Christmas celebrations still can be found in Beijing – with either a religious or commercial tone – while some other Chinese cities are banning them
The familiar trappings of Christmas were gone from some Chinese cities, but at a shopping centre in central Beijing, the popular English Christmas carol that six-year-old Sisi sang with her kindergarten classmates made the season bright in the nation’s capital.
“We wish you a merry Christmas…” the little girl sang.
“We all learn English and we all can sing this song,” she said proudly, shaking her head to show off her reindeer antler hair band.
Christmas in China 2018 is less cheerful and bustling than in other years, as the ruling Communist Party stresses “traditional Chinese values and cultures” amid a growing tide of cultural nationalism stoked by the country’s trade war with the United States.
Christmas decorations reportedly have been banned in at least four cities this year, including Langfang, about 55km (34 miles) south of Beijing, where shop windows were stripped of Christmas stickers and streets were kept free of Christmas banners and lights.
The seasonal humbug follows similar outbreaks of anti-Christmas rhetoric in 2014 and 2017. It appears not to be centrally organised, but rather a spreading resistance to foreign festivals by local authorities seeking to align themselves with a changing outlook in the Chinese government.
The capital itself seems free from such bans, though. As a South China Morning Post reporter found, people were continuing to mark Christmas across the sprawling metropolis in ways both commercial and religious, though for the most part Christmas has largely continued to be a shopping festival in Beijing and other cities.
At the shopping centre, where a Christmas sale of Lego toy building bricks was underway, kindergarten crooners Sisi and friends eyed Lego items they said they coveted as Christmas gifts.
