China report-Bye Bye Beijing

I tried to post thie earlier but I was blocked...

So far the comics I see are mostly Japanese.Or Chinese pirated
copies of Japanese comics, mostly illegal.The other comics I see are
basically Pooh and Disney comics---blarg. They fucking love Disney
here. They are all bagged so I couldn't browse them. The Chinese
prefer the Japanese comics like everyone else. Last night while
resting after a long day in the Forbidden City the CCTV news ran a
story about the Death Note comic the goverment is having a tizzy
over. They are going around to various stores and confiscating the
movie adapted from the comic and the comics and were interviewing
little kids, kids way to young to even want to read it, these kids
would be more into Narruto.

It was a way to sort of "trump up charges." The goverment says
Deathnote is making kids juvinile delincquents, ignoring their
homework, etc., much like Wartham did in the 50's. I find it really
funny to see the controversy. I think it's a straw dog, the fact is
they are really looking for something to blame and a comic about a
kid who can write peoples name into a mystical book causing them to
die probbaly gets on somebody's nerves.

Too much wishful thinking. Or maybe a bit too close to home, you
know, names in books of people to be offed...

On another quick note I have mixed feelings about Forbidden City, it
was cool and really cheesey at the same time, a real tourist trap and
the way it's sort of set up, is, well, a bit disrespectful and it was
dirty. Unlike the reports I read a while back, there is no actual
Starbucks inside TFC, but plenty of chines run cafes, the Starbucks
is somewhere outside, we never saw it though. It is amazing to stand
in a place that was built in 1400 though, the craftsmanship was very
high, but I feel many chinese don't hold it in as high reguard, there
was a lot of trash even though they had the zillion worker bees out
cleaning constantly. Sometimes people suck.

We are off to Kunming in a few hours. I didn't make it to the great
wall this time as we had a lot of social engagements, but we did do
Tiananmen Square yesterday too.

I'll keep looking for comics though. I loved my time here in Beijing, the great people I have met, friends now for sure. there is so much to see you need a month here alone. I want to see the old Beijing, the real China, the places just off the beaten track near the Forbidden City were far more interesting to me, they were full of real chinese, not fat tourists ( me included) snapping picks, crowding over each other. They are some rude assholes here sometimes though

Mike