China trip

Since the Padre hasn't already, I'll inform you that we're back in this decadent capitalist hell, where greed and natural Western indolence have broken the revolutionary fervor of the working classes. While in the People's Republic, we looked upon the gaudy palaces and prideful painted monuments of the corrupt old feudal regime of the emperors, seeming to speak to us with all the tragic irony of Shelley, " 'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains". We also saw the magnificent Great Hall of the People, the largest auditorium in the world, empty of people at the moment but filled with a palpable anticipation for the National Congress, the gathering each year when representatives from all over the People's Republic will fill the hall to voice their enthusiastic support for the policy decisions made by the Communist Party of China! We also saw Shanghai, the Pearl of the East, once a bastion of Western capitalist imperialism but today a gleaming modern monument to the undeniable triumph of the ideals of Chairman Mao; glass spires soar into the sky, built not by the money of the sick and decadent elite but by the hands of good, hardy and true Chinese laborers for the benefit of their Communist brothers-in-arms in the entertainment, communications, and financial sectors. Thus China today: a country under a Communist system so pure and so successful that they call it "special socialism".