Keeping To A Censorship Theme,

apparently Christmas,

or at least the celebration of it on television is looked down upon by the Chinese government, which has resulted in the bazar pixeling of television programs like the one above, Mango TV, a subsidiary of state-controlled Hunan Television, aired the first episode of the sixth season of Who’s the Murderer, a popular online reality show, on December 24. As it was Christmas Eve, the television saw it fitting to shoot the show in a hotel decorated for the Christian celebration,

however, they also decided it would be a good idea to censor all elements related to Christmas, as a way to avoid being criticized by the Government for showing Western festivals and worshiping foreign things, as you can see the result was a pixelated mess, with protagonists walking by blurred Christmas trees, tinsel-decorated plants, and even wearing blurred Christmas hats, then why shoot it there? is the obvious question,

the thought was that the special episode’s setting could be interpreted as a promotion of Western festivals, so a decision was made to blur out all Christmas trees, wreaths, bells, and other decorations during broadcast. Even the protagonists’ Christmas hats were censored with post-production cartoon hats,

while there is no official document that bans Western festivals and cultural elements in China, a clampdown on foreign celebrations and various other cultural elements has been observed in recent years. Some cities have banned Christmas decorations in public places, and Chinese schools have banned Christmas celebrations on campus, this hostile attitude toward Western festival and trends is believed to have been kickstarted in January 2017 by a document issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council. Entitled “Suggestions on implementation of projects to promote and develop traditional Chinese cultural heritage”, it asked all levels of government and local authorities to promote Chinese festivals and culture, the controversy spread from Weibo to Western social media platforms like Twitter as well, and a day after airing the Christmas-censored episode of Who’s the Murderer, Mango TV decided to remove the controversial pixelation, that’s what Chinese publication The Stand News claimed, anyway, because the version of the episode uploaded on the show’s official YouTube channel still has plenty of blurring, now here's a thought, as Chania apparently does not like seeing our Western culture, why on earth did the company not reschedule for a week and not have to pixelate all of the episode, it could have quite easily been filmed in any Chinese location, but at least the West knows where it stands regarding censorship, toleration and cultural differences.