Irony...the word you're looking for is irony

China has been become ironic. Not in the way that hipsters are self-consciously ironic, that would be annoying. China is ironic because it's crazy amount of develop has caused thing that shouldn't be together to clash. I don't know if anyone notices it, but it's hilarious, at least to me.

First, there is the luxury stores. They are all over China. Every large city AT LEAST has a Maserati or Aston Martin dealership and most large cities either have a Bentley or Rolls Royce dealer, or both. Then there are the luxury clothing and accessories stores. You name it, they have it. Everywhere. It's kind of disgusting.

You want giant Prada store? China's got MANY!

What's ironic about this is that they developed this nice big street with all these high end stores with nice, large public areas with green space. (This is in Hangzhou by the way...one of the most beautiful places in the world). But guess who's out in front? Old people.

Hundreds of senior citizen gather in these open spaces in the afternoon. To do what? Sing old Communist propaganda music. Like clockwork, old folks come around and sing ballads to Mao and songs about taking down the "capitalist roaders". In front of all the high end stores. Can't make this shit up.

Does it stop there? Of course not! There is also the "Confucius" Temple in Nanjing. I went because I thought it looked pretty on Wikitravel. What do you get when you get there? This:

Confucius, now with LED lights!

Brought to you by KIA

Guess who paid for this? KIA Motors! So, in front of the temple for a guy that said, roughly, that being a merchant is not an honorable profession and no gentlemen should wish to be a merchant, KIA Motors has decided to deck Confucius out with some LED lighting! Oh yeah!

There's also Starbucks. It's everywhere. It's as prevalent in China as in the US, which really irritates me since Chinese people don't drink coffee. It's not something we do, traditionally, but whatever, we developed a habit. One of the things that Starbucks does really well is marketing their brand. Everyone knows the Starbucks logo and they paste it everywhere. They do have a Chinese name "星巴克", which is basically a transliteration by sound, you can see this in Chinatown here. But, they decided to put this up in Chengdu:

Yup...Starbucks has gone Chinese, with a Chinese 1700's style store front and a traditional Chinese signage. Yay? Not sure... much rather you do you. I can REALLY live without a Starbucks with a traditional Chinese style sign, it's called a bian or 匾.

China's development has created a weird bunch of shit all colliding into one place. You still have a lot, A LOT, of people that were educated and grew up in a Communist society, while modern China embraces the capitalist roader. This can lead to some crazy, ironic, weird, and unintentionally hilarious things. One more thing, since 90% of people ask "Who is General Tsou?", "Did he really invent the chicken?". The answer is this is General Tsou (左宗棠, Zuo zhongtang):

He was Viceroy of Liangjiang

He wasn't a general, he was a viceroy.

And NO! He didn't invent the fucking chicken, some dude in Chinatown NYC did in the 70's.