Several education institutions around China were decidedly Scrooge-y this year and have banned Christmas, in a bid to promote more traditional Chinese festivals.
Wenzhou has already made international headlines as it banned any Christmas-related events across the city’s schools, kindergartens and universities. The city, which is home to over 1 million Christians has seen increased opposition to Christianity this year as authorities have been bulldozing, and removing the crosses from churcbes across East China.
According to the Global Times, an education official said that “We are not suppressing Western festivals, but we hope schools can be more balanced on this”, and expressed the hope that students could focus on more traditional Chinese festivals.
The Modern College of Northwest University in Xi’an went even further, holding a mandatory 3 hour long screening of a documentary of Confucius on Christmas Eve, and hung up banners saying, “Strive to be outstanding sons and daughters of China, oppose kitsch Western holidays” and “Resist the expansion of Western culture”.
According to Reuters, one student said of the enforced documentary screenings “There’s nothing we can do about it, we can’t escape”.
Source: sohu.com
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Keywords: Christmas Banned in Schools
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Europeans and American are behaving like they have so many mosques or Buddhist temples in their country.So why should china keep them in their country? Aren`t the Europeans are against mosques their city ? Europeans says mosques are not suitable for european style.So churches are not suitable for China either. Examples: The mayor of Liège(city in belgium), Willy Demeyer (PS), banned a protest march against the mosque that was to have been held on March 30. "My role is to avoid excesses and problems of public order," he said. In Luxembourg, a Muslim group called Le Juste Milieu (LJM) is engaged in a fund-raising drive to collect €1.8 million ($2.3 million) to purchase the ground floor of a building that currently houses a makeshift mosque in downtown Luxembourg City. The building is mostly residential; local residents are opposed to the mosque. So China is doing the same what Europeans does.
Dec 31, 2014 10:04 Report Abuse
It's about family, when you really think about it. who is against family?
Dec 29, 2014 18:07 Report Abuse
Christianity this week (that's from the Middle East and taken over by the 'West') What's next week? - discourage Islam (also from the Middle East, and part of China's North Western problem) Then maybe Buddhism (they got that from India) Hmmm - that really only leaves Daoism (Now that really is Chinese!) if you don't count fringe groups like Falun Gong (which is already banned)
Dec 29, 2014 10:49 Report Abuse
Christmas was getting out of hand. It's a natural response to an event that no longer has any cultural meaning anyway. At least Chinese New Year is still about traditional family gatherings and has t been taken over by rampant consumerism.
Dec 29, 2014 08:28 Report Abuse
It's about freedom of religion & sharing happiness, now they just want to drop it, oh...I hope they can wake up earlier.
Dec 28, 2014 19:21 Report Abuse
Most of the world's religious doctrines put the deity above the piddling government of the day. That doesn't sit well with the almighty (and a little nervous) CCP.
Dec 28, 2014 00:16 Report Abuse
You may just have nailed a crucial aspect of CCP mentality.
Dec 28, 2014 12:19 Report Abuse
"Resist the expansion of Western culture"??? Ironic that I just ate my PapaJohns pizza before commenting on this post. I live in Jiangsu Province btw... It seems that in my city (Nantong) they are much more lax about the whole Christmas thing. I was encouraged to sing Christmas songs with my students (albeit without religious connotations) and there are two large churches in my city (yes, I'm sure they preach allegiance to the state etch). It's just so ironic to me that they're so willing to embrace Western style commercialism and mass marketing, yet Ol' Shengdanlaoren is a threat to cultural purity...
Dec 27, 2014 20:34 Report Abuse
It is a well known fact that Santa Claus somehow ruined every other Chinese speaking area of the world. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore have all been enslaved to the big red bearded imperial lie and his eight reindeer of Western decadence.
Dec 27, 2014 22:53 Report Abuse
The Government are trying to increase consumer spending so China's economy isn't so dependent on foreign investment. It does this by banning Christmas. That's just foolish. Christmas isn't about forgiveness and kindness - it's a festival of unabated consumption. It's a pilgrimage to the altar of free-market salvation. China really missed the boat on this one. A golden opportunity left wanting. If you are going to take moral messages from The Bible then you shouldn't cherry pick the easy ones like kindness and forgiveness. The Bible tells us that we should kill homosexuals and kill those that work on Sundays. People who talk about Christmas being about kindness and forgiveness need to go and read a Bible.
