By BAISE SHENGDANJIE
Weather Correspondent

In a pleasant break from shovelling shit, PLA troops shovel snow

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – An unprovoked flurry of snowfall hit Beijing late this week, bringing the country’s inexorable rise to a grinding halt.

Cabs around the city vanished, as the capital’s traditional traffic jams were replaced by the occasional car, albeit ones still moving at a crawl.

State media scrambled into action as soon as the Minister of Propaganda’s driver was able to get to work.

The unprecedented weather impinged on China’s inalienable sovereignty and “deeply hurt the feelings of the Chinese people,” as well as making it a bitch to commute, local newspaper the Global Times thundered.

Salt trucks hit the city’s major roads as early as two hours ago – but by then it was already too late for China’s GDP, which rapidly dropped overnight from a sprightly seven-percent annual forecast growth-rate to a distinctly sluggish six.

The small amount of snowfall presents newly appointed President Xi Jinping with his first major crisis, analysts say. Like most Beijingers, however, when Xi looked out his window this morning, he simply groaned, deeply, and burrowed further under the covers.

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By WATT EVA
Hipster Correspondent

‘I remember when this place was just me, and a few Red Guards.’

GULOU (China Daily Show) – A nine-year veteran of Beijing’s famous hutong district, Gulou, has vowed never to leave the area again, after a shocking experience outside the Second Ring Road last weekend.

Jake Trenton (pictured, right)  – who prefers to be known as Gao Fuhao – agreed to meet some former university friends touring China last Saturday evening, after Trenton had finished his regular kite-making workshop.

The 29-year-old has spent much of the last decade living in a converted Qing courtyard house while practicing tai chi, an experience funded partly by Trenton’s calligraphy sales and mostly by his wealthy Manhattanite parents.

“My buddies called and said they were in Sanlitun and had just bought a round of drinks,” Trenton told China Daily Show. “It was too late to warn them – I had to simply go.”

Sanlitun, an embassy district in north Beijing, is renowned for its excellent shopping, restaurants and bar scene. But it is also, according to Trenton and others, “the gateway to Hell itself” and “full of asshole foreigners.”

Nevertheless, Trenton obligingly rode his refurbished fixed-gear bicycle across town, arguing that the worst than could realistically go wrong was being jostled by a gaggle of 14-year-old drinkers, or possibly pestered by a beggar.

“Leaving my authentic, historically intact neighbourhood, with its colourful array of genuine Beijing folk and extremely real smell of shit is so hard to do. Almost impossible – I mean, why would you?” Trenton angrily mused. “But, if it was for a pair of really great university friends who’d traveled 3,000 miles just to see me, I was prepared to go and have a brew – a local microbrew, I mean.”

Trenton refused to be drawn on the details of what happened – other than divulging that the area was “absolutely full” of Americans and Europeans – but the experience has left him shaken and disillusioned.

Now the much-loved foreigner is telling friends he is also dismayed by what has become of his beloved Gulou neighbourhood in recent years.

‘If they could just get rid of the electricity, this place would be really authentic’

Witnesses report that on several drunken occasions, Trenton has threatened to throw in the towel and move to Tongzhou, a bleak suburb that he claimed was one of the last remaining resources of ‘Real China’ in Beijing.

As for what he believes qualifies as decent Chinese nightlife, Trenton was giving little away yesterday.

“I go to authentic little niche joints, many of which don’t have ‘names’ or specific ‘addresses.’ But I refuse to tell you which ones, in case someone reads this article and decides to come down and ruin it,” Trenton said, his voice shaking with emotion.

“The last place I fell in love with got profiled by some foreign journalist and within a week, they’d fired the bossa nova DJ – a guy I happen to know and enormously respect – and replaced him with an Akon CD. I can’t let that happen again.”

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Profile of a hipster: Tate Wallace, 27

City: Beijing

‘The Amnesiacs won a Grammy? What the fuck? They’re ruined’

Favorite band: A tiny drum ’n’ bass prog-rock collective called The Amnesiacs. You’ve definitely never heard them.

Hates: Tourists who don’t speak Chinese.

Loves: Wealthy Chinese in need of consultancy; The Amnesiacs. I also love myself.

TV: Huh. I stopped watching TV after Cop Rock got cancelled.

Books: Mostly Chinese classics: The Tao. The Kama Sutra. And I should mention my own memoir, wryly titled Hutonghua: The Life and Language of Real China (available exclusively via my website).

