China bans sexual innuendo, “gold digging” in dating reality series

Following a campaign to “eradicate all social evils” and “advocate a healthy, civilized and high-minded lifestyle” that involved shutting down night clubs and massage parlors, censors in China are now going after reality TV shows. They have “ordered all matchmaking shows to cut the sexual innuendo, uphold traditional values and ban any talk of women ‘gold digging,’” The Washington Post reports.

What they’re upset about is so tame that the censors’ heads would probably explode if they watched a preview for The Bachelor: On the Chinese show If You Are the One, “a 24-year-old fashion model told a poor and unemployed bachelor who offered her a bicycle ride that she would ‘rather cry in a BMW than ride a bicycle while laughing,’” according to the Post, which reports that censors “said it indicated a materialistic, ‘gold-digging’ attitude that was the equivalent of prostitution.”