China’s 60th: The view from Suifenhe

So the big 60th birthday celebration in Beijing seems to have gone off well. From the parts that I caught on TV, the parade looked pretty badass. The goose-stepping female soldiers in minidresses and knee-high boots? Holy smokes. There were some sour notes: That the Xinjiang float was dedicated to the “unity of all the ethnic groups there” kind of rubbed me the wrong way – I mean, do they have to rub it in? And the English-language broadcast included little recorded vignettes of children saying what they wanted to be when they grew up. And when the little girl said “I want to be a journalist and record China’s glory through my camera,” it seemed like not quite the way all of us would define a journalist’s job.

The celebrations here in Suifenhe, where I arrived this morning from Vladivostok, were pretty muted. I thought the city might be shut down, but it seemed to generally be business as usual. This is a city of about 200,000 mainly dedicated to trade with Russia, and the amount of bustle here – even on a national holiday – probably exceeds that in all the five cities in Russia I visited, put together.

The most notable sign of the holiday was that most TVs in shops, my hotel lobby, etc. were tuned to the parade in Beijing, and there were Chinese flags everywhere.

There were also some fireworks, but my limited experience in China has taught me that the Chinese need little excuse for fireworks, so I don’t know how special that was. There was a flag-raising ceremony earlier in the morning that I missed, and some performances on the main square, like these acrobats:

But unlike in Beijing, the rain in Suifenhe wasn’t controlled and not long after I took that photo, rain forced everyone to leave and the performance was off.

The person arranging my interviews explained that because this isn’t a traditional holiday, most people don’t take it too seriously and so continue to do business. But while business went on as usual, government apparently did not. The guy in the local government I wanted to interview couldn’t meet today: he was drinking, I was told, and would have to meet tomorrow.