Tracy was watching Young Bao Qing Tian lately on Tianjin Satellite TV. You’d probably that a centrally-governed municipality that’s about 30 minutes away from the capital by HSR is yet another world-class piece of art, so that Tianjin TV, too, must not suck.

But you’d be fatally mistaken. These guys get rid of lazy afternoons by — airing ten-minute long telemarketing infomercials that force you to buy a cheap, CNY 199.— shanzhai (rip-off) mobile phone. Forget Apple’s iPhone’s tinge of silver on the sides; this is supposedly gold plated. And, oh, its voice recognition system is so good that it knows what you want to do before you finish, if you watched the whole 10 minute spamvertisement in full.

Most incredible is how they try to be “covert” (if at all) about it. Instead of denouncing Apple, they brainwashed the audience with the phone’s copycat features and that “199” thing. Of course, for 199 yuan, one gets a sub-optimal makeshift (make-believe, even) phone. That old adage — “you get what you paid for!” — more than applies here.

I’m just shocked that Tianjin TV has OKed the infomercial. I’m more annoyed that the local company behind the spamvertisement (called “Real” — get real!) decided to use primitive methods at cheating (or attempting to cheat) the audience: by repeating stuff a hundred times or more. They must be fanboys of the notion that lies, repeated a thousand times, become the truth. I’m telling ya, the US does the whole thing much better — even Peking does this better (at times). When you try to manipulate minds by repeating the same thing a thousand times, you’re showing people your lack of confidence and lack of expertise in “propaganda-nomics” or “propaganda-ology” (take your pick).

My end, I’m not going to buy that fake ripoff. I’ve got my iPhones and I’m happy with ’em already.

PS: Onto something else: Anyone else know why on earth my iPhone 4 keeps having the hotspot (even if connected via USB) drop off by itself?…