Not just Indians

Before the news about the macabre child abductions and killings of young children near Delhi or the senseless and unforgivable murder of over 80 Biharis in Assam by a separatist Assamese liberation outfit (who will get their just desserts sooner or later) and of course the mind numbing media frenzy on 2 actors agreeing to get married, a constant media issue was the entry of foreign retail chains. We had all sorts of leftist elements in India from writers, authors, activists and politicians deriding any such entry. I usually hang my head in dismay & shame when confronted with these sadly misled ideologically outdated dinasours but seems like we Indians aren't the only ones to border on the absurd. The Int'l Herald Tribune reports from Beijing and I quote from their edition today:

" BEIJING: Caretakers of the Forbidden City in Beijing may force Starbucks to close its outlet inside the 587-year-old imperial palace after the world's largest coffee-shop chain was criticized by a Chinese news anchor on his blog.
The outlet is "a symbol of low-end U.S. food culture" and "an insult to Chinese civilization," Rui Chenggang, an anchor at state broadcaster China Central Television, wrote on his personal Web log. The blog has attracted over 540,000 hits and thousands of responses in Internet chat rooms since last Friday." ...continues here

This is both extremely laughable and ironic at the same time. Laughable because here's a country who has actually abandoned or forcibly made extinct centuries of culture and tradition to pay obesiance at the altar of Mao, not to mention savagely suppressing one of the world's most rich, vibrant & peace loving civilizations but, and here's the ironic part - the entire issue came to light through a blog! Delicious irony that is.

I distinctly remember walking up and down the streets around the Bund and Nan jing lu in Shanghai hunting for little shops selling old books hoping for a copy of the Economist because big brother China wouldn't allow me online access to the Economist, Blogspot and a host of other "politically sensitive" websites and journals. And to top it all, a news anchor on CCTV, the Communist party's mouthpiece has stated that this shows the power of the internet. I continue to add to the cynical bile inside of me as I witness the doublespeak. So yes! Lets deny hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting Tiananmen and the Forbidden city hot coffee and a place of refuge in the piercing sub zero winters of Beijing. All in the name of preserving a culture already long gone and purposefully lost.