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By MEI DEBAO
Party Congress Correspondent

Journalists discuss lunch options at the Party Congress

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Pity poor ABC TV reporter Megan Sykes: the 27-year-old broadcaster arrived from New York last Thursday with a crew of three, ostensibly to cover China’s National Party Congress. Now she and her team spend their days wandering the streets of Beijing, looking for something to write about.

“There’s an AIDS village about 30 miles outside Beijing,” suggests cameraman Peter, as the crew awkwardly relax in a cramped Dashilar coffee shop. “We could do that.”

“We didn’t travel 2,000 miles to cover another AIDS village,” Sykes angrily snaps in reply. “Look, sorry, Peter… I’m just tired. And frankly bored of this.”

She’s not alone.

As one of the biggest political events of the decade slides into its second week, many correspondents who’ve flown in especially for the event are waking up to the realization that there’s absolutely nothing to report.

“This is a complete bloody disaster, mate,” says veteran Australian journalist Bill Higgins. “My editor is calling me up every bloody day, asking how we can justify the expense of sending two reporters to China for ten days. I offered him a story about a provincial initiative to promote new dance routines for ethnic minorities in Sichuan. He told me to get off the bloody phone.”

Police report that across Beijing, hundreds of dispirited, disheveled and dejected reporters, from countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan and the US, are milling around the capital’s hutong and boulevards, many without a source or even a place to go and meet somebody for coffee.

“These journalists pose a potential problem to stability. If they aimlessly drift through the city, desperately asking questions, looking for stories, who knows what they might find?” asked worried Chaoyang police chief Lin Liu. “We’ve asked the Ministry of Fisheries to hold an emergency press conference – just to get them safely off the streets for the night, and provide them with at least one hot lead.”

Not every journalist is experiencing the same difficulties, however.

Tongaat Masebo, of the state-run Radio Free Zimbabwe, says he simply does not understand what all the fuss is about. “We have run many fine stories this week, and my editors are very happy,” Masebo beams. “If anything, the problem is that I have too much material. I think that many of these so-called Western media are not proper journalists.”

Masebo is not alone in this view.

“The Party Congress is a most rich goldmine of stories,” agrees Majid Gholem-Hussain, deputy editor of the Tehran Democratic Post. Gholem-Hussain has spent the last week providing his paymasters with a series of stunning scoops from his luxurious Wangfujing hotel room.

“We are being hand-fed the choicest morsels of fascinating news by our good friends,” Gholem-Hussain gloated. “Our exclusive coverage is making utter humiliation for those fools at the New York Times and Washington Post. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk,” he added thoughtfully.

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By SHI FU
Transport Correspondent

Zhou Daguo carefully scans the streets for potential fares to disappoint

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – “Look! You see him – that guy there? Now watch this, as I don’t slow down,” says Zhou Daguo as he passes a male in a business suit, cab light on.

As the man’s smile is replaced by a look of crushing disappointment, Zhou’s chuckle rises to a manic laugh. “That felt good,” he admits.

Zhou shares a taxi – but an hour before each shift is finished, he likes to travels to the nightlife and business districts of Beijing, and purposefully not pick up passengers.

He is one of dozens of local taxi drivers enjoying a new hobby, one that can only be translated as “hope fisting” (xiwan quan jiao).

“Last night I was in Wudaokou, and there were three students in the rain, trying to wave me down,” recalls a gleeful Zhou. “I slowed right down until I could look them right in the eye and smile – then I hit the gas and drove on.”

In the past year, the Beijing government has cut the number of cabs in the city from 60,000 to 50,000 with a view to reducing the figure to 40,000 next year. Many are wondering why officials are doing this, when the public is in clear need of reliable private transport.

Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at Peking University Li Junghua thinks he has the answer: “They’re sadistic fuck-knuckles.”

In the meantime, a small cabal of cabbies is determined to enjoy their last few months on the job, by taking revenge on irritating pedestrians.

Chief among them is the ‘King Fister’ – ten-year Beijing cab-scene veteran Ai Jingjung, 45.

Ai takes delight in causing potential passenger to curse him out and boasts that, just this morning, he purposefully passed a heavily pregnant woman in clear distress.

“I did it,” smirks Ai, sipping from a jar of flower tea. “So what? The rear-view mirror Buddha told me to.”

Some pedestrians are failing to see the funny side, however.

