The outing begins by Thursday noon, when the recreational vehicles start rumbling into town and their owners set up bivouacs.

They made their good-byes.

Photos obtained by CNN from an attendee at a village funeral in Cheng'an County in Hebei Province show mourners of all ages, including children, watching the performance. The attendee, who asked not to be identified, said he was visiting family during the Lunar New Year holiday. While he was there, one of the elderly villagers died so he went to the funeral.

On the right, emerging from the social sciences, is a position that identifies the recent sea changes in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the longer-term global shifts toward internationalisation and the collapse of movement politics of various kinds as calling into question the continuing relevance of the neo Marxist 'motor' of cultural studies.