Saluting Chinese Superhero Jianbing Man on National Jianbing Day
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Throwback Thursday takes a look back into Beijing's past, using our 12-year-strong blog archives as the source for a glance at the weird and wonderful stories of Beijing's days gone by.
Today is National Jianbing Day, a day on which we celebrate the iconic, eggy breakfast pancake and remember all the times it saved us from a monstrous hangover.
This year's Jianbing Day happens to fall on a Thursday, so it's only right that we delve back into our blog archives to find the ultimate jianbing moment in modern history. From 2015, we bring you: Jianbing Man.Jianbing Man teaches a valuable lesson
Jianbing Man is China's attempt at a superhero, and also the subject of a film released that year. Although the Beijinger quipped that his origin story involved his unlikely birth at 4am on Dirty Bar Street (may its memory rest in peace), that is sadly not the origin portrayed in the film.
In fact, Jianbing Man the film is not about Jianbing Man at all, but instead about a filmmaker trying to make a film about a superhero called Jianbing Man. Meta.
The draw of the jianbing was so big that it netted JCVD
Over a dozen Chinese celebrities play themselves in the film, as does '90s martial arts movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme. Director and screenwriter Da Peng, also playing himself, takes on the role of the protagonist, the creator of a web series called Diors Man – a thinly veiled analog to the real-life Da Peng sitcom, Diaosi Man (Loser Man). After a tumultuous first act in which Da simultaneously loses his love interest and finds himself in deep financial trouble, the only way to solve his problems is to make a successful movie, and thus Jianbing Man is born out of Da's childhood desire to become a superhero.
To this day, Jianbing Man is the closest that the Chinese film industry has ever come to making a superhero movie. But is it still worth a watch today? It does have a so-stupid-it's-funny charm, and having grossed USD 187 million at the box office, it certainly is not the worst Chinese movie ever made. Regardless, its existence reminds us of the place that the good old jianbing holds deep in the heart of Chinese culture. (After all, there is no Shouzhuabing Man... yet.)READ: Throwback Thursday: When Boris Johnson Flubbed Weibo
Images: IMDB, flicks.com.au
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