John Kennedy · October, 2006

Latest posts by John Kennedy from October, 2006

China: Writings on the walls

  31 October 2006

Back in the day, big character posters were mostly used for vile purposes, so when they started popping up recently on shop fronts in a remote corner of China's Yunnan province, it's no surprise mention was made at major Chinese forum Tianya. From Tianya blogger Big Reporter (大记者): 云南石林县惊现”大字报” Shilin...

China: Good cop/bad cop

  24 October 2006

A story shared by A-list blogger-journalist Huang Tingzi (黄亭子) about an engineering student recruited by Chinese cops on his campus who—along with four colleagues—one day finds himself quite a bit in over his head: 读大学时,庄警官念的是无线电专业,毕业前,本打算去IT界发展。结果,正好遇上公安局招干,陪同学一块去顺利也报了个名,没想到很快就被录取了。 In university, officer Zhuang majored in wireless communications. Before graduation, he was planning to go...

China: Botched jobs

  21 October 2006

‘Yes, journalists in China do have it rough,’ Bullog blogger Siyi says back to a recent BBC article, ‘but we're not all the innocent victims that you seem to think’ in: 中国是记者最大的监狱? 监狱,还是桑拿中心? ‘China is the largest prison for journalists?’ Prison? Or sauna center? BBC 最近一篇文章中说:”The media rights group Reporters...

China: Where my Nobels at?

  18 October 2006

When one of the best writers in the country flees, is asked not to come back and then wins a Nobel prize in literature while in exile, would it be a bit disingenuous to accuse the Swedish Academy of bias against awarding Nobel prizes to mainland Chinese? Perhaps not, judging...

China: Let your photos do the talking

  14 October 2006

While dealing with blocked pages and filter-trigger keywords can get pretty annoying on the wrong side of the internet, for bloggers in China who want some discussion on, say, the highest-level corruption crackdown in ten years, there are always ways to beat the system. This time it just happens that...

China: Youth, too much free time

  11 October 2006

Obscurity is here to stay for the residents of a distant northern Chinese town, it seems, judging from a post this week from Chongqing-based blogger-journalist Ran Yunfei. 中国的县之多,从未听说过某一县,当然不足为奇。比如山西的方山县,我就从未听说过。但最近这个县的县委书记张国彪来了个铁腕政策,打着为保护未成年学生的幌子,关掉该县县城所有网吧,干涉商人经商之自由,以及人们了解信息之自由。还被许多人赞美,这真是滑天下之大稽。 There are many counties in China. To have never heard of a certain country is of course nothing strange. Shanxi‘s Fangshan county,...

China: Fifty-three things you may not know

  8 October 2006

As if learning Chinese wasn't hard enough, did you know that all bloggers in China are security encryption experts? ‘An effective way to visit Wikipedia’ [zh]—which is blocked in China—from Bokee blogger KangKang: 现在,维基媒体提供了通过HTTPS协议安全上维基网站的方法。使用下面的连接: Wikimedia now offers a way to safely access Wiki websites via HTTPS. Use the following links:...

China: Media literacy, meetings, Macau, memories and mooncakes

  4 October 2006

Do Chinese police see bloggers as some sort of criminal element? Blogging undisturbed nearly requires a mastermind these days, and it's getting worse. Liu Di (刘荻), aka Stainless Steel Mouse, imprisoned in late 2002 for over a year for writings she'd posted on the internet, updated her blog late last...

China: Blogger-poets

  1 October 2006

In Qian Zhongshu‘s (钱钟书) 1947 novel Fortress Besieged (围城), one of the greatest works of twentieth-century Chinese literature, protagonist Fang Hung-chien attempts to build a career with a fake degree from an imaginary American university. As seen in a post yesterday [zh] from Bullog blogger Fang Zhouzi, life does still...

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