meA short kiss, Nigel Dixon presses his teddy bear between the two eyes of the button before placing it on his thigh and begins to make music: he has built a construction from a cleaning bucket, a mop and a hanger that is based on the chinese instrument erhu. and weigh your upper body to the beat of the music. The Briton arrived in Wuhan in early 2020 to celebrate the Chinese New Year with friends and not to record videos for the Douyin platform. But then he became famous with his films in the first confinement. On the Chinese version of Twitter alone, more than 460 million people follow how Nigel Dixon washes his bear’s paws under the tap, dresses in Chinese suits or praises the “brave” Chinese government for its coronation measures. Because you don’t hear critical words in Dixon. Therefore, he and his teddy bear are safer for the Chinese state than Disney’s bear Winnie the Pooh, who was repeatedly the victim of censorship after President Xi Jinping was compared to the honey-bellied lover. fat on the internet.

Dixon adorns himself, in a gray tweed jacket, dark suit pants and wine red tie, also with strange feathers: for more than 20 years he has appeared as a doppelganger of “Mr. Bean ”, like“ Wanna-Bean ”. Even as a copy, the cult figure still celebrates success. The original celebrates its 30th anniversary in Germany this year. On January 1, 1990, the first episode of the comedy series appeared on British television. In Germany, SWR broadcast the episode with three sketches a year later. Original actor Rowan Atkinson’s originally dark hair now glows silver-gray, but his movie persona is followed by 129 on Facebook, 29 on Youtube, and 8.6 million people on Instagram, a fan base larger than many of the world’s stars. pop can boast.

Before Princess Diana, Paul McCartney and Charlie Chaplin

How is it that Mr. Bean, that grown boy in a suit and tie, became such an enduring hit? The first sketch called “Church” shows Mr. Bean trying to stay awake during a service and how he fails miserably. This failure continues for 15 episodes. Every 25 minutes, Bean takes one misstep after another. The series, whose last episode was released on December 15, 1995, was followed by movies, an animated series dubbed by Atkinson, and video games. In the late nineties, he was considered one of the most famous faces on this planet. Actor Rowan Atkinson describes his character as a “boy in the body of a man”, which became a worldwide hit.

There are many things that point to Britain as a filming location: Bean drives through the streets of London in a Mini Cooper, if there is a big misstep, he gives the Queen crazy, and when he visits a hairdresser, a El portrait of Prince Charles hangs on the wall. At the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, he sat at the keyboard and accompanied the London Philharmonic Orchestra. And in a study by the British Council, respondents chose “Mr. Bean ”was named one of the“ Best Brits ”in 2014, ahead of celebrities such as Princess Diana, Paul McCartney and Charlie Chaplin.