And what could be more festive than a Starbucks in Beijing? (There's been some impressive Christmas displays in Beijing and Shanghai but this is the only picture to have survived a technical hitch involving my camera). One mall in Beijing summed the celebration up perfectly as "Christmas Shopping Festival" and as such its increasingly adopted by trendy and/or western-style restaurants and shops. But its not just another reason to go shopping for everyone, an estimated 90 million Chinese Christians might be celebrating Christmas today. An interesting conference report from the Ethic and Public Policy Centre talks about Christianity in China and the impact Christianity could have on China. This article is also interesting as there's parallels between the CCP's attitude to faiths and many other things in China - as one interviewee puts it "China doesn't have many freedoms but there is a lot of tolerance". Also interesting as we hear a lot about China's openess to economic opportunity and material lifestyle trends but little about the increasing interest in spirituality or new value systems.
But its Christmas and I'm really not thinking more on all that, I'm got a heavy eating schedule to stay up with today.
Merry Christmas!
1 comment:
hey. how's it going? where in the world are you? My motherland? or your motherland?
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