Hello, Goodbye relationship with Youtube.com

After it was restored for one day, Youtube.com is again blocked in China.

The most recent news articles I can access here are from last Thursday, reporting the Chinese government lifted its ban on Youtube.com. I suppose I'll report from here myself, since last night it's been blocked again.

"On Friday, people in Beijing access the site without using special software to enter it through a proxy server, a common way of getting around Internet walls put up by the government. Google said Tuesday that China had blocked YouTube but that it did not know why. The block came during a week when China was criticizing an Internet video, released by the Tibetan government in exile and put up on YouTube and other Web sites, that showed Chinese security officers beating handcuffed Tibetans."-taken from Edward Wong's New York Times brief

China is reporting this video was fabricated. Other sites that are recently blocked: keepvid.com and many pornography Web sites, according to this article.

"China has closed more than 2,000 Web sites and arrested at least 45 people in a sting against online porn launched in January. It has also vowed to stamp out erotic text messages sent on cell phones. Various blog hosts have been shut down as well, including some known for political content that ran against the central government line. " -taken from Network World article.

'Atta boy China–way to be vigilant. (For my students who read my blog frequently and for those of you in my writing class where we're about to study sarcasm, parody and satire, this is sarcasm.)

Tibetan Serf Emancipation Day today, but no info available

Though the Chinese government may have invited more foreign media to Tibet in the lead up to today, Tibet's Serf Emancipation Day, according to a China Daily article, Internet users within China can't tell the difference. We can't get any foreign coverage of the holiday here anyway.

Internet searches for news about the holiday instated this year by the Chinese National People's Congress only reap articles by Xinhua, the media arm of the government, and China Daily, the country's only national English language publication published by the China Communist Party. Several other news sources came up in my searches–Reuters, Washington Post, a Taiwanese media outlet–but only a BBC and Times online article could be loaded. The Times online article was headlined, "New holiday celebrates freedom for serfs and lets China show itself in a good light."

Earlier in the week, Youtube.com was blocked to all Internet users within China. Apparently started over a video depicting the beating of a Tibetan by PRC officers, the entire nation of Internet users was denied Youtube for the better part of this week. The government said the video was fabricated and the site is again available. Read Al Jazeera's report here.

Today's holiday is meant to celebrate the start of Chinese rule in Tibet, which began in 1959. The government's position is that it freed Tibetans from primitive slavery and antiquated living conditions. The holiday was formalized weeks after last Spring's Lhasa protests, during which Tibetans rioted against the Chinese government's rule.

Here's what I'm interested in: According to a Xinhua article, the holiday is meant to celebrate the freedom from primeval slavery Tibetans suffered under out-moded serf style rule. According to another China Daily article, only 5 percent of the population in old Tibet owned serfs. But according to yet another Xinhua article, more than a million Tibetans were freed when the Chinese came in 1959 and that that number, one million, comprised 95 percent of all Tibetans. This means before 1959, Tibetans were either serf owners or serfs.

If these numbers are factual and true, they're astounding and provide great credence to some of the government's actions in 1959. But I don't know if they're true. The journalists writing these stories work for the government and the government won't allow me to read any articles on the issue other than those written by journalists working for the government. I can't corroborate this information with any sources from outside of China. It's insular, inflexible and frankly scary and it doesn't provide a convincing-enough argument for me.

But lest I feel caged in and isolated in China, the government wants me to read another Xinhua article headlined, "Curious about Tibet? Look, listen and see for yourself!" Well, I can't. Since the beginning of February, foreigners haven't been allowed to go to Tibet or large parts of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces.

It's not that I don't think these things are true, it's that I'm only permitted one source of information and I'm not willing to believe anything until I can get a few sources on the same issue. I guess it's another situation where the government just asks me to take their word for it. By now, I want to see things for myself.

Beijing from the back seat

An afternoon ride in the back seat of a motorcycle cab through the hutong from Jingshan Park through, within the inner city walls, to near Chongwenmen.

Language still 'Big Mountain' to climb

RELATED • Fluency in the impossible: View Da Shan's Web site

I recently had a breakthrough in my Chinese and all I got from it was this lousy friend Da Shan

Da Shan, a foreigner like me, speaks fluent Mandarin, much to the surprise of the Chinese and much to the chagrin of other foreigners. Born in Canada, his Chinese name Da Shan means Big Mountain, while his English name, Mark Henry Rowswell is a common colloquialism for unremarkable white guy.

The only thing that makes this 44-year-old Ottawan special is his apparent fluency in an impossible language. For this thought-to-be-inconceivable accomplishment, he was rewarded with a TV show called "Sports Chinese," on China Central Television and the coveted position of dancing poodle on Spring Festival TV shows.

