joel at danwei.org posted a collection of front pages from newspapers around china that marked the death of the king of pop today – pretty amazing to see everything laid out like that. the news of his death has been a pretty hot topic around the office, yesterday when i walked out of the elevator, the first words out of the receptionists mouth wasn’t hello, but “michael jackson died! on cab rides yesterday, i noticed that radio stations were playing tribute to him nonstop.
i’ve been talking to my chinese colleagues about his death, and they all told me that michael jackson (chinese name: 迈克尔-杰克逊, pronounced màikè’ěr-jiékèxùn) was one of the first and only foreign pop stars they were able to listen to as kids, and that when thriller finally came out in china, everyone rushed to try and get a copy, even though they cost over 100rmb at the time, which is alot of money for an album in china, even by todays standards. god, just imagine a billion tiny chinese kids trying to do the moonwalk!
(from the danwei post) most of the headlines are variations on either “Michael Jackson dies” or “Goodbye Michael.” a few newspapers went with something different, but the usual punning headlines that accompany major international news stories were fairly uncommon:
* Dongguan Times (东莞时报): “The Whole World Mourns”
* Chengdu Evening News (成都晚报): “Farewell to a Legend”
* New Information (新消息报): “The King Will Not Return”
* Modern Express (现代快报): “Heaven Gets the Moonwalk”
* City Evening News (城市晚报): “Remember”
* Chinese Business View (华商报): “The Black and White Life of a Lonely King”
in addition, major online news portals like Sina, Sohu and even Xinhuanet collected news, music, photos, and memories from chinese and foreign media.