Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

My wife and I went to the National Museum of the First Communist Party Congress of China in Shanghai yesterday. On balance, quite a good museum. It was well put together and well lit with a lot of different period items. Bio’s of each of the participants in the first CCCP, clothing, contracts, weapons, stamps and books from the years about 1911 to 1920. Only 3 RMB per person to get in--foreigners pay the same price as Chinese too.But the three things that stuck with me are: First, my wife thought Mao Zedong was quite handsome when he was young (at least the wax manikin was). Not sure why I’m still thinking about this one...hmmmm…Second, according to the diagrams, the destruction of China in the 1900’s was 100% caused by foreign countries and foreign ideas—no mention at all about the hundreds of years of corruption of the Qing dynasty. Nothing new here, right? As a resident of China I’d all heard this a thousand times before. But something about physically seeing it both in print and with all the accompanying artifacts made it a little more personal than some factory manager telling it to me over dinner and too many beers.Third, the entire neighborhood was purchased and restored by a Hong Kong developer a number of years ago. So the CCCP museum is right next to a Starbucks, next to a British pub, next to a French Cabaret, next to a Thai Restaurant. Across the street was a 4 story glass and steel mall with an international cinema and scores of Euro name-brand fashions. We bought a pack of "Shanghai-100 Years" playing cards in the museum gift shop and then shopped at Shanghai Tang (originally a Hong Kongese company that’s since been purchased by a US group), bought some French make up and had a drink at Starbucks while we waited for the rain to stop.The irony was so thick you could cut it with an original Small Dagger Society knife.