Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf

I have latey been fascinated by a popular cartoon in China. Its title is translated in English as "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf." The animated adventures are aimed at children, who watch as a beret-wearing grey wolf schemes to capture a colony of young goats at the orders of his overbearing, crown-capped wife. What always follows is a set of hiliarious circumstances in which the goats foil the wolf's plans, taking many of the ideas directly from the playbook which the Road Runner used against Wile E. Coyote in the West. The poor wolf always ends up with cuts, bruises, and a damaged ego. To make matter worse, his angry wife usually clobbers him on the head with a frying pan as punishment for his failure.

Anyone from the West who watches this cartoon will immediately see similarities with the Smurfs. The goat leader is a teenage boy called "Pleasant." There is another goat who is a fitness freak, a pretty girl goat sometimes named "Betty" in English, and a gluttonous goat dubbed "Fatty." An older, wise goat resembling Albert Einstein plays the Papa Smurf role. The formulaic plot puts the goats briefly in harm's way thanks to the wolf's nefarious plans, but a glitch always allows the goats to go free and leaves the wolf with a wife-induced knock on his noggin. As you might realize by now, I've watched this cartoon series much too often, many times accompanied by a few pints of chilled beer.

"Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" is at the center of a Disney-esqe merchandising bonanza. Kids all across China can buy a vast assortment of things emblazoned with the characters' image: balloons, lunchboxes, stuffed animals, and all kinds of toys. Some Westerners who bemoan the advancement of modern, materialistic China are troubled by this fact. I am more troubled by the idea that many women believe the wolf character represents "the perfect husband, because he does what his wife asks and never complains." Not even while suffering the most heinous serial acts of domestic violence ever seen on Chinese television.

But I'm pretty sure that after consuming enough Tsingdao brew, even I would accept being whacked in the head with a frying pan if my wolf-wife was cute enough.