As hooting drivers swept past him on a windy sidewalk Tuesday night, businessman Ben Chan refused to comment, instead choosing to drop to his knees on the tarmac and curse the angry god that created this cruel world.

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By SAJIU FENG
Society Correspondent

Evans: ready to build a whole new life in China, then screw it all up again

BEIJING (China Daily Mail) – A terminal alcoholic has startled fellow wastrels by announcing his decision to settle in China.

 “I moved here unintentionally a couple of months ago,” recalls Harold Evans, 48. “I had to find somewhere to go fast, after being made to leave Thailand in completely outrageous circumstances.”

Evans – a traveller, writer, bon vivant and self-confessed “dreamer” – has spent much of his life on Streatham High Street, London.

He arrived in China following complications arising from a lack of visa.

“I never intended to stay more than a few days but this place got a hold of me,” Evans frankly admits, standing on the terrace of a popular uptown bar and addressing his remarks to a throng of non-English speaking students below.

“I’ve only been in China for two weeks and I’ve have already had my phone stolen twice!” he later marvels. “I’ve mistaken my hotel room for someone else’s apartment and admitted things I’ve never told anyone to a Yunnanese barman whose face I can’t quite recall.”

Evans confesses it was difficult to make the transition at first, as he’d considered himself to be at the peak of his drinking trajectory.

In just nine years, the retired brewery consultant has guided at least two marriages onto the rocks, lost an eight-year custody battle to a Valium-addicted former wife and embarrassingly forgotten the names of “more people than I can possibly remember.” 

Yet Evans longed for something more. 

“I had to look at myself and say: ‘Alright. Enough’s enough, Barry,’” the former hod-carrier told China Daily Show. “‘You had a good innings in Blighty – some might say one of the best – but it’s time to move on, while you’re still on your uppers.’”

Indeed, just four days before setting off on a short break to Thailand, Evans successfully lost a darts match at his local tavern, before falling over in the pub’s car park and soiling himself.

Still, he admits that China is not quite the gilded playground of cheap backrubs and bottomless ergotou it first appeared.

“There have been setbacks to the rule of lawless,” Evans warns. “The relatively recent introduction of a drink-driving rule is one notable fly in the ointment. But I get round that by simply not driving, and instead puking in the back of a rickshaw.”

But despite such restrictions, the successful British booze-artist says the scope for serious alcoholism in China is even bigger than it is in the West– and growing every day.

“It’s going to be the next big thing, China,” Evans muses, dabbing an unexplained bloodstain on his jersey. “A surging economy, loose borders, cheap ale. Count me in.”

And he has good advice for anyone wishing to follow in his footsteps.

“Never give up: life is full of surprises. Every day is a new beginning. Seriously – I can’t remember a bloody thing about yesterday.”

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By RONG REN
Politics Correspondent

All those in favor of rocking this party out till dawn, raise your hands in the air!

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – It’s official! The Seventh Plenary Session of the outgoing 17^th Central Committee will be “even bigger, better and bolder than ever before,” according to early reports.

“This year’s plenary session will be so off-the-hook, I can scarcely wait to create a precise flower arrangement suitably honoring it,” wrote one giddy netizen.

And it’s not just a fan talking about it – officials are excited, too.

“This plenum will surely be the best plenum yet,” insisted plenum spokesman Le Keqiang, who added that he was looking forward to this year’s plenum – scheduled, as usual, for sometime in September, October, November, December or perhaps next year – “with tension.”

But the new plenum has not been without its controversy.

Political turmoil earlier this year saw the shock downfall of Chongqing politician Bo Xilai and his allies, sparking a major leadership split.

Meanwhile, organizers have had to contend with complaints from some critics that last year’s line-up was “flat and inspiring.”

Especially disappointing was said to have been a lackluster vocal performance from the Rural Social Development Panel, led by rising right-wing star Ling Bo, 58.

“They played the usual set without any gusto… it was the same old stuff: reform the household registration system, raise agrarian living standards, yak, yak, yak,” grumbled long-time social-reform advocate Zhu Yipeng, 49.

“Their new material – things about controlling the housing market and capping inflation – seemed derivative to the press and didn’t really get much love from fans, either.”

Peng has vowed to wear a ‘fucking enormous dress’

But a draft version of the line-up for the 17^th Central Committee’s final plenum suggests that officials have taken those earlier criticisms seriously.

Late Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang’s widow, an endearingly popular presence, has been drafted in to open the talks.

