Why Do The Chinese Fear Winnie?

I don’t look like Winnie the Pooh. Not even from the side. But if I did look like Winnie, I wouldn’t mind that much. Winnie is kind of a good-looking fellow. A little chubby, perhaps. But most Americans are chubby.

In fact, most Americans — let’s face it– are fat. America has more fat people per square inch than any other country. Fat and getting fatter. America just doesn’t care anymore. To hell with it: Fat is beautiful. That’s the new slogan. Fat is sexy. Fat is as American as two apple pies. Bring on the fat!

Barack Obama was thin as a rail. Very un-American. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is fat. Look at him. A true American. All that girth is not muscle-girth. That’s genuine fat-girth. Cheeseburger-girth. Trump is not only going to make America Great Again. He’s going to make Americans proud to be fat.

But no cheeseburger for Winnie the Pooh. Winnie’s weakness is honey. He just can’t get enough of it. Pooh can drain a honey pot faster than bees can produce the stuff. That’s why he’s always on the lookout for honey. You never know when there could be a depletion.

Winnie would never use a fancy word like “depletion,” of course. That’s one of the great things about Pooh. He’s down-to-earth. Nothing fancy about him, nothing pretentious. (That’s another word he’d never use) Pooh is just Pooh. Everyday-talk, that’s Winnie’s style. It goes with his good looks.

His ears are a little nubby and his nose comes to a gentle point and his eyes are always a little dreamy, a little glazed with wonder.

All in all, he’s a handsome fellow. Many people have called him “cute.“ But he’s too humble and too serious to think of himself as cute. He’s too much of a down-to-earth, everyday bear with serious intent. Cuteness is for fancy folks who prefer tea.

His actual name is Edward, but he prefers Winnie. And outside his home at the base of a large oak tree there’s a sign over his front door that reads, “Mr. Sanders.” But that’s a long and obscure story.

Winnie is very creative, has an active imagination and deep depths of curiosity. He also makes up songs and other verbal originalities. He will often stand in front of a broken piece of mirror and in the morning, for instance, and do what he calls “Stoutness Exercises.” He tries to stay in shape, but finds the allure of honey a little too tempting. And so he simply does what he finds most beneficial to do: be a bear.

The song he made up goes right to the heart of the matter: “Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!/Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!/I don’t much mind if it rains or snows,/ ‘Cos I’ve got a lot of honey on my nice new nose, /I don’t much care if it snows or thaws,/ ‘Cos I’ve got a lot of honey on my nice clean paws!/Sing Ho! for a Bear!/Sing Ho! For a Pooh!/And I’ll have a little something in an hour or two!”

All of which makes me wonder why the Chinese are so uptight as to censor Winnie and keep him off the Chinese internet.

The reason seems to be that some people on the internet have mentioned that Chinese President Xi Jinping looks a little like Winnie. This has so upset the censors that they have banned all pictures and all mention of Winnie the Pooh from their devices of virtual reality.

No Winnie on computers and smartphones and iPads or any other device that could summon up that bear’s image.

Twitter still seems able to convey this dangerous bear’s image to the Chinese. But that may not last long.

Apparently, the honey hit the fan back in 2013, according to the New York Times, when Presidents Obama and Mr. XI met in Rancho Mirage, California. At that time, people on the internet posted images of Mr. XI looking like Winnie and Obama looking like Winnie’s friend, Tigger (the tiger in the Hundred Acre Woods).

Ever since then, the Chinese censors have turned Winnie into a persona-non-grata.

But that’s like banning Innocence. Or Goodness.

Or the Tao.

In 1982, a serious book about the Eastern philosophy of Taoism was published under the title, “The Tao of Pooh.” The author, Benjamin Hoff used Pooh to illustrate that unique system of thought.

Now, 35 years later, Pooh is portrayed in the minds of Chinese censors as someone to avoid, an image to delete, a presence to edit out.

Pooh was called by his creator, A.A. Milne, a “bear of little brain,” which I’ve always thought was unfair and an uncalled-for insult. Apparently, Benjamin Hoff thought it was unfair, too, and turned Pooh into a philosopher.

But now it seems that if anyone has a “little brain,” it’s the censors who oversee the Chinese internet. They just don’t get the essence of Pooh. They don’t see the beauty of his countenance, the wonder in his eye, the inquiring tilt of his head.

And they probably don’t like honey, either.

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