"It is more than just a Korean soap opera. It hurts our culture dignity."

Anguished one member of China’s political advisory body (the CPPCC).

Well aware of the craze [the Korean soap opera "My Love from the Star"] has created in China... the CPPCC... spent a whole morning bemoaning why China can’t make a show as good and as big of a hit.

At a meeting of delegates from the culture and entertainment industry, some blamed it partly on China’s censorship, euphemistically referred to as the “examination and approval system” at the meeting by Feng Xiaogang, a famous director and a CPPCC member. “My heart trembles,” he said, when waiting for a movie to go through this rigorous censoring procedure.

“My wings and imagination are all broken,” said one comedian delegate. But she didn’t go into further detail, perhaps out of caution of offending those very censors.

What would it take for the Chinese government to lift censorship? Seeing its own people really loving a Korean soap opera?

“Korean drama is ahead of us,” Wang Qishan said in surprising comments at one of the more important legislative meetings, according to Beijing News. Wang is head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, in charge of an ongoing wide-scale anti-corruption campaign.

And he adds this hilarious grab at cultural dignity: "The core and soul of the Korean opera is a distillation of traditional Chinese culture... It just propagates traditional Chinese culture in the form of a TV drama."

That's funnier when you realize that the story line is about "an alien who accidentally arrives on Earth 400 years ago, meets an arrogant female pop star and falls in love."

And I love the detail that the lead female character referred to "beer and fried chicken" that caused Chinese restaurants to offer beer-and-fried-chicken meals.

ADDED: What kind of arrogant female pop stars did they have 400 years ago?

AND: Attempting to answer that last question, I arrived at this find example of Americans distilling traditional Chinese culture (and word has it that the restaurants in China will soon be serving bangers and custard):