Dude looks fabulous
In Madison, Wisconsin, USA the police used to attack the annual halloween riot with chemical weapons until they eventually made it illegal to have fun unless you bought a ticket and had fun in the official fun containment box watched over by armed cops who would shoot you for having too much fun.
I saw the headlines of people being arrested for partying in the streets and my first thought was, yeah you probably need to get a block party cleared by the local government. I mean, when people riot over college basketball and get arrested, no one is writing:
"In America, freedom of expression is on the decline, as College Basketball fans take to the street to celebrate the end of another season, some were met with brutal police pushback. Some fans were pulled into police cars and asked to ID themselves to authorities, all for attempting to partake in the celebrations at the end of March Madness. Government sanctioned celebrations at the local Wild Wings continued as scheduled."
You don't necessarily need a permit for these sort of street gatherings, but some local governments are aiming to crack down on 洋节/foreign holidays for nationalist and/or anti western cultural hegemony reasons.
Although modern Halloween barely has anything to do with the religious roots as the eve of All Saints Day, some people have argued that it's essentially a celebration of a foreign religious festival which goes against laws that prohibit prosletyzing religion (no-one really seriously believes this).
However, coupled with the specific location, which was used for anti lockdown protests, and the fact it was spilling onto public roads, the Shanghai police shut it down with little warning. A bit heavy handed but wasn't a nationwide ban.
Like just looking around the XHS I can see costume parties from Chengdu to Beijing. SH police was overcautious due to previous protests at that exact location, and were too heavy handed in dispersing the gathering.
I'm not like China expert, but this seems to be a pattern in stories for China that I've started to notice more, since the different local responses to Covid. Some local police or local government will do something and then it will be applied to the country as a whole, it's federal government, and/or to Xi.
Trump praises Xi for controlling 1.5 billion people with an iron fist. Americans actually believe China is some sort of Borg hive mind controlled by Xi where everyone thinks the same thing and it's always because he extended his will, like the Borg Queen does.
China is seen as a monolith, sometimes even among the Chinese. Something that came up is 几多 vs 多少 (how much) in modern China. Someone from Beijing will say 几多 is only used in Cantonese speaking areas and in old texts since it's such an archaic way of asking "how much" that's been preserved in the far south, despite the fact that I hear it on a daily basis here in Wuhan, it's like 40/60 for 几多/多少. Also 饮 (to drink, eat or enjoy in general) vs 吃 (eat), 喝 (drink) or 抽 (inhale). 饮 is very rare for my dialect of Mandarin and only really paired with 料 to make 饮料 (drinking mixture/concoction, refers to soft drinks or other non alcoholic beverages or fruit juices), but I think other locations will still use the old verb.
Localities get a lot of autonomy in China. The central government generally issues guidelines and only steps in directly in cases of national interest, like with organizing the economy, which is part of why Chinese people when polled tend to have a higher opinion of the national government than they do their local government. It also means that foreign press can cherry pick moments where a local government does something bad while simply never reporting on the things that they do that are cool to paint a certain picture of China.
when people riot over college basketball and get arrested
Cops in the US will just let you riot, for the most part, so long as you don't block them or trespass on their turf.
Was in downtown Austin during a real raccous 6th Street party and the police were simply standing around in front of a few of the nicer buildings. My friend moved out of the way of a big cluster of people in the crowd and crossed some invisible line. Two cops immediately rushed him, tackled him, and dragged him off for trespassing. Some guy was straight up standing on a car half a block away and nobody cared.
J6 was crazy in so far as how blaise the initial police response was. Whites really don't have any kind of fear of the police in the US.
I think that's the root of the anti-China hysteria. "What if you were in a country where you weren't completely immune from the law?"
Something something binds but does not protect, something something protects but does not bind
Without doxxing myself that's 3km from me rn. There's a really scenic park nearby called 宝岛. On an afternoon it's old folks playing cards near the lake side and people walking the perimeter.
Its near 香港路 and 台北路。I don't see anything wrong with naming parks and streets after your own territory.
Do you know a good park or riverside for running? One suggestion was 沙湖公园, but it was from a western site and the route appeared to go along a main road which is less than ideal. If you do know one an amap link would be great
Riverside is usually a lot more crowded a lot more often. Off the top of my head, 菱角湖公园 has a recently done running/walking track with soft asphalt that's not too out of the way. In fact it's like a 3 min walk from 三眼桥 metro station. If it's not a weekend, holiday or school pickup/drop off time it's actually surprisingly space for being in the middle of a large city.
The twin lakes of 西北湖 has a running track that's almost exactly 1.5km but the running track passes the back of a strip of bars, incl an international one where white people gather. So depending on when you're running it could be pleasant or crowded with drunks. Ymmv with the white people, they range from cool leftists to completely disengaged from politics to reactionaries.
Otherwise, you're in Wuhan, you're never more than a few KM from a body of water, and all the lakes are public spaces.
Even if you take the Halloween is illegal at face value, how is that even renforceable ?
FAKE TANKIE LIES!!!!! this is NOT a halloween celebration, since yes, halloween IS banned in china. you can clearly see it says "HALLOWE E N H A"
and by the way, china is a MUSLIM country and we can literally see a BAR in the background. ALCOHOL IS ILLEGAL IN CHINA!!!!!
TANKIE. LIES!!!!@ THATS A GHOST OF A CHINESE DISSIDENT WHO DIED FROM THE EVIL XI CCP WINNIE POOH HUAWEI 5G
Wow the costume looks great
Too bad halloween is a bourgeoisie holiday 😠
Halloween is the opposite of bougeois. It's the holiday where we celebrate tackiness and defying social norms.
Thanksgiving is the bourgeois holiday.
Halloween is a pagan holiday, it's western, but that doesn't mean its bad. I do like me some Halloween stuff. I feel like we should embrace culture and make it our own, instead of just discarding it for where it comes from. Of course, no one has to like Halloween, but I don't think there's any harm in celebrating it
It's a Western "holiday", I understand why South Korea and Japan celebrate Western holidays like Halloween and Christmas, because they are USA puppets. Hope they don't continue embracing the hyper consumerism of Christmas.
Step #1 of the new revolutionary government: proletarianize Halloween
People are in cosplay all the time out here. I see it pretty much everywhere. We also had a Halloween event in our apartment complex put on by the complex folks.
These people are clearly crisis actors paid by the Chinese government
But I thought fun was illegal in evil communist Choinah?
No way, you're one of them ceeceepee chyna actors, halloween is illegal there -
There's English signage in a lot of big Chinese cities. I don't think it's especially touristy here, at least for foreigners. Although I did hear there are quite a lot of historical sites
Internally, there's a fair amount of tourists from other parts of China. But it's large enough to just have an expat/immigrant community, I'm currently in an international bar in Hankou and half the patrons are white
I've gotten adds on YouTube videos in the past advertising it as a vacation spot.
Yeah the video was of a bunch of people in marvel costumes, so I imagine it had something to with some libs being weird rather than "OMG HALLOWEEN ILLEGAL"
Oh no! Now that you revealed them the Chinese secret police will kidnap them and they'll lose a million social credit score!
the chiangist brigands have infiltrated wuhan
