More chinese TV

I was flipping around channels on the TV last night and found a channel showing the movie The Patriot. I don't know if they were showing it because it was the 4th of July or not, but I can make believe they did and think it was nice that they did that. But of course, today they had an old movie on about a chinese army unit twarting the americans in Korea. It was kind of goofy, especially the attempts at makeup to make some of the actors look like americans, and the gear and uniforms were definitely not GI.

The TV channels show a lot of war movies here. Most of them are about ancient battles in China or the victories of the communist armies. I'm not too sure many of the people here care much for the latter since most chinese prefer tragic stories (like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon demonstrates), and these goverment-made war movies always seem to have a happy ending (happy for communist forces and the grateful peasants, that is). The only war movies that I've heard people saying they like here have been Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers (which is in such demand here it's been playing for over a month now on several channels), and a mini-series about a female russian unit during WWII which used russian actors and actresses, but was written, directed, and produced by chinese.

Some of the other chinese shows that seem popular here are chinese soap operas and chinese amuetur-hour type shows. They also have a few game shows, and one is almost exactly like Who Wants to be a Millionaire (including the music). There are a few american TV series shown here, such as Fear Factor, Survivor, and VIP. There are also a few french and russian series also, but I've never watched them.