Welcome to Tiαnαnmen Square. Note the museum on the east side and the Great Hall of the People to the west. The increasingly skinny old fellow in the glass case in the center used to run the place. Oh yeah, and on Jυne 4, 1989 nothing happened here. It was just another summer day in the Olympic City. Birds chirped. People sang. Deng Xiaoping played a round of bridge with the boys.
That’s basically the take as Harper Collins borrows the CCP’s airbrush and plans to sanitize its newest guidebook on China.
From the BBC Magazine (blocked in China):
Hotels are a must. So are tips on the local cuisine. A few key phrases. Some maps. A list of the best tourist sites and their opening hours. Perhaps some cultural do and don’ts. All are key ingredients of a typical guide book. And yet many also feel the need to offer something more – a grounding in the history of the place that can help flesh out its culture, architecture and art. Take Nuremberg. You could describe the city’s medieval architecture, its beautiful perch on the River Pegnitz and its role in the German Renaissance.
But many travellers might