Meanwhile, headlining the second day is Peng Liyuan (pictured, left), the popular folk-singer wife of  the expected incoming President Xi Jinping.

The famed soprano, who holds the rock ’n roll rank of general in the army, is said to have a talent for reading crowds, Tang poetry and her husband’s email.

Peng is also particularly well-known for her hugely distracting costumes on stage.

Her syrupy set will feature a pre-approved playlist of “blisteringly mild reformist rhetoric and some nostalgic, leftist classics for the oldsters,” according to insiders.

On paper, at least, the eagerly awaited Seventh Plenum is poised to provide a guideline document for China’s continuing reform and opening-up process, as the blueprint of ongoing socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics– but, experts say, most people just go along to rock out and get messy.

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By SHA DUI
South China Seas Correspondent

The islands are an increasingly popular holiday destination for rabidly nationalist tour groups

DIAOYU ISLANDS (China Daily Show) – A Japanese man puzzled by recent unexplained activity on his island chain was surprised to discover a Chinese woman living there without his permission, police said yesterday.

The woman was found in her pajamas on a beachhead of the Senkaku Islands – known as the Diaoyu in China – four of which are owned by a Japanese private citizen.

“She was clearly kitted out for an extended stay: she had several Chinese flags, a compass, an 1892 maritime map, blankets, everything,” said a spokesman.

Police said they also found 12 empty packets of instant noodles nearby, indicating the woman had been there several hours already.

“We think she moved in this morning,” the spokesman said. “She told us she intended to reclaim the land for her motherland, then get some sleep.”

The woman – identified as 27-year-old student He Ting – was discovered living on the northernmost point of the island, sheltering under a rock shelf five metres from the southernmost point.

“The woman told us that she could not afford an apartment in Beijing, and that living on an uninhabited rock in the middle of the ocean was much the same as living outside the Fifth Ring Road,” said Yashimoto Kawashira of the Japanese Coast Guard.

“She was logging onto Facebook when we found her.”

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By WEN LOCK
Olympics Correspondent

Jingjing, pictured shortly before being asked to move on by managers at the nearby Foot Reflexology and Beauty Centre (Image: LOLA)

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – It’s 11 o’clock on a weekday morning in Beijing’s Central Business District – but for Jingjing the Panda, it’s simply time for the first drink of the day.

The once-loveable Olympics mascot – or Fuwa – is now a sad shadow of her plush 2008 glory days. The dyed black wool around her eyes has been faded by tear-stains and her snow-white cheeks are now stained a grim nicotine-yellow.

“I find it hard to get work,” she says, cradling a bamboo juice – her fourth of the day.

This downtown bar opens just before midday and Jingjing is normally the first customer through the door.  “These days, the demand for a four-year-old Chinese cuddly Olympics mascot is surprisingly low,” she claims.

She blames her personal decline on a superstitious online slam campaign that linked Jingjing, a native of Sichuan, with the earthquake that devastated the region in 2008.

Nini, a prosaic green swallow who looks like a kite, was also tied to a deadly train crash in Shandong’s Weifang –known as ‘Kite City.’ Other Fuwa suffered similar accusations, but it was Jingjing who possibly took it the worst.

“I stopped going out – and started drinking,” recalls the bedraggled bear. “My libido, which was always pretty low, soon hit rock bottom. Then my teeth started falling out.”

Jingjing’s hit TV show, It’s Fuwa Time, was swiftly cancelled; her agent stopped answering calls soon after. “I couldn’t even get a job at the Beijing Zoo,” Jingjing admits with a bitter smile.

While tragic, Jingjing’s story is hardly an exceptional one.

All five Fuwa – the cuddly dolls based on China’s four most popular animals and the Olympic Flame, and whose names once spelt out  ‘BeiJing Huan Ying Ni’ (‘Beijing Welcomes You’) – have since fallen on hard times.

Beibei the Fish is perhaps the most successful, having landed a steady job at a Hebei water park. “It pays the bills,” Beibei explained in a brief, terse phone interview.

The Fuwas’ sad decline highlights systemic problems with the country’s state-run sports system, which demands its athletes dedicate their lives to ‘patriotic glory’ – but often abandons them once they can no longer perform in a stadium.

Last year, for example, champion gymnast Zhang Shangwu, 29, was discovered begging on a Beijing street. In 2008, tennis star Li Na left the national side to pursue her own career, going on to win the French Open in 2010.

