The Road of Rejuvenation: a lesson in Chinese history, according to the CPC

As I mentioned in my previous post about my visit to the Chinese National Museum, the one of the main exhibits, entitled "The Road to Rejuvenation," chronicles Chinese modern history from 1840 onwards. However, to call it it an historically accurate exhibit would be quite a stretch, a point highlighted in a New York Times article entitled, "At China's Grand New Museum, History Toes the Party Line."

Now of course, in general, national history museums of any country, not just China, are not the best places to go when searching for the most accurate historical accounts of a nation's history. However, the exhibit on modern Chinese history seems to take historical revisionism and blatant pro-Chinese Communist Party propaganda to a new level.

Inside the exhibit, which is aptly named, "The Road of Rejuvenation," you can find plenty of flaunting of what the CPC (the Communist Party of China) considers it's greatest achievements, including mementos from China's first voyage into space in 2008. But you'd be hard pressed to find any actual mention of any of their failures, such as The Great Leap Forward and the resulting famine, Tian'anmen Square Massacre or the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps the best part about this very biased exhibit however, is the very bombastic language used in their explanations. Many of the statements in the summaries and captions seem straight out of a bad Communist Party propaganda novel. Needless to say, I found many of them highly amusing and almost made my two hour wait in line worth it.

Unfortunately, my camera battery was dead so I have no (good) pictures to share with you, but I had my cell phone camera to help me record some of crazy things written in the exhibit.

Below are some quotes from the exhibit. I think there are some real gems in there and you'll find them as amusing as I did. Enjoy!

• "The Chinese nation is a great nation whose people are industrious, courageous, intelligent and peace-loving and have made indelible contributions to the progress of human civilization."

• "'The Road of Rejuvenation' is a permanent exhibition showcasing the explorations made by the Chinese people form all walks of life who, after being reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society..., rose in resistance against humiliation and misery, and tried in every way possible to rejuveniate the nation"

• "Today, the Chinese nation is standing firm in the east, facing a brilliant future of great rejuvenation. The long-cherished dream and aspiration of the Chinese people will surely come to reality."

• "...the imperial powers descended on China like a swarm of bees, looting our treasures and killing our people."

Thanksgiving Misconceptions

It's definitely very indicative how of just prevalent American culture is abroad when most of the non-Americans here at BNU (and the teachers) know of Thanksgiving, which for all intensive purposes a very American holiday.* Not only do they know of the holiday Thanksgiving, many of them knew that Thanksgiving is in November and includes a turkey. However beyond that, their knowledge of Thanksgiving was limited (not that I can blame them for that). But they did have some interesting ideas about what traditions were apart of the holiday:

On Thanksgiving, everyone tells the truth.
One of my classmates asked me earlier this week if it was tradition that at Thanksgiving everyone sits at the dinner table and tells the truth. At first, I was very perplexed by her question, until I figured out that she was most likely getting this idea from a number of US television shows and movies. In many television shows and movies that feature Thanksgiving, all the family drama comes out at the dinner table while the family is all gathered together. Although family drama rearing it's ugly head is not a Thanksgiving tradition in the United States, I do suspect that perhaps for some families, it might be almost be the equivalent to a tradition.

After we gather for Thanksgiving dinner, we exchange presents.
Several people asked if we exchanged gifts after Thanksgiving dinner and each time I was asked, I said no and was slumped why they would think that presents are vital to Thanksgiving. At first, I thought maybe they were getting American Christmas and Thanksgiving traditions confused from what they see in US films and television. However, after some further questioning, they simply explained that with name of "Thanksgiving," they figured the name referred to the giving of gifts and giving thanks in return. Despite being incorrect, I thought their conclusions did make sense if you hadn't had the whole pilgrims-and-Native-Americans story drilled into your brain for most of your childhood.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the tale of (American) Thanksgiving, it begins with pilgrims from England fleeing to what was then the colonies to avoid persecution. However, once they arrived in Plymouth Rock, the pilgrims had no idea how to grow food and survive in the colonies. As an act of kindness, the Native Americans living nearby at the time taught them how to grow food successfully in their new home. As the tale has it, at the end of the first harvest, all the pilgrims and Native Americans gathered together for a big feast to celebrate the harvest, thus beginning the story of Thanksgiving.

It must be noted though that Thanksgiving wasn't recognized as a national holiday officially until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln announced his Thanksgiving Proclamation, which declared the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day. However, in 1941, Thanksgiving was officially moved to the third day of Thanksgiving in hopes that lengthening the Christmas season would boost the economy.

And as for the term, "Thanksgiving," it supposedly refers to the pilgrims giving thanks to the Native Americans for helping them out with their crops.

Anyways, that's enough history (or at least, fabled history), for now. Here's a picture a friend sent to me that I think perfectly sums up what I think is key to any Thanksgiving (along with family and friends)....

Eating!

*Not #1: Yes, I do know Canadians have Thanksgiving too, along with a few other places. But for this message of this post, Canadian Thanksgiving (and the others) are irrelevant. I hope I didn't offend any Canadians out there.

*Note #2: I also do know that the whole Native American-pilgrims/Native Americans-colonists relationship is not as cheery as the Thanksgiving story suggests. However, for the sake of being concise and not opening a whole other can of worms, we'll just put those facts aside.