China's National Day Exodus Heads for Japan
It's a paradox of a government denounces another while its people love it enough to come to visit it. It's about China visâ€àâ€vis Japan of course. In the international scene, China calls Japan names picking on Japan tirelessly on issues of historical awareness Nanking, etc. Japan is made a target of insinuations on every occasion China so chooses. One might assume then that its people, the Chinese public, must inevitably be hostile to Japan and would never dare visit Japan.
So, it's a paradox of the century. For so many of the supposedly anti-Japanese Chinese the 7-day holiday streak around China's National Day is getting to be a welcome chance to visit their "favorite country"- Japan. The Guangzhou Airport in Guangdong Province is jammed up with outgoing tourists heading for Japan; Japan-bound flights are nearly full every day.
The Japanese Consulate General in Guangdong Province issued visa 40% more than the same month last year. The Chinese economy is said to be staggering but is it really? Some Chinese tourists at the Guangzhou Airport think otherwise: "No, I don't feel that way at all. No."
Many choose sea cruise. A liner bound for the South Korea and Japan was loaded when it left Shanghai on August 28 with 4000 passengers and the 2000 cabins were all full.
A paradox. China as a political entity is anti-Japanese and China as a nation is the font of Japan. Beijing talks about historical awareness; the Changs and Wangs swarm over Japanese rice-cookers in Akihabara. Chinese tourists come to Japan and shop at random in enormous quantities because they have learned from experience that Japanese commodities are superior in quality. What if they learned from experience that Japan is no country they should stand against? What if Beijing one day found out such anti-Japanese trump cards as "historical awareness" and "Nanking" would not fool its own people?
China is after all an imaginary animal with the head of a proud lion and the body of a hungry hippo.