Hainan police's adaptation of Jay Chou's Mojito goes viral

Police in Hainan province released an arresting video that has gone viral.

The music video of an anti-drug-themed adaptation of Mandarin pop singer Jay Chou's new track, Mojito, has been an online sensation. The timing was significant as Friday marked the International Day Against Drugs and Illicit Drug Trafficking.

The clip lasting 1 minute and 24 seconds had been viewed about 33 million times as of Monday on social media platform Sina Weibo. On short-video platform Douyin, it has been viewed more than 4 million times. Many netizens commented that the adaptation is quite good and the lyrics are funny.

In an encouraging development, Chou himself posted a screenshot of the anti-drug version of Mojito on his Kuaishou account on Thursday, commenting: "Well done! Everyone should stay away from drugs and protect themselves!"

Chou became the figurehead of a government anti-drugs campaign in 2014.

Instead of Havana in Cuba, the clip is filmed on location in Haikou, Hainan province. It finds policeman Xu Rui flanked by several colleagues in police uniforms, similar to the setting in Chou's video.

In the video, they dance-walk on a coastal road with sea wind blowing, and instead of a vintage car in Chou's shot, a police patrol car drives along the road.

Adapted from Chou's track, Xu, from an anti-drug unit under the Hainan public security bureau, changed the lyrics of Mojito to reflect police efforts in the crackdown on drugs, intending to raise public awareness on the drug problem and make saying no to drugs a cool thing.

He uses new lyrics－"Oh please give the drug dealer a mojito; I love the sorrow that his painful eyes have told; And my teacup doesn't need to be full, 'cause he has made the world suffer too much."

In the last verse over Latin-style brass instrumentation, percussion and guitar, the 32-year-old sings: "A world free of drug abuse is the best reward for police".

Xu says that the new lyrics inspired by Chou's new song which dropped on Tencent Music on June 12 only took him about five minutes to finish that day, which has won applause from friends and colleagues.

He Wenchang, who plays the ukulele in the video, says he hopes their performance can give people some relief during this stressful time. He is also the music producer who is in charge of the recording and mixing.

"I didn't expect it to go viral like this," He, a traffic policeman who is also 32, says, adding that the loose performance and melody seem to calm down and comfort viewers who have been through a tough time this year due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

"It took us fewer than three days to record the song and finish the video. Our team, all policemen, consists of a four-person band, two dancers and Xu, the singer," He says.

It is not the first time that the Hainan police have gone viral for posting interesting videos.

He and Xu, who both love music and graduated from the People's Public Security University of China in Beijing in 2011, established Cop Sky Studio to record songs in their spare time since 2015.

"We have produced dozens of songs and videos to publicize laws and regulations over the past five years," He says.

Thanks to such efforts from police officers like He and Xu, more people have an increased awareness about the harm illicit drugs can do.

According to an annual report released by the National Narcotics Control Commission last year, there were 2.4 million known drug users in the country at the end of 2018, as compared with 2.55 million in 2017－the first time the number has declined.

Besides an inspiration for Hainan police in anti-drug promotion, Chou's new clip has also impressed the Cuban embassy in China on social media, which said that "the video re-creates images of Havana".

Online travel platform Mafengwo has documented the number of queries about "Cuba" surged more than 10 times on the day the video launched compared with the previous day.

Over 1 million people paid 3 yuan (40 US cents) for the single online within the first hour after it was posted on June 12. As of Monday, about 5 million people have bought the song on Tencent Music.

With the lyrics written by Alang Huang, the song comes on the back of the singer's J-Style Trip, a reality travel show first broadcast by Zhejiang Satellite TV in March.