lingfry's Xanga

The Great Firewall of China

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:55:14 GMT

China is so frustrating sometimes. I am currently accessing Xanga through a backdoor of sorts which I am sure Beijing does not like. That is because Xanga is still being blocked. The extra frustrating thing is that now all Flickr pictures are blocked in China. I can still go to the sites and see all text but no photos show up. Well this is nice of them (China) what is the point of going to a photo website if you cannot see any photos? Ugh.

It seems that while I have lived here (one year, wow) they are blocking more instead of less. Here is the list of sites that have been or are blocked.

Xanga - For the last four months or so.

Myspace - On and off

LiveJournal - For the last four months or so.

Flickr - All pictures, for the last week.

Wikipedia, BBC, Lots of random sites - Years

So this is what life is like in a Communist country.

Sometimes I forget that China is a communist country then I try to look a wikipedia website on flying squirrels and I am reminded when I get an error message.

Still around

Tue, 29 May 2007 13:40:57 GMT

Let's see so it has been about a month now since my last post. I guess that means I am due for one again.

Things are going alright here. To not bore you, or at least bore you less I will not say anything about what I did this last whole month. Instead I will tell about the last few days. On Friday night I went to our school's foreign language corner. This is normally English corner since everyone comes and speaks English. However ever once in a while they make it larger and include the other languages studied here. When these larger corners (I am not sure what to call it) happen it has English, Thai and Vietnamese. Well then you can add Chinese since all of the shy and nervous students only speak their native language instead of the one they are studying. In the English section many students simply circle around the foreign teachers and try to listen to them. While this is all good the whole point is that they should be speaking with each other instead of simply listening to the foreigners. This day out of the four foreign teachers I was the only one who was there. This meant that I was not lacking in an audience no matter where I went. While this is great for an ego boost it can get tiring.

On Saturday I went with a friend from the town here and a friend of hers to go swimming. We went to a lake about thirty minutes drive away tucked into the mountains.This was my first time swimming this year so it was really nice. We rented a small bamboo raft and then paddled to the middle of the lake and jumped in swimming around the raft. After swimming for some time we got back onto the raft and ate lunch. One part of the lunch was a sweet roll with a chicken meat patty along with a sweetened fried egg both inside. While this sounds strange and possibly horrible let me tell you about the most ridiculous part. When we bought these rolls they were not being refrigerated. There was no attempt at any part of the life of these little buggers to keep them cold. This sounds so unsafe to me. Yet I am still alive today (Tuesday) and the Chinese seem to live through it (remember it is the most populace country in the world, they know what they are doing.)

On Sunday I went with some people to take a river boat cruise down a local river. Along with about twenty Taiwanese tourist (or should I say Chinese tourist, hmm politics) we went down river for an hour and a half. The final destination was ancient cliff paintings besides the river. They are interesting considering what it took to make them and how they could paint something that would last thousands of years. Why is it that with all the advancements in technology our paint only lasts maybe five or ten years in the sun while these people's paint is working thousands of years so far? What are we paying these scientist for?

On Monday I had classes. Umm. Enough said I guess.

On Tuesday I had no classes since the van we normally take to go to the other campus was needed else where. The other campus is over an hour away so when the van is not available I do not teach there. I then went on a bus adventure on my own. I went to the bus station and got on a bus knowing only the name of the destination city. The city is called Ningming and is 1.5 hours and $1.25 away from Longzhou. While there I wandered around and got plenty of stares and random hellos. There was nothing really amazing there that I found. Yet in spite of this it was fun.

If you want to put an image with what I have talked about you can go here:

http://flickr.com/photos/giantlaowai/

Vietnam!

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 22:16:30 GMT

Alright so here is an update. Since it has been such a long time I will skip the last two months or so. All you really need to know is that I am still in China and I still teach English here. I am doing well.

In about one hour I am going to leave my apartment to travel to North Vietnam with Rex, Kate and Megan. Starting on May 1 is the Labor day here in China so we get one week off. We are taking this time to travel around Hanoi and other parts of Vietnam. I am excited about this since I have never been there and it is supposed to be interesting. I will make sure to put pictures online so you will be able to see what it is like.

I would like to say more but I really should go since I need to finish packing and I do not want to hold everyone up because of something like that.

Hey!

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 13:57:16 GMT

So I have not been on Xanga in over a month now because China has blocked this website. There are some strange parts of being in a communist country. Megan found a website that helps you get into the website in a round about way. I am not sure how legal this is here so I will not tell you anymore about that.

Assuming that I can still access the website using this new method I will post some stuff soon.

Just telling you I am back.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 03:52:05 GMT

So I finally changed the look of the blog. That is of course if you care.

Back home

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:50:00 GMT

A few hours ago I made it back to my apartment in Longzhou after a long time traveling. I will write more and put up more pictures later.

In case for some reason you worried there is no need to any longer.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:15:03 GMT

I have added new pictues to my flickr site. These are from earlier on the trip but hey I do what I can.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/giantlaowai/

Later.

Safe

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:12:07 GMT

I do not have the time or desire to write much now. I just wanted to put up a short post to show that I am still ok.

I am right now in an internet cafe in the city of Diqin in Northwest Yunnan province. The city is near the border of Myanmar, Tibet and Sichuan province set within some amazingly large mountains. The trip here took around seven hours by bus which was an adventure since it seemed like we would slide off the road and down the mountain any moment. I will try to put pictures up at some point which will show you what it is like here. The city is very Tibetan in feel and interesting to say the least.

I hope you are doing well and I will write more later.

Happy New Years

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 01:13:52 GMT

Today is New Years in China.

Right now I am in a city called Lijiang which is in the Province of Yunnan (Southwest China) near the borders of Myanmar and Tibet. This place is touristy but it is really nice and it is near some amazing mountains.

Last night the city erupted in fireworks to celebrate the Chinese New Years. We stood on a hill overlooking the city and fireworks were coming from every street and alley it seemed. For a few hours there was a constant roar of fireworks being set off all over the city. Fireworks are cheap and very easily available here so it seems that nearly everyone has bought loads of them. It was amazing to see.

I am still traveling around Southern China and I do not need to be back for twelve more days. I am really excited about the next places we are going since the scenery is incredible.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:39:12 GMT

Tonight we got back from an overnight trip to Luzhou which was four hours by bus away from Chengdu. While there we visited a few projects that Amity (the organization I am with) sponsors. Below are a few of the highlights.

Church run projects which is sponsored by the local church, Amity, and the government.

- Community hospital

- Recreation center for the elderly

- Kindergarten for 150 students

- And the church of course

Rural projects that help blind people be able to function in their daily lives. The first man was taught to get around his village with a cane and how to split bamboo into small sticks to be used in incense sticks. By doing this he is able to help his family financially instead of being a burden. The second blind man was taught to do massage where he opened a shop in the local town with the help of his wife he now earns 3,000 RMB a month ($360, more then me.) Before the help of this program both men could not do daily functions on their own and were a burden to their family and felt very poorly about themselves.

It was nice to see these projects and see what Amity is helping do around China. I was surprised to see that Amity, which is openly Christian, helps pay for things run by churches while the local government also helps pay for the same projects. For instance the kindergarten is called a Gospel Kindergarten in English and it is run by the local Luzhou protestant church and part of the funding is from the government of Luzhou.

One strange thing was that we were accompanied by seven men and women from the police who were sent to "watch out for our safety." These people went with us on all outings we made on our two day trip ate all meals with us and rode in the bus with us. The truth as we are guessing is that the government wants to keep an eye on over fifty Christian foreigners when they visit places. China is still communist if you wondered.