Brilliant. The best commercial I've seen in a long time...

Those of you who understand Chinese will absolutely appreciate the brilliance of this commericial.

Background:
Tongbohu is a famous dead poet who's also known as quite a playboy. There's a famous old Chinese poem, loosely translated as "It's raining now, should I keep my guest or not?", which I actually don't remember if it was written by him or someone else. But, it plays on the importance of punctuation in the Chinese language, and how merely moving a period or comma from one character to another can completely change the meaning of entire sentences or even paragraphs. It's a well-known story studied by kids all over in elementary schools, and even I still remember it till this day. It also illustrates an unique nuance of the Chinese language very well.

Enter video:


Brilliant. Simply absolutely brilliant

I love the none-too-subtle exophobic jab and underlying nationalistic implications here. Plays extremely well to the Chinese youth market and popular sentiments. I am quite impressed.

Personally, I have compared both searches, and I do think Baidu does a better job of parsing Chinese than Google does. Google has got a real competitor on its hands, and things are gonna get interesting...

English translation as follows -

Foreigner: I know! Heh heh.
Tangbohu (a famous Chinese clever guy): Hahahaha~~ You may not know!
Tangbohu: I know you don’t know. I know you don’t know I know. YOU DON’T KNOW.
Foreigner: I know!
All: Ei? [audience is surprised at Foreigner's seeming agreement with Tangbohu that the foreigner does NOT know (as in does not "get it"]
Foreigner: Ei!I know!
Tangbohu: Not necessarily. I know you don’t know me, I know you don’t know me, haha~ I know you don’t know!
Foreigner: I know!
Tangbohu: I know that you don’t know I know. You don’t know that I know you don’t know!