Just one more day in the Central Kingdom, so I thought I’d put up one more The Worst of Perth on Tour China post. The church hasn’t done too well in China since 20 million died in The Taiping Rebellion (where a Chinese guy thought he was Jesus’ little brother), but KFC is going strong. I’m putting it into worst church, but I don’t actually disapprove of a church being turned into a fried chicken outlet. There are certainly more bums on seats. The guy in the foreground is praying that they’ll bring back popcorn chicken. And if you are not spritually fulfilled enough after KFC, just pop around the corner to the Faith Bar, where saintly local bar girls will top up your state of grace until well after 4am. TWOP on Tour, Dalian North China.
The Worst of Perth 
Wow, back when I worked at KFC we didn’t have such flash premises…
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The “chicken” nuggets are made of former altar boys.
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I’m reading Paul Theroux’s Fresh-Air Fiend: he has a few essays on China. Lots on pollution of course. Also this:
“Mao had wanted to create a population of revolutionaries. But his campaigns and purges were more like aversion therapy. What emerged from the Age of Mao was a vast army of reactionaries and opportunists. Mao’s greatest success – though he may not have realised it – was in turning his people into single-minded materialists. Ideologically speaking, the Long March has taken a right turn down the capitalist road.”
You think LA?
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From what I have read, Mao was about Mao. he didn’t want a dynasty, and seemed to some extent indifferent to his sons death. The recent biography is completely depressing, worse even than Stalin’s. After uniting the country, everything else was a downhill slide until he died 30 years later.
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“Omnipresent amid all the frenzy of Shanghai is that famous portrait, that modern icon. The faintly smiling, bland yet somehow threatening visage appears in brilliant red hues on placards and posters and is painted huge on the sides of buildings. Some call him a genius. Others blame him for the deaths of millions. There are those who say his military reputation was inflated, yet he conquered the mainland in short order. Yes, it’s Colonel Sanders.”
P.J. O’Rourke
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Nice to hear something positive about KFC – over here in the UK it just goes wrong:
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Are you sure the KFC is a converted church? It looks more like a converted Legoland recreation of our own beloved Perth Town Hall. Probably they couldn’t work out what to do with the building once they’d finished it, too.
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We weren’t staying at the Red Castle Motel (fortunately).
I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take much for any other KFC (or any other fast food joint, period) to provide speedier service than the one in Belmont Forum. I figure if they pitch it just right, they could market it as a ‘mandatory pre-dinner 40 minute meditation session in our luxurious drive-through lane’.
Thanks for your comment, will certainly check back soon,
New Perth
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