
We went to eat at a Cultural Revolution themed restaurant in Shijiazhuang before setting out. They serve northeastern style food, heavy on the cornbread and saurkraut, and the decor is really neat. Above the doors are lables that say "The First Collective, The Second Collective," etc... What I found most interesting though is that while the restaurant has the intention of keeping down with the Joneses (rural style cuisine, tin plates, etc...) the prices are very high. A meal here will cost at least the same as one at McDonalds if not more. I often wonder if these types of movements are similar to the Slavophile movements of the mid-nineteenth century in Eastern Europe. I think that the idea of rich people searching for an ethnic identity is a sign of a desire to set themselves apart from the global McEconomy that they strived so hard to join. This meshes with my understanding of the Slavophile movement which was a reaction of the elite in the Russian empire after they began to have a greater role in the Western European industrial economy.
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