Read the rest of my most recent column on the Post-Tribune site here.

Xi'an city wall

My American aunt visited me last week in Beijing, for a whirl-wind, one-week taste of China tour. Though we spent the vast majority of her visit in Beijing, we flew out to Xi'an one day to see the clay soldiers my aunt has spent her artistic career admiring.

She cried out of happiness when she saw the soldiers, a reaction our Chinese guide Cici was definitely not prepared to handle. After the tears dried, she was vulnerable enough for me to talk her into riding a tandem bicycle with me on Xi'an's old city wall.

The city wall is entirely intact, preserved since the 2,500 years ago when it was built. Aside from the potholes (it is nearly 3,000 years old) it was smooth riding. The view includes the sometimes dilapidated interior city, the rapidly modernizing outer city and the spring peach blossoms of the gardens immediately surrounding the wall. Enjoy and if you'd like to see more of my pictures, go to my portfolio at www.AmericanFair.shutterfly.com.

Forbidden City photos

It's too late tonight to write, but feel free to check out more pictures from my first trip to the Forbidden City at my shutterfly site here.

"Hit the Christie's" another Chinese slug at the French

Chinese netizens are reacting to last month's sale of two bronze Chinese artifacts, originally stolen from China in the 1800s, at the Parisian Christie's auction house.

Beijing petitioned Christie's not to sell the items and instead return them to China for free, but the private auction house refused and proceeded to sell the bronze rat and rabbit head.

However, the winning bidder Cai Mingchao is a Chinese national who works closely with an organization that recovers lost and stolen Chinese artifacts. Cai joined the auction to deliberately sabotage the sale, winning the items and then admitting he does not have the money, nor does he plan on ever having the money to pay for them. Read the Reuters article here.

Now a few HTML savvy Chinese have created an online game "Hit the Christie's," where latent angry netizens can hit a punching bag labeled Christie's in Chinese that appears to be hanging from the Eifle Tower. Hit the Christie's here

According Wall Street Journal blogger Juliet Ye, the Parisian auction house has been slugged more than 340,000 times.

Say it ain't so

After a confrontation between five Chinese ships and one US Navy vessel Sunday, China is calling the US insubordinate and the US is crying foul, not what foreigners living in China want to hear.

US Navy ship The Impeccable was performing a sonar surveillance mission 75 miles (120 kilometers) off the coast of Hainan, during which it tows long cables behind the ship designed to detect submarines (presumably dangerous submarines designed for warfare). Five Chinese vessels approached, thought by US Navy officers to be a naval intelligence vessel, two smaller trawlers, a fisheries patrol boat and an official oceanographic ship, according to the New York Times.

The Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively manoeuvred in dangerously close proximity" to the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, on Sunday, with one ship coming within 25 feet (7.6 metres), a U.S. Defense Department statement said. -taken from Reuters.

The US says it was in international seas and the Chinese ships violated maritime rules. China said the US ships were conducting illegal surveillance so it doesn't matter whether or not the waters were international. Thus the rub.

"The U.S. claim about operating in high seas is out of step with the facts," a report from Hong Kong Phoenix TV quoted a spokesman from the Chinese embassy in Washington DC in saying. "The U.S. navy vessel concerned has been consistently conducting illegal surveying in China's special economic zone." -taken from Reuters.

Foreigners living in another country never want confrontation, but even worse, confrontation their home country and the international community is calling a battle of machismo.

The BBC and other international news services incident is being called a test of the newly minted President Obama's mettle. Maaaaaan, come on! (I tried to link a BBC World article to this post but it's currently blocked, go figure.)

Here's how I see the comment that the Chinese ships' aggressive behavior in international waters is actually a test to see what President Obama would do: it's lose lose. If it's wrong, you've insulted the Chinese. If it's right, we've got international conflict. Neither sit well with me from my apartment outside Beijing.

Wen Jiabao: China can still achieve eight percent growth

"In his annual speech to the opening session of parliament, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the country was facing "unprecedented" challenges from a worsening global financial crisis but that he still expected GDP growth of 8% for 2009." Watch the Youtube video of France24 analysis here.

If I am what I eat, thank god my tastes matured

David Halberstam, the famous Vietnam War correspondent, came of age as a food person Saigon.

"The pressure of the job was so great, the friendships among colleagues so important, and the food so astonishing that my life changed," he wrote in "The Boys of Saigon," "and I began to appreciate the things that I scarcely could have imagined when I first got there."

I'm not deluding myself to think my job and life in Tianjin compare to the culture of war Halberstam lived and chronicled, but I can compare to the experience of dining and how it mirrors a traveler's evolving lifestyle. Like Halberstam, food is my barometer of personal growth.

Read the rest of my column here