My local PBS TV station runs commercials when they show the BBC News. One they’ve been showing lately is from the Chinese Tourist Board, showing a young Western guy visiting the sights in Beijing in the company of a young, very pretty Chinese girl. They are both in their late teens, or early twenties, and they appear to be in love, or on the verge of falling in love. In the background are the usual touristy things, Tienamen Square, the Forbidden City, the big portrait of Chairman Mao hanging on the Hall of the Workers, you get the picture.

Pretty straightforward stuff, right? Well, here’s the rub. The commercial is shown in two versions, both identical, with the same European dude in the male lead. But the second version substitutes the young sweetie with an older Chinese lady, sort of a Mom or even a Granny figure. She seems like a sweet old lady, but the contrast with the young babe is striking. They seem pretty chummy too, like an auntie-nephew pair, except, of course, he’s Occidental and she’s (ahem) Oriental.

Why two slightly different versions of the same commercial? This is deliberate, and there must be a very good reason for it. (Probably a sinister one.) You will recall a few weeks ago I mentioned a similar GE commercial featuring a terminally cute little girl bragging about how her Mom invents all these wonderful things in her job at GE. This message also appears in an alternate version, identical, except in this edition its her DAD that does the inventing. You get a close up of her face so you can lip read her. There is no doubt about it, its deliberate.

Something creepy is going on here. This marketing must be targeted at different audiences, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what they’re up to.