IMAGES OF CHRISTMAS IN CHINA
Posted on 12/24/2014 8:40:54 PM PST by SeekAndFind
BEIJING—There’s a joke going around: “Santa Claus was descending into China from the sky. Due to the heavy smog, he fell to the ground, but no one dared help him up. While he was still lying in the snow, his bag was ransacked for presents, and his reindeer and sleigh taken away by the chengguan. Therefore, no Christmas this year.”
While some of the humor needs context—there are digs at China’s notorious bystander effect and much-despised urban-management officials, chengguan—the larger meaning is clear. Ironic jokes about Santa’s routine being disrupted with uniquely Chinese characteristics are a sure sign that, yes, they do know it’s Christmas time in communist China.
Retailers lead the way here: An annual spending season that once focused on Chinese New Year in the winter is now bloated and elongated, stretching from the invented Singles' Day on November 11 through February, with Christmas as a kind of hump day. Even before December, shops, streets, and hotels begin filling with slightly off-kilter Yuletide scenes: performers in elf suits play traditional cymbals while a grinning plastic Santa Claus toots a saxophone outside his gingerbread cabin. Why the sax? Theorists point to everything from romantic associations with the avuncular Bill Clinton jamming on the instrument in the 1990s, to the smooth alto-sax muzak that is the preferred soundtrack of Santa’s typical dwelling, the shopping mall.
There’s no sign of Jesus, but in many big cities, you’re still more likely to see Father Christmas’s face than that of “Uncle” Xi Jinping, as state media has characterized the country’s president, presenting a homely, familial image that’s quite at odds with the repressive manner in which he’s coldly eliminated opponents. But Xi is not above the fray himself, visiting Santa’s official cabin in Rovaniemi, Finland in 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
‘Tis the season to be jorry.
Fa ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra
I demand a Confucius display!
Chinese will have no problems with L. It’s Japanese that do.
Confucius should say it is exceeding wise to believe in Jesus.
Don’t tell the American government.
RE: Fa ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra
I think You are confusing China with Japan. The Chinese have the “L” sound in their phoneme, the Japanese don’t.
Here in Los Angeles, Little Tokyo has a Samurai Santa dressed up as a samurai and listening to what kids want at Christmas.
My Chinese friend can not pronounce “R”. He pronounces it as “L”.
My Chinese friend ads an “S” to many singular nouns. Like “let’s go drink some wines.”
Hey, your buddy can count. It's you that doesn't get it, Round Eyes!
It wouldnt take much booze and he couldn’t count anything!
Did you hear about the Japanese man goes to see an eye doc..
The Doc examines him and says “you have cataracts”
The Japanese man says “no doc, I drive a Rincoln”!
In Mao’s day, religious belief was suppressed. Today the Communist Party tolerates it out of recognition that without strong values, China is destined to become a moral wasteland.
Which is why Xi Jinping has promoted Confucian values in the Party Higher School. Give a few decades and the Party’s ban on religious believers joining may well go the way of the Party’s former ban on the rich joining it.
I had to Google that... by golly you’re right.
This pic is interesting... Samurai Santa looks like KFC’s Colonel Sanders!
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3358/4644643308_a0b1375959_z.jpg
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