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A new hotpot restaurant in Chongqing that named itself after the Wenchuan earthquake on May 12 has been shut down by authorities after a huge public outcry. The Chinese characters used in the name of the restaurant "512震宗锅" (or "512 Quake Pot") was a homophonous pun for "authentic hotpot". Netizens have called it the "most shameless hotpot restaurant in Chongqing" and the owner of the restaurant has apparently been sent in for "criticism and re-education". Just two weeks ago, a Chongqing magazine was also shut down by the propaganda bureau for publishing "sexy" earthquake pictures in a special earthquake edition.
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Being sent of "re-education" sounds a bit ominous. I get the image of a building with 2 doors. People going in are normal and people coming out our Stepford Wives.
Group think, group speak and group behavior have been taken to a whole new level.
I'm just waiting for a foreign food vendor to sell the "earth shattering flavor" of their product or an over the counter medicine to quiet "that quake in your stomach".
This earthquake is big business. The government tries to secure enough material for temporary housing, and bang!, up go the prices. Double, triple, quadruple, the sky is the limit for prices.
Earthquake restaurants are just suckers on the periphery of a big feeding frenzy.
Reeducation means 'reform through labour'. You can be taken in for up to 2 years for reform through labour (without formal trial) in remote places such as Qinghai. Usually, this is special treatment for hookers, pimps, followers of cults, generally people whose misdeeds are not listed in the criminal code or whose crimes are associated with pollution of the pure socialist mind.
This is not a Chinese invention. Like practically everything else in Chinese socialism, this is just a one-to-one copy of Soviet installations. In the USSR these places were called Gulag.
I really hope that reeducation bit is false. The public outcry is understandable, but I can't see how the owner's choice of name for the restaurant be a crime in a legal sense, or even a more vague crime against the nation. Oh wait! You DONT have to be convicted of a crime to be sent for reeducation. How silly of me.