Dec 27, 2014 19:52 Report Abuse
Come to Jiangsu, they are allllll over the Xmas thing for the almighty dollar... ahem, Yuan.
Dec 27, 2014 20:36 Report Abuse
Wow... China.... We should have Anti-Chinese New Year protests in Europe, Canada, U.S., Australia et al... how would they like that? The blocking and censorship here is getting way too ridiculous.
Dec 27, 2014 00:22 Report Abuse
God, what a bunch of morons. --- "How can we stop younger, brighter people from being interested in Western traditions?" "I Know! Let's force them to watch a 3 hour video about Confucius." --- I really do love China's earnest (but utterly incompetent) attempts to dictate culture to young people. It's so impossibly retarded it's almost endearing. --- NOTE TO CCP: Because of you, all young Chinese people hate Confucius. Wenzhou young people now hate Confucius a bit more.
Dec 26, 2014 23:14 Report Abuse
Desperate measures from desperate old-school thinkers. The more they enforce these desperate ideals, the more the youth will see their peers at other open-minded schools having a grand old time and reject the force-fed bull-dust. Another fear induced, knee-jerk reaction.
Dec 26, 2014 23:02 Report Abuse
The second cultural revolution is coming. This time foreigners can take everything with them : computers, electricity, TV, planes, trains.........
Dec 26, 2014 22:45 Report Abuse
What about the First of May? Isn't that a foreign holiday? The Chinese authorities are always selective in what they label as "foreign", and thus unsuitable for China.
Dec 26, 2014 20:59 Report Abuse
Unfortunately not the first and definitely not the last time that the Chinese have been cancelling festivals and cracking-down on both religions and ideologies in the people's (nationalist) socialist republic. To this can of course be added that they are cracking down on Christmas without promoting traditional Chinese holidays in their stead. So it seems it is just another concession to the nationalist youth.
Dec 26, 2014 18:54 Report Abuse
'I guess the idea of thinking of others,kindness, forgivness and other christian teachings are not compatible with how the communists want people to be like.' Although this may sound like a joke, I am afraid you may be right. You hit upon a deep underlying truth, the kindness, love, compassion of christian teachings are incompatible with their ruthless nature, which they mislead the world by calling it 'strong', and being kind, loving, forgiving, civilised is weak. This kind of lies used to confuse your enemy, to cover-up your darkness is one dark trick they mastered well. Another possibility, a more superficial one, is that it is well known that mainlanders have this egomaniac syndrome that everything comes from China. It looks like Cultural Revolution #2 is on its way, this time trying to prop up their face with 'we have it, we discover it ourselves' campaign. Last christmas I talked to a mainland spices producer about a certain plant, found growing in Asia, in abundance in the Indonesian islands. That mainlander immediately said it must have originated from China. Strangely though you can't find them in China. I suppose some ETs must have grabbed all the seeds and wiped the plants out in China, planted them in those tropical islands thousands of years ago. :) The truth is that particular spices needs tropical, island climate in the Indonesian region to flourish. And even around that region not too many islands have them. News travel fast these days, if it hasn't happened already, it wouldn't be soon nobody in the world would trust one single word uttered from china mainlanders' mouth. When the world finds out how many lies they are making to prop up their 'face', or ego, '死要面子', or worse, to camouflage their malevolent goals, that's the time their credibility falls to pieces.
Dec 26, 2014 18:51 Report Abuse
Hahahaha, now everyone thinks its bad?....but evryone was so happy and positive when they were doing the same with muslims. men with beards not even allowed to get on public transport.. or budhists were beaten up for wearing their attire....no one raised a finger then,,...btw if anyone had researched religious history, JESUS was not born in december, and Santa Clause or the tree doesnt have to do any thing with religion, infact this was a pagan ritual, strictly forbidden in Christianity. ...Jingle all the way...lol
Dec 27, 2014 15:30 Report Abuse
Years ago, a young theology student professed to me, 'many will never become christians if they read the OT first when they open the bible'. I agree...lol (I am not a christian, btw). With the almost non-existing morality standard in a place like China, however, I would say having mainlanders exposed to the best part (imho) of the bible, having compassion, love, forgiveness, ...etc. is better than none. Just teach them NT, skim through or better still, leave Genesis alone as some truth can be unpleasant (and no I am not referring to evolution vs creationism stuffs)...lol...
Dec 28, 2014 12:00 Report Abuse
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