It proved a less-successful move, however,  for Yingying, the Tibetan Antelope, who rapidly became a banned keyword after giving a controversial acceptance speech, expressing support for the Dalai Lama, at an elementary school prize-giving ceremony.

“I had a few too many fermented yak teas,” Yingying admitted later.

But the apology came too late for many – Yingying lost a lucrative consultancy gig at big-game consortium Safari Tibet Together and is currently believed to be either dead or living abroad in Dallas.

“I have it all: money, women and constant access to other people’s cigarettes,” former Olympic Flame fuwa Huanhuan boasted in 2009.

At the height of his fame, Huanhuan married Hello Kitty at a 50-million yuan ceremony in Sanya, Hainan. But the fairytale union quickly ran aground and the pair divorced acrimoniously just eight weeks later.

“I blew most of my cash on the wedding,” he admitted last year. “That little bitch Kitty took the rest.” Huanhuan committed suicide this February – leaving only a cryptic note referring to himself as a “candle in the Olympic wind.”

Now more than ever, times are difficult for the Fuwa.

A trademark rictus grin masking his pain, an unshaven Haibo touts for business in a wifebeater yesterday (Image: LOLA)

As the rest of the sporting world applauds the triumphs of Chinese gold medallists like Ye Shiwen and Chen Ruolin, the memory of the Games and its London closing ceremony brings nothing but bitterness for the surviving Fuwa.

And it’s not only ex-Olympians feeling the pain – other state-sponsored mascots have seen their stocks plummet too.

Near a neglected Dalian dock, infamous for its bawdy nature, we find Haibo, the former 2010 symbol of the Shanghai Expo.

Once known for his chirpy charisma and bright blue skin, Haibo today ekes out a grim existence, offering hand-relief to North Korean sailors in exchange for just a few yuan.

“I can still trade off my fame a little,” Haibo admits after a few glasses of baijiu. “But it’s getter rougher out there. And I can’t get real money offering full sex, either – because I don’t have any proper genitals to speak of.”

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by WEI AIAI
Economics Correspondent

Police deny the case has anything to do with Ai Weiwei

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – A well-known Chinese economist has lost his appeal against charges of artistic evasion.

Ever since renowned taxation pundit Lu Tao was apprehended at Shanghai airport last year, while boarding a plane to Macau to lecture on revaluation of the yuan, calls have been growing for the Chinese courts to overturn their decision to fine the rogue economist.

Many believe the true reason for the case was Lu’s inflammatory speech regarding the inappropriateness of Keynesian analysis for examining fluctuations in the market price of shale gas, delivered at the Harvard Business School last March.

The economist’s outspoken criticisms of flagship Chinese economic policies are believed to have angered finance ministers.

Although the chubby neo-liberal – nicknamed “Fatty” Lu – made a name for himself on the international economics scene long before his arrest, it was the decision to charge him with so-called “artistic crimes” that sent shockwaves through the media last year, and catapulted Lu to greater fame.

Although Lu himself says the charges were “frivolous,” Beijing has denied that the case is connected with Lu’s economic activities.

“Lu Tao’s arrest has nothing to do with his economic principles or his academic output,” a spokesman told foreign media in one of the government’s few official statements on the matter. “This is a legal case, according to local laws and customs.”

Beijing has instead waged a propaganda war against Lu through various mouthpieces, such as an editorial in the Hong Kong state-backed newspaper Wen Wei Po, which claimed that “Lu secretly pursued a painting career while posing as an economist.”

The anonymous writer claimed that police had found evidence of several “poorly-realized traditional Chinese landscapes on canvas,” adding that their “amateur draughtsmanship” represented a “deliberate insult to the aesthetic principles of our 5,000-year-old culture, as cherished and preserved by the Communist Party.”

Although friends say the paintings merely represent Lu’s amateur drawing habit and “aren’t bad,” that didn’t stop Beijing police from confiscating artistic materials – including paintbrushes, a pastels set and several sheets of stiff-backed parchment – from his university offices.

Lu’s wife Zhang Yuqin, who is believed to have sat for one of her husband’s incendiary attempts at Impressionist portraiture, was also questioned.

Wen Wei Po said the sketches were “risible” and “offended police” but fellow economics professor Lin Dehua told China Daily Show that “it is abundantly clear these ‘artistic evasion’ charges are not really about the fact that Lu is a famously atrocious illustrator.”

