and the sooner you come to accept that the happier and more successful you will be. Likewise be wary of evaluating the worth of someone or their opinion based on how long they have been in China (see your: “You must be new here”). I have seen plenty of examples of expats who have been in China for 10+ years and have been simply useless. Conversely I have seen people who had only been in-country for 2 days who got and were adding real value added results. My point is don’t view your “length of tour” as some sort of expert certification – it will get you into trouble and you will miss out on some of the most powerful insights which can only come from outsiders.
3) Stop thinking of it as “here” and “there”. It is an outdated thought modality that truly successful people, whether it be Business, non-profit, or “media”, have long ago abandoned. Examine your prejudices and let them fall away.
4) Drop the cheap debate tricks and exercise your grey matter. Responding to a post with, what next ….shooting Asians in the U.S. is a sad play on the old high school debate trick of if you think/say x you must be a NAZI. Instead open your mind and think rather than taking the easy knee jerk reaction way out of a situation. Nowhere did I suggest the things you said and comment was a cheap shot – I would encourage you to begin to practice raising your though process above such a simple one. For the record I would be just as offended if a U.S./Euro/ etc. company had run the ad campaign (see #3 above).

Good luck in developing your China career, it’s a though row to hoe but if you take some of these points in mind it will help.

Very cool ad. 9ii was an inside job, anyways. Bush & co should be the ones ashamed of this travesty of humanity.

American culture demonizes, insults and emasculates Asian males on a level that is well beyond acceptance, then develops creepy fetishes based on pedophilic tendancies for Asian females. And yes, this has nothing to do with the ad, but when you've been taking it up the *ss from Western culture for as long as I have, it's difficult to feel empathy for those offended by the use of the WTC photo. How many Americans do you think would cheer on the collapse of China's growing economic power? How many Americans would cheer on the notion of returning all of China's citizens to a life of poverty? Most of my neighbors certainly would.

James, you need to gather up some cash and to go Las Vegas right now.

The ad is in bad taste and is a bit of a marketing fuckup to say the least. But agree completely with the comments on how western countries often have no clue how the things they do also offend other nations. America and it's citizens behaviour towards France a few years back was both appalling and utterly utterly childish for a supposed 'advanced nation'.

I'll just ignore all the tangents and get straight to me response to the person who said the ad was a slip up because some media people "forgot" to check the work of the "little underlings."

Like you, I've worked in media, and there is nothing but checking and double checking of advertising visuals, ESPECIALLY those that are worldwide. Even nationwide, for that matter.

It's not that they didn't check, it's that they DID check and also approved it!! Don't make excuses here. That BenQ ad was just 1) bad judgement on some upper management media side, creative side, and also client side and 2) the people making the approvals obviously don't have enough marketing experience or worldwide experience to know it would very much so offend a large audience.

Anyway. 2cents.

Western culture insensitive to others? Asians pushed to the side in a color-blind west? No, say it ain't so: http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2006-12-07-tsunami_x.htm

Yes, Joon makes an interesting assertion, albeit WRONG. To claim that anything remotely on the scale of 9/11--much less "worse"--happens "everyday" is just childish and naive. Perhaps, by "everyday" you meant "frequently," but that too is just a simple-minded, emotional nonsense.

Even if you do a simple body-count, seldom do events occur that take the lives of 3,000 innocent people. If you want to look at the economic impact, seldom does a single event, on a single day destroy trillions of dollars. If you want to look at the social impact, 9/11 changed American society and societies beyond its borders in fundamental ways, mostly negative. If you want to look at it politically, never has a group of 19 individuals perpetrated an act so vicious, dramatic, violent, and calculated to upset the entire world-order with repercussions for a hundred years hereafter.

Please, save your Michael Moore 4th-grade interpretation of world events.