Today in China

While Naomi Simmons outsold ‘Da Vinci Code’ in China with her English books for children, Dan Brown is still expected to make a triumph this week-end as the movie is released in China today. The movie is expected to reap more than 60 million of RMB (6 million EUR) in China with tickets selling from 45RMB to 120RMB (4.5 EUR to 12 EUR).
However, everybody in China does not welcome this movie… The Patriotic Church of China called the believers for a boycott. They see the movie and the book as insulting.
“The movie has many details that go against Catholic teachings or are even insulting,” said Liu Baining, vice-president of the China Patriotic Catholic Association to Xinhua. The movie indeed enraged a lot of believers worldwide with its suggestion that Jesus married and fathered children.
I decided to go to Wang Fu Jing (王府井) to watch the movie on Sunday and couldn’t buy a ticket except for the last show times, late in the evening. Was it because all the tickets where sold out? No!!! In fact, you had a few people who bought all the tickets and were selling them just in front of the cinema for 100RMB instead of the official price of 70RMB! So, we left Wang Fu Jing and went to the smaller cinema near the Poly Theater where we had no problem to buy tickets to watch the Da Vinci Code, a good movie but far from amazing…