According to Lin, “this case has everything to do with the relevance of Hegelian theory in assessing the historical significance of the Gold Standard.”

Lu’s opposition to corruption is well-documented and controversial passages in his twelve-volume, banned bestseller Be More Like Belgium (2009) – asserting that trickle-down economics is only applicable to developed and centralized societies –are said to have infuriated senior officials.

“Lu’s pencil drawings may be relatively unaccomplished, but did the police just happen to hone in on a doodler who also has a flawless command of the intricacies of economic transformation in China’s post-socialist marketplace?” Professor Lin asked. “Please.”

Lin said that Lu was a public figure who frightened the Party.

“Let’s be honest,” he added, “if anyone’s going to be a figurehead for a Chinese revolution, it’s an economist.”

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By BAO FOJIAO
Religious Affairs Correspondent

A suitably evil-looking Catholic ceremony in China recently

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – A high-profile spat between the Vatican and Chinese Communist Party has split opinion among critics who normally simply dislike both.

Relations between the two, long strained, were plunged into further crisis by the dramatic resignation last week of Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin.

Bishop Ma announced his withdrawal from the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) at his ordination in front of a congregation of 1,200.

The Vatican claims the sole right to appoint bishops worldwide; Beijing insists that any sovereignty within China belongs to the Party.

The conflict has divided supporters of neither.

“At the end of the day, the Catholic Church’s support for universal human values must be the deciding factor for me,” sighed Stephanie Pence, a legal clerk in Milwaukee. “Even though they must bear huge responsibility for the proliferation of AIDS in places such as Africa.

“No, wait: I need to think about this.”

Last year, the CCPA forced clergy loyal to Rome to take part in the appointment of three of its bishops, an act seen by many abroad as indicative of Beijing’s persecution of religious freedom.

Physicist Sundarshan Gupta disagrees. “No, no, no,” Gupta said, wearily, his red-lined eyes betraying a sleepless night debating the issue.

“An essentially secular government, such as in post-Mao China, is the bedrock of a healthy, pluralistic society,” Gupta insisted. “No more matter how corrupt or self-serving… I’m pretty sure about that.”

Those who wish to worship outside state auspices must do so in underground churches that face regular disruption by authorities. Bishop Ma  has since been allegedly detained and banned from performing ceremonies.

“It’s kind of weird to find myself getting worked up about Beijing’s attitude towards Chinese Catholics,” admitted graduate student and self-confessed ‘slut’ Helen Getty. “Especially when you consider that I spend a lot of my time defending myself against these religious nutjobs.”

Getty admitted that it was extremely hard to choose between two aging, rigid, deeply unpopular institutions.

But as she debated whether to dress as a ‘tarty bishop’ or ‘promiscuous official’ at a rally in support of religious freedom that evening, Getty said that, as conflicted as her opinions were, ultimately, her belief in the absolute freedom of expression was the deciding factor.

“I guess what I’m saying is, I think Catholics should be free to channel their sexual frustration and self-disgust into vindictive personal attacks on me if they want, and I should be free to tell them to go shove it right back where they don’t want it,” Getty declared, as she polished off a small glass of wine and settled on the ‘tarty bishop’ look.

For some, the issue is not just one of human rights as outdated, superstitious ideology.

“It’s extremely hard to take seriously anyone that believes in the tangible existence of foreign devils,” said Tsinghua Professor of Sociology He Fang.

Professor Fang says the Vatican and Party represent two large opposing forces who nevertheless share much in common.

“When two ostensibly evil powers clash, that can be a very confusing moment for all of us – especially for those who normally couldn’t give a shit about either.”

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Foreign black hand – or just your creepy church leader?

Play ‘Party or Vatican,’ the game that’s sweeping China! 

1)    Oops! That school your dodgy organization built just collapsed and it’s time for a hasty self-criticism. But do you confess to a bishop – or your local Party secretary?

2)   You just got caught raping a 10-year-old schoolboy – but that doesn’t necessarily mean a court appearance anytime soon. Is that because you’re a Catholic priest or a provincial cadre?

3)   Your education turns out to be riddled with inaccuracies, omissions and historical distortions. But where did you just graduate from: the seminary – or Communist Party School?

4)   There’s nothing like an internal conflict to leave the blood of tens of millions on your hands. But who were you needlessly slaughtering – heretics or counter-revolutionaries?

How to play: simply choose either answer. Congratulations – it’s the right answer. 

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