China cracks down on Halloween, wary of subversion lurking in costumes

Police in China are cracking down on public Halloween celebrations in some of the country’s biggest cities by clearing people from streets and questioning them about costume choices, out of apparent fear the holiday has become a rallying point for youth dissatisfaction.

A growing trend of street costume parties has become the latest target for the stifling of individual freedoms under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has overseen sweeping restrictions on cultural expression and political dissent. Under Xi, the Chinese Communist Party has been especially wary of “Western” ideas that officials fear will erode political loyalty among young people.

The crackdown follows unusually lively - and politically charged - Halloween celebrations last year in Shanghai, where the city’s young residents turned out in huge numbers for the first celebration after coronavirus controls were lifted. Many used their costumes to register lingering anger with the government over its chaotic policy swings in the final months of restrictions.

As this year’s parties began over the weekend - for young people in China, Halloween can last for a week or more - partygoers were met with an overwhelming show of force from police.

Although there was no formal announcement of restrictions, streets in downtown Shanghai that hosted some of last year’s biggest gatherings were lined with police vans. Officers in luminescent yellow bibs patrolled the streets, questioning people in costume and checking their IDs, according to videos and witness accounts.

One bar owner said on social media that authorities had instructed the venue not to hold Halloween parties or to allow entry to anyone in costume.

While attendees said Shanghai’s celebrations have been low key compared with last year’s, in part because of the heavy police presence, similar gatherings were also organized in other major cities, including Hangzhou, a popular tourist destination.

Police broke up crowds packing Zhongshan North Road, a street full of bars and restaurants in downtown Hangzhou, on Sunday night after saying there had been noise complaints from residents.

The most prominent partygoers were taken to a hotel lobby and held until everyone dispersed, then people with costumes were barred from returning, according to two people who witnessed the clear-out.

“It’s still unclear where everyone will go on Halloween, but if there’s another gathering, I’ll join again,” said one attendee, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid official reprisals.

Although few children in China grow up trick-or-treating, university students and young professionals in big cities have begun to embrace the holiday as an opportunity to express themselves. For some, it’s a rare chance to cautiously voice political grievances - through costumes.

Last October, Shanghai residents used the first Halloween after the government ended its tough coronavirus rules as an opportunity to blow off steam - and to vent at authorities for a traumatic two-month lockdown in 2022 that trapped people at home with poor access to food and medicine.

At street parties that year, besides the usual collection of ghouls and celebrity impersonators, people used their costumes to poke fun at the government’s uncompromising policies.

Many came as hazmat-suited coronavirus testers carrying giant cotton swabs. Some dressed as security cameras, satirizing China’s ubiquitous surveillance, or as graduate students with begging bowls underscoring record unemployment levels.

A few wore blank sheets of paper, the symbol of mass demonstrations in November 2022 after frustration with pandemic policies reached a breaking point. Protesters held up the paper to convey discontent so widespread it didn’t need to be named.

This year, few costumes were overtly political, according to videos and accounts from people on the ground. Many, instead, were uniquely Chinese celebrations of historical figures, food and folktales, alongside Hollywood classics such as Batman and Spider-Man.

Others poked fun not at the government but at celebrities and companies. One popular choice was tech giant Huawei’s recently released tri-fold smartphone, which has become a popular meme on Chinese social media for its unwieldy design that many say resembles a brochure or a folding screen door.

This year’s gatherings were really just “revenge entertainment,” or letting loose after having missed opportunities to do so during the pandemic, said Kevin Wang, a 25-year-old photographer based in Hangzhou who attended gatherings in the city over the weekend.

“My wish now is just to have an open space where people can freely dress up with as few interruptions as possible,” Wang said, noting that people were looking for new places to gather on Oct. 31 after officials shut down the most popular spots.

But there have been some instances of masked political commentary this year, too.

One costume supposedly celebrated the country’s amazing stock market performance after authorities launched a stimulus program last month, but it was paired with a darker message: a Chinese chive costume, referencing online slang for the legions of inexperienced investors who pile into stocks only to get cut down to size by big institutions.

A popular option for the underprepared: not dressing up and instead declaring yourself a “broke ghost” too poor to afford a costume. (The government has struggled to bring down stubbornly high youth unemployment, which hit 18.8 percent in August.)

Attendees said it isn’t always clear why police detained some people over others. But in some instances, officers forced people to change into normal clothes or remove their makeup before releasing them, according to online posts from those who were picked up by police.

A male folk-theater actor dressed in drag as Fan Bingbing - a Chinese movie star who was blacklisted in 2018 after being found guilty of tax evasion - was taken away by police in Hangzhou but released soon afterward, according to social media posts from the actor. Officers cited the need to prevent stampedes, he said.

A star of last year’s gatherings, who did popular impersonations of a famous singer, posted a video on Saturday describing being “invited to tea” by the authorities soon after she arrived in downtown Shanghai. (This year, she was dressed as a Chinese empress in traditional robes.)

“In order to prevent any mass gatherings, everyone who wants to celebrate Halloween should go to Happy Valley [theme park] or Disneyland, those are officially designated places,” she said in the video.

Dismayed partygoers, similarly harassed or moved on by police, took to social media to complain that yet another avenue for self-expression was under threat - even in Shanghai, which prides itself on being among China’s most tolerant cities.

“It’s obvious that Halloween street parties improve Shanghai’s image and enhance its cultural soft power,” said one commentary forwarded widely on the social media app WeChat.

“It’s hard for young people to find things to laugh at today, so on Halloween they want to laugh with abandon and display what is left of their creativity and imagination,” the article said. “Even that is now gradually becoming a luxury.”