Opinion: Ticket pic of the Week: Encouraging signs of commercial decadence spotted in China

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For those worried about the 400 million Chinese students studying math and science around the clock to somehow surpass lazy American kids in failing schools, here’s some good news.

Our colleague Brady MacDonald brings the uplifting word that authorities in China have officially, knowingly and wittingly allowed the importation of Hello Kitty, a feline-based cult of souvenirs and other merchandise.

Hello Kitty was first spotted by public health officials in Japan in 1974. In only two years it somehow crossed the immense Pacific Ocean to infect the minds of little girls across North America.

Since then, the annoying Hello Kitty virus has spread into countless products such as computers and toasters that burn the Hello Kitty kitty into each slice of bread.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not even tried to control the epidemic of stupidity caused by the darling fictional cat with the perfect jaunty bow; they learned their lesson trying to stamp out Steamboat Willy.

Now, Brady tells us, the iconic kitty has spread into mainland China to accomplish the total domination that even the Imperial Japanese Army could not in the 1930s.

Construction starts in July on a 150-acre, $215-million theme park in Zhejiang province. An estimated 1 million volunteers a year will expose themselves to the Hello Kitty plague starting in 2014. That’s a full year before Shanghai Disneyland is scheduled to open.

Over time, those Hello Kitty girls will grow into young women and have their own little girls to share the Hello Kitty paraphernalia with. Eventually, a growing majority of the proletariat’s female minds will be infected with the commercialized cat and the rest of the world can resume its normal naptimes.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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