** Adoption countdown: Pam, Terry and Matthew are on their way home!**
GUANGZHOU, China (Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008, 9 a.m.) – Despite the best efforts of motion picture studios and law enforcement agencies, pirated movies remain widely available on DVD in parts of China.
In stores and kiosks in Beijing, Zhengzhou and Guangzhou – cities my wife and I have visited during our trip to adopt our son – you can easily buy the latest box office hits on DVD.
In Beijing, for example, you can find hordes of bootleg movies for less than $10 each. Among the titles available were “Max Payne,” “Mama Mia!” and the new James Bond thriller “Quantum of Silence” – films not yet available legally for home video.
In Zhengzhou, I saw racks of pirated movies at Lotus SuperCenter, a Thailand-based department store chain similar to Wal-Mart SuperCenters in China and the United States.
And across from the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, where a number of local merchants cater to parents waiting for their children’s U.S. visa, one merchant had boxes of pirated box office hits.
Pirated discs
“Top quality,” the gentleman told me as he proudly displayed boxes and boxes of recent films – including “Quantum of Solace” packaged in a clear plastic sleeve that indicated it was Blu-ray high definition disc.
“Is that Blu-ray?” I asked.
“High quality DVD,” he replied in simple, clipped English, clearly not understanding my question.
I tried again: “Is that Blu-ray? HD? A high definition disc? Or is it DVD?”
“High quality DVD,” he said, adding it cost just 15 Yuan – the equivalent of about $2 – and obviously unaware what a Blu-ray disc is.
Pirated movies aren’t the only bootleg discs in China. In Beijing, at the seven-story monstrosity known as the Silk Market, several vendors sold pirated Wii games for the equivalent of about $1.40 each.
But would the games actually work on Wii consoles in the United States, I asked the merchant at the Silk Market when we visited center about two weeks ago.
“Well, you can buy this Wii today, I’ll turn it on and we can see if the games work,” he said in perfect English and with a hearty laugh.
I declined: No new Wii system for me (I have one, thank you) and no bootleg games. The same went for the pirated videos I saw in Beijing, Zhengzhou and Guangzhou; besides being illegal, the quality likely is garbage.
Television series
Another vendor at the Silk Market in Beijing also sold elaborate, oversized box sets of complete television series including “Lost, “ “24” and “Band of Brothers.” One in Guangzhou sold “Lost, “ “24”and “The Sopranos.”
One set caught my eye in Beijing: “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a profane and insanely funny comedy that Larry David developed for Home Box Office. David, you may recall, was a creative force behind “Seinfeld.”
For 340 Yuan, or about $50, I could buy the first five seasons.
“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the box said in large letters mimicking the font of the show’s on-screen opening credits. “The Complete Firstesth-Fivesth Seasons. Starring Larry Dvid,” the box read in a dead giveaway it was pirated.
The back of the box had a combination of English and Mandarin text with the official HBO logo at the bottom. But somehow, I just didn’t think HBO authorized the set.
Copyright 2008 by Terry R. Cassreino. All rights reserved.
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