China is the top of the top to roll out the welcome mat to foreign VIPs. It is a friendly country. Mr. Putin and other dignitaries were attending the SCO meetings (Shanghai Co-operation Organization) in Shanghai some days ago. You don’t want those VIPs having to face all those crowds when visiting the Bund and attending their meetings. So, Shanghai, out of respect for the guests, closed down good part of the streets, several metro stations and kindly gave our Shanghainese friends a mini “Golden Week”. A bit of unplanned five-day bonus to go away from the city, travel agencies were busy trying to ship out the citizens while the railways were trying to cope with 570,000 holiday travelers, according to China Daily. It would also guarantee not to have too much laundry drying in the open and mahjong players on the streets.
Rumors were strongly denied that Beijing was sending a team to learn from Shanghai, to prepare for 2008.

We appeal to Hollywood to follow the good example of China. Films should reflect on the positive sides of the country. Hollywood movies show too improper aspects of the USA: high criminality, gun fights, slow or corrupt police, dirty streets with rusting cars, graffiti, laundry drying on balconies, people playing cards on the streets, violent scenes, so many ugly things. Hollywood should promote abroad the image of the USA. Why not show only modern buildings, clean neighborhoods (Desperate Housewives and their famous Wisteria Lane is a positive example, as long as they don’t burn down their houses), friendly and fast-reacting police forces and all the nice things in “Mei Guo” (Beautiful Country = USA in Chinese).
We here are much more advanced. China cares about its image.
So, Mr. Tom Cruise, we don’t accept your version of Shanghai. Here we don’t have violent scenes and nobody plays mahjong on the street (I refer to China Daily), let not even think about drying clothes outside. We have laundry drying machines for that (OK, sometimes they don’t work because of the lack of energy in summer, but that’s exceptional).
Of course I am waiting for somebody to get me the 10 kuai unedited version of Mission Impossible III, not the sanitized version – I have been told by a friend the story seems to jump at times and she did not understand what was going on. Also, I want to see this mahjong stuff. What is it actually? Maybe they play it in the USA?
Not to wonder why we can buy all those pirated DVDs here: anti-US propaganda?
Now back to our CCTV series on kungfu and epic battles. Peaceful at least.

The people in charge here are really funny.
The film took off as a success (I did not see it, I’ll wait for a good, full version DVD at 10 kuai). The movie was expected to beat ticket sales of “Titanic”. And then – poof. Gone, just like the Titanic. Well, you see, we need to have more domestic movies in the cinemas (evidently not the ones that get international awards, they are not good for your morals). Of course, the powerful Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church (or something like that) did not like the movie. As we all know the country is now following in the conservative footsteps of the USA and the Church prevails here. No gay marriage, no abortions, etc. Of course you guys don’t know this because you read the malignant foreign press. Wait a bit and we have even neocons here. We sure don’t want “social instability” because of this blasphemous movie.
Of course the brisk ticket sales were only halted once the movie distributor had made its intended minimum profit – because of “declining ticket sales” according to some official sources.
Of course I don’t know what others know or possibly don’t know, but I know I will never really know all I have to know. That’s what Rumsfeld would say, I guess.