On the Barbarian's Side of the Great Firewall of China
Wow! There are enough cobwebs on this blog to embroider a replica of the QingMing Shanghe Tu!!! Where the heck have I been?!
WAITING...and sometimes not so patiently. Blogspot has been blocked in China since sometime in April or May. Who really knows why. One month approaching the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen '89, the lights just went out. And not only blogspot--for a while, Twitter and hotmail were down too. And Youtube of course--Youtube has been among the dead and missing since March or earlier. I assumed that all of the paranoia would end abrubtly and arbitrarily... some Monday in June... or maybe June 15th. Nope.
It dragged on and on until July 5th or July 6th, when it got worse. July 5th brought the beginning of a tragic, see-saw series of protests and riots in Urumqi of Xinjiang Province. I assume this news was as big worldwide as it was in China. You know about it, right? As far as the Internet, well, you can imagine--all but the candles went out. No more facebook; Skype and Yahoo! mail were my only connection to the outside world.
For me, this ever-higher wall has been an aggrevation. In the last two or three months, I experienced and did some incredible things. The final months flooded my life with a whirlwind of amazing stories and spectacular pictures. But I can't share them now... not enough time to say so much.
So how am I blogging again? Did China lift the block? No. Did I use a proxy to tunnel my way under the wall? No (I can't seem to make proxies work). I am taking advantage of the third option--I took a 747 over the wall and landed somewhere on the other side of the Great Firewall of China. From America, I can blogspot, facebook, twitter, youtube, wiki, and google my life away again!
But... that's not what's going to happen. Don't expect any blogs until September. And you won't see much of me on facebook either. You see, I only have a month at home before I pick up my bags and return to China for another (hopefully) wonderful year. Now come on, don't cry about it. No one wants to read blog entries about my first cheeseburger back in the States. So until September--or until China unblocks blogspot--zaijian!
This post is due for a disclaimer: It's clear that China's policy of censorship and blocking annoys me at the personal level. And I would argue further that these tools are probably not as effective and in some ways potentially counter-productive in terms of China's objectives. Yet all-in-all I understand China's rationale. In recognition of blogspot's capacity as a medium to incite anger/hate/division or facebook's capacity as a medium to organize a protest-come-riot, I understand how censorship and blocking are justified as a means for maintaining social order. In terms of human rights, I value one human's right to safety from death, injury, or vandalism at the hands of a mob over many human's rights to chat at leisure on social networking websites.
And let's not forget that America has censorship too. Many 'Youku' videos, for example, are blocked in American. Why? Because they blatantly violate copyrights! That's a good enough rationale for me. Well, agree or disagree, but China has its rationale too.
