This week was one of holidays, first the National Day on Tuesday, and afterwards the Golden week with Moon Festival on Thursday. The city was decorated with red flags and lanterns. Many people had traveled, the streets were quiet but we heard about record numbers of visitors to the Forbidden City (182,000 in a day!), and many other tourist destinations. A good time for us to be at home and discover some new sites around where we live.
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| Singing in Luxun Park |
As we strolled through Luxun park today we came across a big group of people singing, clapping, happily spending time together. To understand why we were drawn to the sight you need to know one thing first: (many) residents of Shanghai live by the motto
'me first'. There's a big lack of social cohesion. Family ties are very very important, but besides that nothing seems to bind people together. Traffic is an example of everyone trying to be first. No way someone will wait for me to cross the pedestrian crossing with a baby. More likely they'll honk and nearly drive into you. I could write another blog post about examples on this topic. Many reasons and ideas exist about the why and how of this lack of cohesion. No religions is one, a reaction to socialism is another.
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| In Luxun Park |
This being said, back to the park, and the group of singing people. Many with songbooks, mics, music instruments, taking it very seriously. We wondered, were these Christians? The music sounded like psalms. People knew the lyrics by heart, and the sharing spirit made me feel as if in church. We lingered a little longer, surprised, enjoying.
On our way out, someone caught up with us. His own singing is no very good, he said, but he like listen. They sing high of Mao Zedong, they sing praise, he explained. They are happy, it is nice. We had more questions than he had answers, but at least now we had something to speculate for the remaining walk. Was that nostalgia that we just experienced? Or were they singing praise of the communist party of today? Why? How?
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| Chineseposters.net |
2 comments:
Nice post sister! I also love the website where you got the poster of Mao from. Chineseposters.net makes me remember a lot about Chinese history. Wish they had wallpaper size pictures though.
Blush.. Forgot the credits for the website.. just added them!
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