60th Birthday Party

This is the first of a couple of catch up posts.
It is just over a year since we moved to China and I can say at least for myself that I'm still loving it here. I'm pretty sure Caroline is too.

We've moved to a beautiful new apartment and that will be the subject of the next catch up post. Fantastic food and drink are still accessible and cheap.
We've got some great friends.

Work for both of us is challenging and at times stressful, but I really feel like we're both learning quickly and getting more experience, more quickly than we would back in Europe.

So everything is going well. One thing I haven't found a replacement for however is media. I haven't found a better source of world news than the BBC, particularly Radio 4 and the World Service. Podcasts, listen live and indeed local dvd copies of BBC programmes are still a major source of my information.

However, a recent event here in Beijing did show me that coverage of world events could still be improved. On 1st of October, China celebrated 60 years since the establishment of the People's Republic of China. 60 years is significant in Chinese culture because it is a complete revolution of the Chinese astrological calendar. The coverage I saw on CNN and heard on the BBC was fairly simplistic. It was reduced to a militaristic celebration of Mao.

In reality I think there were some interesting things worth mentioning that didn't really come through in the International coverage I saw.

In the run up to the parade there was a strange atmosphere around the city. To me it felt almost like the authorities wanted the whole thing to be over with. I can't give any tangible evidence of this feeling, it just seemed that the whole affair was viewed only as an opportunity for mistakes to be made and embarrassment to be avoided. Rather than a genuine celebration the emphasis was on control. Roads were blocked, notices sent to people on the route forbidding them from viewing the parade. And not just for us in the city.

As the following photographs show, preparation and training for the army was pretty intensive too.





We actually spent the day of the parade at the Australian Embassy at a party our friends Ruth and Alex threw. So we enjoyed frozen Maogeritas, Long March Ice Teas and lots of other great food and drink. We watched the parade there, this amazing video, courtesy of journalist Dan Cheung is a good summary of the whole thing.

China's 60th Anniversary national day - timelapse and slow motion - 7D and 5DmkII from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

As usual, here is a link, in case the embedded video doesn't work.

Following the parade, the most human part of the day was seeing the relief and celebrations of the soldiers as they got back to their barracks and received their 'parade veterans' certificates.

You may have seen some pictures on the day itself, or from the pictures above, you may think that it's a bit uncomfortable to see such a powerful country flexing its military muscle. And being here, we did also have that feeling. However, I did think at the time that as with much of the actions of the Chinese Government, the audience was mostly a domestic one. An effort to make the populace feel safe, impressed and perhaps a little bit in awe of the strength of their country. This view was later echoed in an Economist article I read and in a Q&A session with Sidney Rittenberg we attended. So I did feel somewhat vindicated.

Another interesting point was evident that didn't seem to be covered externally. It was quite clear in the parade that Mao's role, whilst being respected, was now seen and presented in the context of other achievements by Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and the current leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. He seemed to be presented as one among a few heroes - rather than the only one. And this to me seems like progress. Another few years and they may even openly acknowledge the terrible years of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.

It's also worth pointing out that the coverage of the day covered a lot on China's ethnic minorities. Given the recent tensions in Xinjiang, this may have been seen with some cynicism, but as usual I prefer to be a bit more optimistic and say that it would have been easy to ignore these things. Whether minority issues in China receive due attention, but perhaps this is changing for the better.

That's a bit of a long post - Caroline's out at a talk on China as an Aid recipient y'see - so anyway, I'll finish up now, with a final composite photograph from Danwei.com showing the newspaper front pages of the day - again I think this looks great.