While (the Chinese) Elle Deco didn’t even make it to the newsstands, the latest (English version of the) National Geographic, which is a special issue on China, is available in the English bookstores. However when you read it you’ll notice that some of the pages had been glued together; the article “Mao Now” (page 100-101) on artists using the Chairman as an objet d’art (ironic for someone who decreed “there is no such thing as art for art’s sake”) and again page 128 & 129 which are dedicated to Censorship (sic!) “Cutting off Dissent”. Two maps have also been banned: one with the geographical distribution of minority groups “Beyond Han” and another map of China, which on a first glance didn’t seem too controversial since Taiwan was marked as being part of China, but maybe the red dotted lines marking “boundary claimed by China” near the Indian’s and Bhutanese’s borders were to blame.
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| You have to imagine the censors gluing one by one those pages in all 100+ issues! |
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