Let’s get tanked! Wish list for the October 1 parade
A contest Dukakis would support.
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Barbed wire, shouting comrades, and tanks are making me a bit nervous these days. Why not lighten the mood and think about what we would like to see in the October 1 parade?
I would like to see a fleet of Xiali taxis, with their fapiao machines sychronized, amplified, and providing militant background noise as they crank out smudged receipts. I would like to see thousands of people in Fuwa outfits and armed to the teeth. Even better, I would like to see the October 1 holiday have its own mascots – since the Fuwa originally were called “The Friendlies“, I suggest “The PLAyies.”
I know others have dwelled on this topic. These include chadcat on Twitter, who wrote that he, “would like to see the Sanlitun Carlsberg girls goosestepping in the parade.”
So, what do you want to see? Leave a reasonable comment, one that doesn’t get my site blocked, and I’ll enter your name into a draw for a nice bottle of laowai baijiu, otherwise known as vodka. (Note: You have to live in Beijing and be willing to pick the prize up in Sanlitun to win.)
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Howabout the Ernai Brigade of 20-something girls with their elderly “Uncles,” riding on the backs of convertible BMW Z3′s…
I’d like to see a small army of three-wheeled cycles stacked 4 meters high with styrofoam, cardboard and Watson’s water bottles.
Actually what i would like to see in the parade is for the soldiers walking in “Beijing order”. It would be great fun seeing them traspassing the parade,or walking randomly, without even noticing that they shouldn’t walk there. Throw in a couple of guys in their cars(or tanks), driving 0.004 km/h talking on mobile phone and turning somewhere right(ish) or left(ish) (with the officials in their cars behind blowing their mighty horns in melody) and the parade would be a great showcase of Chinese culture.
A cadre of old men with bird cages on Flying Pigeon bicycles.
A mob of old women biligerantly yelling at the assembled masses that they should be wearing long underwear, preferably 3 layers of it.
A bunch of little boys in split pants on a float creating a human fountain.
An army of ayis dragging dirty brooms down ChangAn Dajie.
Hey, let’s not leave the foreigners out of this.
I would like to see 888 leather-jacketed middle-aged males on muffler-less motorcycles with sidecars, revving along the parade route to “Born to be Wild.”
Cheers, boyce
Well then, I would like to add a whole bus load of touists carrying little red books, tatoos of Chinese charcters that don’t say what they think they do, cans of diet coke and video cameras throwing 100rmb bills and statements about how glorious the local culture is to the parade.
Sadly I have to self-disqualify myself from this contest, i already drink too much laowai baijiu.
the xiali’s beat out your suggestion of a lee kai-fu float, huh?
I would like to see a couple tour group squadrons, complete with matching tshirts and hats, following a flag-bearing, megaphone-toting guide yelling at them to hurry up and take fewer pictures.
1. A Mao Zedong impersonator doing the Matthew Broderick/German Day Parade bit from Ferris Bueller’s day off.
2. Be sure that the Peking University Student Union is placed in the parade order right in front of the tanks. (What, too soon?)
3. Hire a few Freudian psychologists to do the color commentary on CCTV. “Wow, look at the size of Hu Jintao’s missile…”
I want to see this.
Because every party should have a cake…
Giant effigies of the Dalai Lama being pilloried, like that ‘Hunt the Jew’ festival in Borat. Of course, the local folks might not get the point of the satire…
I suppose it’s too much to hope for a column of long-haired young men in white shirts carrying shopping bags to walk down Chang’an Dajie in the opposite direction and stop the tanks?