Fear of Western culture leads to bans on Christmas celebrations
Print Edition
CHRISTMAS in some parts of China wasn’t so merry this year, with a university in the northwest and an eastern city’s education bureau banning festive celebrations.
The moves were in stark contrast to the government’s tolerance of religious activities in a country where the Christian population is rising and Western festivals such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, April Fool’s Day and Halloween are becoming increasingly popular.
China has ten of millions of Christians.
However, the Modern College of Northwest University in Xi’an urged its students to “guard against the expansion of Western culture” and forced them to watch documentary films about Chinese traditional culture on Christmas Eve, the Xi’an-based Chinese Business View newspaper reported.
Christmas was a “kitsch” foreign celebration unbefitting of the country’s own traditions, it said.
Banners saying “Strive to be outstanding sons and daughters of China, oppose kitsch Western holidays” and “Resist the expansion of Western culture” could be seen around the campus.
No student was allowed to leave campus after 7pm on Christmas Eve, a guard told the newspaper, and from Monday to Thursday students weren’t allowed to leave unless they had a note explaining why.
When the documentaries were being show, teachers were posted at classroom entrances to prevent anyone from leaving, one student told the newspaper.
Not allowed to leave
“There’s nothing we can do about it, we can’t escape,” the student was quoted as saying.
Another told The Beijing News that the college required students to watch about two hours of documentary films on Christmas Eve, including one about the life of Confucius, and warned that anyone absent would be punished.
Students complained online that they’d been made to watch the same films many times before, including at Christmas time.
On its microblog, the college’s Youth League committee said the growing popularity of Western festivals indicated a “blind admiration of foreign culture.”
It urged students not to “fawn on foreigners.”
“In recent years, more and more Chinese have started to attach importance to Western festivals,” it wrote.
“In their eyes, the West is more developed than China, and they think that their holidays are more elegant than ours, even that Western festivals are very fashionable and China’s traditional festivals are old-fashioned.”
Yesterday, it published another statement saying the streaming of the cultural documentaries was intended to call on the students to “value China’s traditional culture and avoid worshipping foreign things.”
Meanwhile, the education bureau in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, which has a large Christian population, told schools and kindergartens in the wealthy coastal city not to hold any activities related to Christmas.
Inspectors would be making sure rules were enforced, Xinhua news agency reported.
Education official Zheng Shangzhong, who was responsible for sending a circular to schools, said that the intention was to highlight the significance of Chinese traditional holidays and to “cool down the fever” of celebrating Western ones, according a report in the Zhejiang-based Xiandai Jinbao newspaper.
Schools have more of an obligation to tell children the meaning of traditional festivals such as the Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Lunar New Year, he said.
Zheng said it was the first time a formal notice had been issued. The bureau reportedly had conveyed the requirement to schools informally in the past few years.
The microblog of the Party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily, displayed pictures of around 10 university students in the central province of Hunan holding an anti-Christmas street protest.
“Resist Christmas,” read banners held up by the students, who wore traditional Chinese outfits. “Chinese people should not celebrate foreign festivals.”
Christmas is gaining popularity in Shanghai and other large Chinese cities where young people get together to celebrate and exchange gifts.
Liu Peng, a student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said that it was a tradition to hang out with teachers and classmates on Christmas Eve to celebrate the year’s achievements and to make plans for the future.
Yu Pengcheng, a student at Fudan University, said there were many Christmas gatherings for students and teachers organized by the university.
In Chengdu, where a 2007 edict had demanded schools and universities prevent students from celebrating Christmas, there was no such requirement this year. Staff at the education bureau in the capital of southwest China’s Sichuan Province said no such notice has been handed down in recent years.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
