Project Green Dam: Harmony V Privacy

When ACB was planing out ideas for Project Green Dam, they came up with a number of alternative designs. Different layouts, different scenes, and so on.

One of the ideas that ACB came up with was a poster showing Green Dam Girl attempting to "Harmonize" an unsuspecting bystander using the River Grab of Censorship (Regular readers will remember that the word for 'Harmony' is often used when referring to censorship, and is thus itself sometimes censored, leading people to use the word 'River Crab' as a stand in due to it having a very similar pronunciation when said in Mandarin Chinese).

ACB toyed with a number of different possibilities. Most of which involved Green Dam Girl either sneaking up on somebody with their River Crab, or Green Dam Girl wrestling with somebody while trying to strike them with the crab. ACB decided the idea of somebody being struck with a crab was too direct and too blunt, and that it did not reflect the subtleness of some forms of Mainland censorship, and so chose the idea of sneaking up on somebody won out. but how to set the scene.

ACB wanted needed an idea that was mildly shocking but not too high brow, or too Mainland, because the posters need to be understandable to foreigners and overseas Chinese, yet it still needed to have some general Chinese themes in order to maintain focus. ACB also wanted to get away from overtly Japanese look of most of the other Green Dam images on the web. Finally, ACB also wanted to play on the theme of vulnerability, and of somebody being caught unawares by state censorship.

Now, when you combine all of these factors, what do you get?

1) Shock value
2) Not too high brow
3) Vulnerability
4) Being taken by surprise
5) Must be easily understood by foreigners, overseas Chinese, and Mainlanders alike

Simple. toilet Humor. Literally.

Thus was born ACB's alternative Green Dam poster.


The poster depicts Green Dam girl sneaking up on some poor unfortunate who is going about their lawful business (In more ways than one, it would seem, ready to plant the River Grab of Censorship on them while they are most vulnerable. The general idea of the poster is that - according to Beijing - harmony is the key to prosperity, and that personal privacy and liberty must be sacrificed in order to obtain both harmony and prosperity.

Harmony V privacy/liberty is a common theme in Chinese state censorship. Beijing has long argued that true freedom is bad for China because it brings conflict and anarchy. Unsurprisingly, the US is often held up as an example of this. Particularly the US First Amendment. While this might seem strange to Americans, who consider the First Amendment to be something to be proud of, Beijing likes remind Chinese that good old number 1 legalizes hate speech and pornography in the US, and it allows people to do things like draw the now infamous Obama the Socialist poster, or to broadcast attack adverts against political rivals or religious groups.

To the Chinese way of thinking, this is a bad thing. Despite being heavily censored and heavily restricted, most Mainlanders honestly do not want that level of freedom available in the US. Naturally, Beijing takes advantage of this desire for a quiet life and tries to make Mainlanders thing that they want even less freedom than they might otherwise do.

For those of you who do not read Chinese (Shame on you) the words around the edge of the poster read:

TOP: Green Dam: Youth Escort
LEFT: Harmony
RIGHT: Prosperity
BOTTOM: Privacy (Crossed out)
DOOR SIGN: Woman (as in a woman's rest room stall)

The text in black reader "Without Green Dam there can be no harmony. Without Harmony there can be no prosperity". It's pidgin Chinese, of a sort, making it easier to understand for non native speakers (Hence 没有, which is instantly understandably by most novice Chinese readers). It's also somewhat reminiscent of the Maoist era slogans that you used to get on posters in some parts of the Mainland.

Reader's may also notice that Green Dam Girl is sporting a different haircut. ACB thought that the pigtails made GReen Dam Girl look too petulant, and not sinister enough, they were also straying from the existing canon for their appearance.

On a brief cultural note, the reason why there is a square platform visible under the door, and why you can't see any feet, is because this is an Asian squat toilet. The user's feet are on the platform and are thus out of sight. Not all squat toilets are raised on plinths (many are sunken into the floor, but ACB decided to draw it this way, anyway. Eagle eyed readers will recognize the crab in Green Dam Girl's hand, and on their cap, as the 3D crab that ACB designed earlier. The rest room stall was also designed in true 3D before bieng rendered into 2D and imported into Photoshop.

ACB plans to replace the white background in the center tile with something else, but ACB isn't quite sure whether they want a pattern or a gradient in there. ACB is also thinking of adding some aging effects to the picture, particularly the writing, which looks too crisp and too clear for the rest of the poster.

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