Two more blogs for the blog roll. First, a political blog...

'Just World News' by Helena Cobban

Her most recent post (check out her other posts about her trip to China)...

China, and the 'meanings' of Christmas

In many of the places I went to during my recent visit to Beijing--and certainly, throughout the whole of Incheon airport, in South Korea--I found massive, very obtrusive manifestations of a certain view of "Christmas". In the Wangfujiang shopping district of Beijing there were huge inflatable Santas. Tinsel hung from every eave.

In the lobby of our hotel, the smell of industrial-strength glue rose endlessly from a specially constructed little Christmas "hut", topped off with the requisite sheets of cotton-wool "snow". At its door, quite inexplicably, one or sometimes two young Chinese women stood in a glamorized version of a "Santa" outfit-- red satiny mini-dress, Santa hat, black boots-- doing as far as I could tell just about nothing except stand there self-consciously amidst the piles of pre-wrapped "Christmas presents" for hours on end. Were they also on offer as merchandise? Who knows?

From the PA system, meanwhile, endless streams of Fa-la-la-la-la or Hark the Herald made up just about the entire repertoire of the week's muzak offerings.

On one of my last days there, the CNN went out from the hotel-room cable offerings so I started flipping channels. Came on the local channel CCTV with a 20-minute rendering in English of local and world news. Quite well done, I thought. Afterwards, a magazine-type piece on the theme of "the growth of Christmas observance in today's China."

"More and more Chinese people are learning about the spirit of Christmas," the earnest announcer said, over shots of department store Santas, and of shoppers picking out red-and-green Christmas doodads from the shelves. "This enables us to learn more about western culture."
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And second, a new eye-candy blog...

life in the present

A link from life in the present...

Kodomo no kuni
Artists and Children's Books in 1920s Japan

illustrated by Yasui Koyata
Railway Bridge
"Kodomo no kuni" 1931.12