Things that are Banned in China

You can access information about the outside world on them

Avatar?

@ Quizmaster - it works here. Just not very well. It's really slow and I usually can't see my results when a quiz ends. Thank Mao for VPNs.

I'm from China. Not yet.

If the site ever started to get remotely popular, it'd be banned for sure

It's allowed. Kinda. Churches aren't allowed to place God/Jesus/the pope etc as being higher than the glorious party, and churches regularly get shut down as a result, and most aren't allowed to display crosses on their roofs anymore, but it's allowed.

I believe it's only the independent house churches that are banned. Churches have to be registered and approved by the state.

China either bans religion when it is considered a threat to the system, or allows and controls it to help maintaining the system. You can see both aspects with Islam. Uyghurs have almost no right of worshiping because they demand independence, while in the rest of the country there are many mosques, mosques that are fully controlled by the Chinese government. Only Imams trained by the state are allowed to lead the prayer and they are only allowed to speak about purely spiritual stuff, nothing that is linked to society or politics. They also need to consistently praise the government to keep their positions, so they basically becomes tools of the state propaganda. What's unfortunate is that Muslims have been part of China history for a very long time (it entered China a few decades after Muhammad's death) and they had always enjoyed religious freedom and state protection before the communists took over.

It's allowed. I've seen churches there with people inside them

I read the caveats, but Winnie the Pooh being banned is a complete myth. It's absolutely everywhere here. Winnie the Pooh memes/references to Xi looking like him, however, are completely banned. This quiz definitely has potential for a 10 part series though, unfortunately.

The Winnie the Pooh one does seem bizarre.

I believe the 1 child policy was only for certain families? And it wasn't exactly banned, but would exclude those certain families from benefits that they might otherwise receive if they stuck to the policy?

And what the hell is up with "banning reincarnation"?!

I don't know whether we can get Last Week Tonight over here. Don't think I'd heard of it before anyway.

I was under the impression that there were a lot of exemptions to the policy - anyone who didn't live in a city, anyone non-Han, etc. I may be mistaken though

Kendal mint cake

What on earth is their problem with jasmine? Is it that jasmine tea is not an original Chinese thing but since everyone else thinks it is and serves it up at Chinese restaurants it is now Chinese even in China?

I thought it was weird too. Some research discovered that it relates to the 2011 "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia, and the word jasmine took on associations with revolutions, freedom, democracy, and the like. I wonder how they refer to jasmine tea in China now then...?

I wonder how many applications the government gets every year for reincarnation (and how many they approve)?

Tibetan Buddhist here! (That is, I practice Tibetan Buddhism; I’m not actually Tibetan. Think Richard Gere, but cooler.) Basically, high incarnate lamas such as the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa have a great deal of political clout and power (the Dalai Lama had been – for many centuries – the temporal head of the Tibetan people as well as the spiritual, until the current one stepped down as political leader and told his people to get over it and embrace democracy, for crying out loud). All of these high lamas have escaped China over the decades, usually with dramatic nighttime exoduses, traveling through the Himalayas to get to India.

Now free of China, these lamas can say anything they want, like how China slaughtered most of them and burned down hundreds of monasteries, et al. In order to prevent this, the Chinese want to ensure that any new recognized incarnations are in their country, under their control (like their fake Panchen Lama), and not stir up any Tibetan uprisings.

(con’t.) So actually, AkJMB actually has it backwards: the Chinese are only going to “approve” rebirths (we like that word better than “reincarnation”) born in China.

From Wikipedia:

On August 3, 2007, China's State Administration for Religious Affairs issued a decree that all the reincarnations of tulkus of Tibetan Buddhism must get government approval, otherwise they are "illegal or invalid". The decree states, "It is an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas. The selection of reincarnates must preserve national unity and solidarity of all ethnic groups and the selection process cannot be influenced by any group or individual from outside the country."

Yeah, so, you get it.

(Last one!) Tibetan Buddhism is actually souring on the whole reincarnate lama (aka “tulku”) system as a whole. (Buddhism in general is fairly flexible like that.) It’s had some serious problems, both historically as well as today. HHDL has been pretty bearish on his own personal future rebirth, saying that even if he did, it would NOT be under Chinese rule (and yes, there are Western tulkus). Plus he’s been preparing people for the possibility of his rebirth being a woman! There are definitely high women tulkus (including one of my teachers, Her Eminence Khandro Rinpoche), just not that high.

Other Buddhist traditions (Zen, Theravada, Pure Land, etc.) rely only on accomplishment and worthiness to elevate people to revered teacher. The Tibetans were utterly isolated until 1949, but now, seeing that system, are coming to realize that it’s a much, much better idea.

And now you know more about the Chinese’s attempted takeover of the Tibetan tulku system than you ever actually wanted to! :-)

Don't bother seeing it either, it's awful.

Didn't get Bieber as I couldn't think of any Canadian - singer or otherwise - who could possibly be accused of bad behaviour.

It's all about context. He's used to mock the leader of the CCP.

In every country, the Government decides about what you can do or not, not only in China. Some Governments are just less strict than others.

But also because Wikipedia.

Actually, the ban on winnie-the-pooh has been lifted, and i didn't realize avatar has ever been banned. I just checked and avatar is available now.

Also, Brokeback Mountain and Back to the Future are both also available now.

Is only animal farm banned, or is 1984 banned too?