This 60th anniversary parade that is building in Beijing doesn’t sound very friendly for a celebration. Partly that is to do with the tanks and the rockets but they are mostly just bad taste and whiting the walls of the tyres does not make them any friendlier either. The problem with this parade is that it gives you the feeling that it does not like you and you had better keep well out of its way.
In the last week, we have seen pictures on television of the parade being born and growing in practice sessions, mostly in the dark. Even a May Queen’s carnival coach would look ominous if you rolled it through the night. I have seen the Pasadena Rose Parade floats backed up and waiting in side streets before dawn and they looked like the Wehrmacht about to move on Poland.
Its not that the Beijing parade wants to burst loose and maraud. To the contrary, you sense a fear that it is us who want to burst out of the side streets and maraud all over the parade. So there are the policemen, paunchy from a surfeit of back handers, ambling in small circles at kerbsides and corners and rank upon rank of white police sedans and vans which sometimes move a few yards and switch on their raspberry ripple roof lights and then stop again because there is nowhere for them to go. They must stand where they are in case we burst out.
We won’t have much chance for that. The parade does not like the feel of us at all so we are being kept well back from preparations by bollards and link fences and blocked streets and totally emptied sidewalks where we would be easy to see and scream at. Anyway, all the shops are shutting and the offices are being emptied and the buses are being halted and even the trains underground are being stopped less they leap up through concrete and sod and snap at the parade. So, there is no reason for you to be anywhere near the parade, which will make the parade feel a lot easier.
Of course, people will have to be seen watching the parade by people on television. Those people will do so from stands where they will be admitted by ticket, which they will get after they have been chosen by the parade. If any tourist fancies running out of their hotel to the kerbside , waving and cheering at the parade as it passes them by, they had better brace themselves for an hour or two with paunchy policemen in the back of a raspberry ripple van.
It is not that the parade is hostile to us. It is simply nothing to do with us or we with it. It has a very serious task to perform. It has to follow its route without incident , making a lot of very important and not very jolly points as it goes about the greatness of a nation, its success, its wealth, its intention to soar and how nobody had better mess with it.
There is very little fun in that and it is simply unnecessary for unapproved individuals to buzz around making unpredictable noises or faces at the parade. It would be very unsettling. If we really do want to watch it we can, nay we should, in fact please, please, will we stay at home and watch it on the television?
We’ll do a bit better than that for the parade. We will take it as an item on the news bulletin.
