By HAO BA
Weather Correspondent
BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Sheet lightning, loud thunder cracks and rain pouring over China’s capital on the night of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiabo’s death indicated that the heavens must be truly pleased, a Communist Party astrologist insisted today.
The bizarre, consecutive bursts of lightning which continued for hours after Liu’s passing definitely confirmed the Mandate of Heaven on China’s ruling Communist Party, and did not indicate the gods’ furious displeasure, soothsayers assured local media.
“The mild haze did part, heralding the timely arrival of nighttime rains over the never-completely-dried out Holy Canal of Lianmaqiao,” astrologist Lao Peng proclaimed of the strange storms that wracked Beijing after the jailed Nobel Laureate died in a closely guarded hospital bed.
“The deities often express their satisfaction with such heavenly fireworks and soothing rain – truly the beginning times must be upon us.”
Under the firm directive of President Xi Jinping, Lao has been compiling recent evidence to confirm the long-held Chinese belief that nature, rather than competence, determines whether a leader is virtuous enough to rule the Celestial Kingdom.
After Liu was admitted to hospital with untreatable liver cancer, auspicious omens began flooding in from across the interior, Lao said. According to official reports, prideful rivers began bursting their banks in joy, while lakes and reservoirs displayed a bountiful harvest of strewn bags, industrial waste and plastic bottles.
“Across the plains – where unruly grasses once held dominion – our noble hills now rise bare brown, having offered their abundant resources of precious rare earths,” Lao intoned, bowing deeply before a shrine to a mechanical digger in the Temple of Mystical Statistics.
In his hands, Lao clutched several reports from the Southlands that told of glistering urban lakes, where the mythical two-headed loach thrived once more.
“I myself have seen the salty dew fall from the eyes of a divine concubine at twilight, in the back of an S-class Mercedes,” Lao muttered. “I too have gazed upon the magnificent whiteness of a 757 Air Canada passenger jet, migrating for the sweet idyll of Vancouver.”
As dozens of foreign correspondents filed moving tributes to the imprisoned writer and dissident this morning, a blazing phoenix – said to signify prosperity – was reported to have climbed briefly into the heavens above Beijing, before vanishing behind a cold front of accumulated construction dust.
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