Just wanted to make a quick point on the Wenzhou train crash. People are livid, and government — that is CPC — response has never seemed so inadequate or out of touch. Minitruth directives that have been leaked — and to be fair, all governments try to set agendas and frame news coverage, though they […]
Some people (like me) would argue that we are already in the dog days of summer. I dread going outside before 8 at night, so I don’t know what I will do come July and August. You’d think other Chinese might be like me, too lazy from the heat to do anything. But, no, they […]
In an effort to be fair, Gmail/social networking sites aren’t the only thing China targets for bans. Here are other things China has banned in recent days: Luxury advertising (local Beijing policy). Indoor smoking (ban in name only). Illegal additives in pig feed that are toxic to humans (cross your fingers!).
Since those pesky flower-related “protests” a month ago, Gmail has been, let’s say, not working as well as it is in the U.S. What I, and most people who use it, had hoped would be temporary has stretched into a month of frustrating, erratic and worsening load times. Even with a proxy or VPN, Gmail […]
In addition to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and YouTube, China has blocked LinkedIn, the lamest social networking site. Apparently, the non-protest protests on Wangfujing, the famous pedestrian street in Beijing, last week was organized through LinkedIn. A LinkedIn user identified as “Jasmine Z” last week set up a discussion group to post opinions on whether the […]
Today’s comparison: Number of prisoners. You’ll hear a lot about the people China puts in its prisons (mainly because we are morally outraged by these “crimes”). To many unenlightened people, China is a scary place — Big Brother and all that. While, yes, you can get put in jail seemingly on a whim, and your good […]
When the first protests stirred in Tunisia, that was fine. But now that revolution has toppled over into Egypt and threatens to spill into the Middle East, China is clamping down. The river crabs are now censoring harmonizing Twitter-like microblogs by banning searches for Egypt and comments on the few news reports on the unrest. The […]
Too busy and too lazy lately, even though I’ve thought of a lot of things to say! So, here’s the short, bulleted version, in chronological order: A modern Chinese wedding. Boyfriend and I went down to Shanghai during the National Day holiday to attend one of his college friend’s wedding. It was interesting, to say […]
Liu Xiaobo, the professor and human rights activist who authored the Charter 08 petition that called for democratic reform, has the highest odds to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Liu, who was arrested last June for inciting subversion of state power, was sentenced to 11 years in jail in December. Unless you count the Dalai […]
The census people came by last night while I was making my banananana pudding (more on that later) and took a household registration survey, which is in preparation for the national census that begins in November. Unbeknownst to them, the roommate turnover rate in my apartment has been quite high lately. Three new roommates in the […]