【09.11.22 泰晤士报】China’s spirits hold Mickey Mouse at bay

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China’s spirits hold Mickey Mouse at bay
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6926942.ece

November 22, 2009 Michael Sheridan Zhaohang in China


The Shangai park will rival Disneyland in Hong Kong, but is opposed by local villagers (David Roark)

Mickey Mouse has met an unexpected obstacle on his chirpy march to bring Walt Disney’s consumer culture into China — ancestor worship.

Amid rice fields and bamboo groves south of Shanghai, hundreds of villagers are resisting plans to dig up family graves in order to make way for the first Disneyland in mainland China.

“It’s harder than persuading them to move out of their homes,” lamented one of three local officials charged with the task.

“A house just equals money but to disturb the forefathers is a trauma for generations.”

Officials are using tact and cajolery to avoid spoiling the news that more than £2 billion is to be lavished on what Disney calls “a Magic Kingdom theme park with characteristics tailored to the Shanghai region”.

There is already a storm of controversy over the decision to let Disney into China, with critics tearing into the project in official newspapers and on the internet. Some have denounced the insidious influence of Hollywood. Others say the state is wasting money on a bad investment.

Mickey and his friends will be socially divisive, according to one writer in the Workers’ Daily newspaper. “Rich and poor kids alike enjoy Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but only the rich kids can afford a ticket so it will be a paradise for them and heartbreaking for the poor,” the writer said.

Many contributors to the websites of Chinese television and the People’s Daily complain that Disney fare is an insult to China’s ancient culture. One commentator went so far as to predict that Disney’s seductive array of characters would destroy the nascent Chinese cartoon industry.

Typical comments republished by the state news agency, Xinhua, labelled Disneyland and its products as “valueless” and “destined to turn us Chinese into consumer fetishists and cultural slaves”.

Such elitist concerns are remote from the folk in this cluster of rural villages, where generations went on working the land while the dynamic metropolis of Shanghai surged up over the last century, just 30 miles to the north.

Most people in Zhaohang could hardly believe their luck when the Shanghai government announced on November 4 that it had reached a joint venture deal with the famously hard bargainers from Disney to build the theme park in their area.

“I’m looking forward to moving for free into a new modern apartment and being able to go to the cinema or karaoke any time I like,” said a 25-year-old mother named Guo, cradling her one-year-old boy, “and when he’s bigger it’ll amuse my son.”

Two men called Zhao were standing outside their farmhouse, awaiting government valuers who will determine how much compensation about 4,000 people will receive in addition to their free homes.

The younger Zhao, 27, muttered that the amount they would be offered would be too low, but officials will have the last word since all land in China belongs to the state and may only be leased.

The elder Zhao, 60, was troubled by more than money and house moving. “They came round more than a month ago to tell us that we had to dig up our ancestors’ bones,” he said. “It’s difficult, because our forefathers have been sleeping under the earth for so long that it is cruel to awaken them.”

All over the countryside the deceased rest in peace near the fields and fishponds they tended in life, their graves chosen according to feng shui, the traditional art of geomancy, for harmonious concord with the winds and waters.

Officials want to transfer the remains to a public cemetery near Shanghai’s ultra-modern Pudong airport, where millions of visitors are expected to arrive en route to Disneyland when it opens in 2014.

It will be another flourish for China’s commercial capital as it rushes to outshine its rivals in Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Local reports suggest that the park will offer the lowest Disneyland admission prices anywhere. Yet it ought to make a profit because there are now millions of people enjoying incomes of more than £5,000 a year in the booming coastal region.

That income level is roughly where Japan was when it hosted the 1964 Olympics and showed off its economic miracle at Expo ’70 in Osaka.

For China, the 2008 Olympics and Expo 2010 in Shanghai mark similar strides towards greatness.

President Barack Obama dropped into Shanghai last week to lend his support and, for the city’s leaders, Disneyland is the icing on the fairy cake.

Young people in the villages that will vanish can hardly wait to move out, driven by a restless urge to travel and spend that has more than doubled domestic tourism over the past decade.

Yet the impact of modernity on places like Zhaohang and on people like the elder Zhao is so stark that even officialdom is trying its best to ease the transition.

“We have to handle this very carefully,” explained an official who was talking to old people in a community hall.

“They all believe that the ancestors’ graves are determined by feng shui and will influence the fortunes of their descendants.”

So far the local government has won over only 50 out of 1,000 families, said an official, who added that it “did not want to spoil the atmosphere”.

All names of villagers in this article have been changed to protect them