chapotraphouse

giant Marx head red tidal wave scene

apparently it's real

I felt my forehead. The dances continued, sleeves swirling, skirts rippling. A man came onstage to sing a song in Chinese, which was translated on the screen behind him. “We follow Dafa, the Great Way,” he began, singing about a Creator who saved mankind and made the world anew. “Atheism and evolution are deadly ideas. Modern trends destroy what makes us human,” he sang. At the end of the song, the row of older white people sitting behind me clapped fervently. In the final dance number, a group of Falun Dafa followers, who wore blue and yellow and clutched books of religious teachings, battled for space in a public square with corrupt youth. (Their corruption was evident because they were wearing black, looking at their cell phones, and, in the case of two men, holding hands.) Chairman Mao appeared, and the sky turned black; the city in the digital backdrop was obliterated by an earthquake, then finished off by a Communist tsunami. A red hammer and sickle glowed in the center of the wave. Dazed, I rubbed my eyes and saw a huge, bearded face disappearing in the water.

“Was that . . . ?” I said to my brother, wondering if I needed to go to the hospital.

“Karl Marx?” he said. “Yeah, I think that was a tsunami with the face of Karl Marx.”