Cultural Revolution Dinner Theater: weirdest dinner in Beijing

Andydeemer sez, "One of the weirdest dining experiences in China involves reliving the pain, poverty, and political madness of the Cultural Revolution. I just posted some video of this weeping, singing, flag-waving bizarro eatery..."

"Some people remember those years fondly," said Reverb. "Our mothers had a very nice time during the cultural revolution. They traveled all over the country because the trains were free to ride. They walked to Beijing to see Chairman Mao. It took a month to get there. All the people would walk arm in arm down the street, singing revolutionary songs, and E.T.'s mom even saw Chairman Mao. They are happy when they remember these times."
And remembering was going on. The waitresses all wore braids and bangs, the mandatory haircut of the day, and were dressed as red guards, the student army force run by Mao's psychotic wife. The walls were smashed, representing perhaps the years of war, or -- more likely -- the destruction of the four olds (the red guard were urged to smash anything old.) Revolutionary posters, some depicting big-nosed Americans being jammed with a bayonet, plastered the walls. And red flags, made of chopsticks taped together and a ripped shred of red cloth, were distributed to every table.

Relive the Cultural Revolution (aka The Weirdest Dinner Theater in Beijing) (Thanks, Andydeemer!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Nostalgia is amazing.

This restaurant makes me think of “Hitler on Ice!”.
Anonymous

A perfect example of why capitalism endures: it can turn anything, even the most anti-capitalist events, into a spectacle for profit! How many people died during from the “Cultural Revolution” either summarily killed or from indirect effects from the disruptions it created? All this make me think that it probably needs just a few more years to turn the death camps into a paying weekend experience!
Jonathan Badger

This sort of thing has been popular in the former East Germany for years — they call it “Ostalgie”. You can’t understand why things like “Goodbye, Lenin!” are popular movies without it
- turn_self_off
  
  Mussolini is still talked about as the guy that made Italian trains run on time. For every evil, there is some benefit. The social safety-net, if you did not rattle the cage, of the soviet states where quite something from what i understand. It is one of the few systems that seems to have put as much focus on the mind as on the body.
zapan

Chinese sure still are adepts of the “smash everything old” doctrine. When they visit Paris, instead of visiting historical monuments, they swarm duty-free shops, cabarets and chinese-only restaurants, because “they have no interest in decrepit old houses and stone rubbles”. They also don’t have any concept of public hygiene, and you can keep track of chinese tourist groups by their abundant littering.
- monopole
  
  Ye Gods! They are even horning in on our “Ugly American” franchise!
- Anonymous
  
  Right, all 1.5 billion of them are exactly the same. That’s something you could more accurately generalise to every single package tour trundling around a city.
  
  Funnily enough, when I was in Paris, I couldn’t get within 10 metres of the Mona Lisa on account of the endless swarm of tourists (of all nationalities, Chinese included) pointing their cellphone cameras at it.
Anonymous

If the foods bad do they get the chef out front for some self-critique?…
millie fink

Oh look, it’s more of those weird Orientals, doing things all different and stuff from us normal people!!!!

*yawn*
EricT

I think I’ll wait until they open a Kristallnacht-themed Dave and Buster’s.

I hear the Khmer Rouge playpen has a ball pit of human skulls.
JhmL

Look everyone, it’s Tom Joad!
lewis stoole

it looks like a dinner theater version of “the east is red”, which by the way is a beautiful movie musical found on the internet archive.

http://www.archive.org/details/The_East_is_Red

culture clash is fun.
SkullHyphy

The trains were free to ride and they walked for a month to Beijing? Why?
RangerGordon

The Cultural Revolution was — needless to say — a major event in Chinese culture. A CR-themed restaurant may be surprising to our eyes, but consider it in context: Is it any more strange than, say, a Wild West-themed steakhouse in America? Or a 1950s-themed diner?

Just visiting a Hard Rock Cafe is probably an equally surreal experience for Chinese tourists in the U.S.
- millie fink
  
  Yes, it is more strange–it’s “weird,” or exotic, cuz they’re Orientals, you see. They’re just not normal. Like us, you see.
  - Anonymous
    
    Really, this doesn’t seem weird or exotic. If anything it makes China seem more like the Western world. They just have their own version of incredibly tacky dinner theatre. Shows that no matter where you go, civilization loves kitch.
    
    Near where I grew up there was a Medieval Times and a Pirate dinner theatre. Remember when medieval armies would come marching into town, kill the men and burn the village? How about when pirates would rape and kill whatever they could? It’s pretty easy to co-opt something that was horrible to experience at the time into something fun if it makes a good spectacle.
  - Dean Pickles
    
    @Millie — I think a Stasi-themed restaurant, or a Slavic ethnic cleansing restaurant, would be just as strange. It has little to do with the fact that they’re Chinese, and more to do with having a dinner celebrating (not one, but) two of the most terrible political movements in China’s recent history. It’s a little odd, don’t you think?
    
    I think Wild West is a poor comparison, or the 50s. These were events that scarred the nation _so much_ that they gave birth to a form of officially-sanctioned literature known as Scar Literature, during the 80s. While some did enjoy the time, it was hard for most. (One friend of mine, her grandparents had owned land. As retribution for this, my friend’s parents were both hung from the ceiling by their rear-tied hands, and beaten at length. Stories like this are everywhere here.)
    
    A couple of these Cultural Revolution restaurants opened up during the late 90s, but it was still too soon. People were horrified by them. They (were) closed soon after.
    
    @SkullHyphy, good question. I assumed at the time it was just for the glory of walking through China, experiencing the countryside, singing patriotic songs. They were kids, so it was somewhat like backpacking through Europe might be. But I’ve texted Reverb, asking…
Atrum

I’d like to remind everyone of the number of WWII movies and video games that have been made, and are still being made. Also, Civil War Reenactments, as someone else mentioned.
Anonymous

They left out the part where people were so hungry they ate grass, spiders and dirt while their leader kidnapped teenage girls for orgies in his palaces.

Don’t see what’s so weird about this though. It’s like a tango show in Argentina, or a civil war reenactment in the U.S.
- Anonymous
  
  dang it and all this gooodness is anonymous? Add human flesh to the bugs…
Anonymous

OK, it’s official. My Wii browser can’t do rtsp, whatever new or exotic embedding form Cory is using, or any video format other than the most basic youtube, and forget about HTML5.

I guess I get no more videos from boing except for Xeni’s youtube links.

As a small additional rant, why does every site on the internet redirect Wii-Opera to the mobile site, but not DS-Opera, which is in more dire need? Grrrr
pinehead

Whatever. At least they got the haircuts right; Chinese girls often do look pretty great with braids and fringe.
Antinous / Moderator

Just wait until they open a strip club with performances of The White (Pubic-)Haired Girl.
Anonymous

I am thinking something along the lines of a theme restaurant based on “the disturbing picture of official compliance in the systematic killing and cannibalization of individuals in the name of political revolution and ‘class struggle’.” This during the Cultural Revolution as well. It could be precious…