Roi Tov: Chinese Cinderella Reaches Israel!

Pirating movies is big business. In much of Asia and South America, improvised shops and stalls sell movies in cheap plastic sachets. In Bolivia, they face fierce competition from Llama fetuses, used clothes, miniature idol offerings, coca leaves, and dehydrated tubers. This is a reasonable explanation for Israel's Ministry of Tourism assessment, that a blockbuster Chinese movie shot in Israel, will boost Chinese tourism to the Holy Land. In 2012, only 20,000 Chinese reached Israel. The Ministry claims that in 2012, eight million Chinese chose their tourist destination, according to what they had seen in movies. Israel's strong links with Hollywood have created a significant movies' production infrastructure, that eased the Ministry's decisions. The Tourism Ministry offices in China, worked together with a Tel Aviv's production company, and succeeded to convince director Lu Chuan and superstar Zhang Jingchu to partially shot Old Cinderella in Tel Aviv Jaffa, Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. The cast will arrive on April 16, 2013, for a week of filming. The Israeli effort is considerable. The Ministry will invest over $80,000 in the promotion of the movie, not including a CNN interview with the director, which had already broadcast, campaigns on Weibo, China's most popular social website, and the hosting of journalists from leading Chinese media in Israel. A competition in China, whose first prize is a vacation in Israel, has been announced. The step is rather unusual, especially when considering that it is only part of an Israeli cultural offensive on China. Expectedly, this has military reasons. On February 11, 2013, Beijing Television broadcast its annual Chinese New Year's gala. It is the most popular show on that day, with more than 100 million viewers on television and internet. This year, it featured Israeli singer Miri Mesika. In 2008, she was chosen Female Singer of the Year by Music Channel 24, Reshet Gimel, and Galgalatz, and has sold more than 100,000 albums. In the New Year's gala, she sang a duet in Chinese, with a famous Chinese singer. The show included remarks by Israel's Ambassador to China Matan Vilnai, and a short clip about Israel. Miri's song and the Israeli connection created a moving effect, which we hope will be relayed to the millions watching the broadcast on February 11, said Ran Peleg of the Israeli Embassy in China, shortly before the event. This second cataclysmic event in the recent relations Beijing as Israel's new ambassador. It was lucky for him, because a few months later, Netanyahu succeeded in forcing Barak not to run in the 2013 elections.