There is something to be said for taking a break from the stressful work week to point a gun at a colleague, and contemplate the glorious achievements of the Communist party of China. Or at least Beijing seems to think so.
The party has invested Rmb9bn ($1.5bn) over the past decade in developing tourist sites where the Chinese salaryman can go to indulge in a spot of revolutionary-era tunnel warfare, or have his picture taken with someone who looks uncannily like Mao Zedong. It’s called “red tourism”, and Beijing hopes it will give today’s comrades a better understanding of the revolutionary history of the motherland – and the party that made it great.
In the past, much of that money would have gone into building dreary mausoleums stuffed with dusty memorabilia from the past century’s wars between Chinese Communists and Nationalists, and between China and Japan. Now the party is finally getting the point that it’s very hard simply to bore people into patriotism; they learn the revolutionary lessons of “red tourism” a lot better when they’re having fun.