A university in
northwestern China has banned Christmas,
calling it a "kitsch" foreign celebration
unbefitting of the country's own traditions
and making its students watch propaganda
films instead, media said on Thursday.
The state-run Beijing News said that the
Modern College of Northwest University,
located in Xian, had strung up banners around
the campus reading "Strive to be outstanding
sons and daughters of China, oppose kitsch
Western holidays" and "Resist the expansion
of Western culture".
A student told the newspaper that they would
be punished if they did not attend a
mandatory three-hour screening of
propaganda films, which other students said
included one about Confucius, with teachers
standing guard to stop people leaving.
"There's nothing we can do about it, we can't
escape," the student was quoted as saying.
An official microblog belonging to one of the
university's Communist Party's committees
posted comments calling for students not to
"fawn on foreigners" and pay more attention
to China's holidays, like Spring Festival.
"In recent years, more and more Chinese have
started to attach importance to Western
festivals," it wrote.
"In their eyes, the West is more developed
than China, and they think that their holidays
are more elegant than ours, even that Western
festivals are very fashionable and China's
traditional festivals are old fashioned."
Christmas is not a traditional festival in
officially atheist China but is growing in
popularity, especially in more metropolitan
areas where young people go out to celebrate,
give gifts and decorate their homes.
Western culture, particularly in the form of
U.S. pop culture, is wildly popular with young,
educated Chinese, which occasionally causes
discomfort for the generally quite conservative
ruling Communist Party.
Wenzhou, a city in the wealthy eastern
province of Zhejiang, has banned all
Christmas activities in schools and
kindergartens, the official Xinhua news agency
reported. Inspectors would make sure rules
are enforced, it added.
The rules are meant to counteract an
"obsession" with Western holidays at the
expense of Chinese ones, an official at the
city's education bureau told Xinhua.
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