Today, December 2, 12/2, is just a regular day in the world—except for traffic police in China. Today, the numbers correlate with the phone number for Chinese traffic police, 122, and because of that the fine traffic cops of Huizhou city in Guangdong province have released a nifty music video.
Set to the infectious Korean Pop tunes of Crayon Pop, people dressed like traffic cops appear in front of Huizhou Traffic bureau dancing and posing. There's even a rap segment in Chinese that talks about traffic safety. All of this is set to Crayon Pop's Bar Bar Bar.
Unfortunately, I can't say that this is the first time something like this has been done. About a month ago, on a day that coincided with the numeric code for the fire department, the Qinghuangdao Fire Department in Hebei province did the exact same thing minus the rap portion.
Both of these videos were professionally produced and it appears sanctioned by the local governments. Both videos were released for the purpose of highlighting or celebrating the date that corresponds with their contact numbers.
In China, instead of dialing 9-1-1 for emergencies or police, people have a series of numbers to call. For regular police and emergencies the number is 1-1-0. For traffic accidents and hit and runs the number is 1-2-2. For fire-related emergencies, the number is 1-1-9. The firefighters video was posted on November 9th.
Not only are emergency contact numbers personified and made into special dates, seemingly normal dates with interesting numbers are also made into a big deal—so today, December 2 is "national traffic safety day" in China. For instance, last month on November 11, the China unofficially celebrated "singles day," spurring the biggest online shopping day in China.
Later this month on December 12, Chinese mega e-commerce site Taobao is going to make 12-12 into something. Of course, Taobao's shopping holiday isn't going to get any government support.
While it might seem interesting that local Chinese governments will take tax payer money to produce hilarious online videos, it's not too far out there. This is China that we're talking about, weirder things have happened (weird can be good or bad! In this case, internet hilarity).
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Eric is a Beijing based writer and all around FAT man. You can contact him @FatAsianTechie@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @FatAsianTechie.