InsideGFW

Shanghai (CNN) — The only souvenir that Xie Jinghua has from her stay at a Holiday Inn Express located in a vast tourism park alongside the East China Sea is a room key. (more…)

Just down the street from Fudan University, one of the top colleges in China, and across from a massive shopping complex that has a Wal Mart, a couple of Starbucks and KFCs, H&M, Sephora and Zara, among other Western brands, lives Feng Zhenghu who for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is barred from leaving his home. (more…)

Walk into Southern Belle on a Wednesday night and you’ll probably see 28-year-old Tom Pang sitting alone on the terrace smoking. He doesn’t have a band, there’s no upright bass or banjo in his set, but Pang strums Shanghai’s best bluegrass. (more…)

Just a small clip of how to be Ai weiwei’s creditor. (more…)

The friend who invited me to Huaxi’s 50th anniversary first advertised the weekend as some kind of helicopter festival: “Hey free helicopter rides, wanna go?” First instinct: No thanks, don’t want to die in China. But then he told me it was Huaxi, now internationally renowned as “China’s Richest Village” and home to one of the tallest buildings in the country, a state-of-the-art medical hospital, a fake Great Wall, and 2,000 super wealthy villagers all living in huge houses with luxury cars. (more…)

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Chengdu, March, 2011. When I first meet Gan I was resting in front of a bank outside the Wuhouci with a friend as I chain smoked in the fresh Chengdu air. (more…)

#That’s the full length feature story of That’s Shanghai ‘s Oct cover story.

Those who have been keeping an eye on my blog may find this article similar to the Interview Of the Homeless People. Yes, they are both in the bottle picking business, they both cannot afford a home here in Shanghai, and they both live at the very bottom of society. But there are some key differences between the homeless people from Anhui and the pocket Hukou owners who were born and grew up in Shanghai. This is where Cai’s story begins.

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#That’s the full length feature story of That’s Shanghai ‘s Oct cover story.

I met Zha in front of the Chinese Club 88 on my way to have dinner with a friend of mine. He was on his handicap motorcycle, and in front of him was a big wooden box. Inside the box, I saw several small bike models made out of electrical wires. They were well-made and looked very appealing to a semi-pro cyclist like me. (more…)

If you’re hanging out late at night on Xingfu Rd (or “happy street” as I like to call it), you may run into an old lady named Mrs. Huang. Unlike the other beggars and flower sellers waiting for you outside bars and restaurants in Shanghai, Huang is not aggressive or dishonest. Although she has had much experience begging in Shanghai, it is certainly not her chosen profession. She is just trying to survive and provide for her family. (more…)

I met Feng on Wu Jiang Rd, formerly the famous street food street before the EXPO. You could access all kinds of food even in the middle of the night, BBQ, noodles, rice, sea food, beer…every thing, cheap, quick, good, casual. But earlier this year it was completely demolished, the old street food street is gone. It became a big trash heap full of rubble and surrounded by walls covered with EXPO printings of beautiful, successful business women/man, happy child/seiner citizens, and weirdo foreigners with a photoshopped helmet for no reason. One block away, Wu Jiang Rd becomes a place full of expensive, up-scale, foreign-looking restaurants, cafes, dessert shops, candy shops, Nike, big malls, etc. It has security guards wondering around 24/7, and Feng was sleeping on a well designed wooden chair in the middle of the pedestrian area. (more…)

The article below was written by Leslie Jones and me, it was posted on urbanatomy.com. Please go to here for a better edited version and pictures of those famous people.

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For Chinese netizens hungry for information that won’t make it into tightly-controlled traditional media outlets, Twitter is one of the best resources going – along with an assortment of blogs and the forum 1984 BBS. In July 2009, after riots in Xinjiang, the micro-blogging service was blocked. Now, it can only be accessed via proxy server inside China. (more…)

Yesterday I was cycling to The Camel to watch the America VS Ghana football game. While biking through Ju lu road, I saw a Cheng Guan vehicle parked beside the street. Some Cheng Guan were driving some homeless people away from their camping spot.

These homeless people were kind of different from the normal ones. They had bikes with three super big bags on the rear axle of each bike. It seemed like they were doing some kind of garbage recycling for a living.

After evicting them from their spot, the Cheng Guan got into their vehicle and left. I followed, waited until they found another place and settled in, then I went forward to have an interview with one of them. (more…)

Chun Ge and Androgyny, The Skywalker that brings in hope
Don’t panic from the title. If you are trying to prompt democracy or human-rights in China, you will get a better chance if you support androgyny. It doesn’t mean that androgynous people are naturally supporting democracy, no. So why does androgyny have anything to do with democracy and human-rights?

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There was once a time in China when husbands and wives would not see one another until their wedding day. These days, in cities like Shanghai, sex before marriage, while not exactly recommended, has become far more common. However if you look into the countryside or even just tier 2,3,4 cities, lots of newly-weds still lose their virginity on their wedding night, although most of them who come from a city have been cuddling, touching, etc., for a long time before finally crossing the finish line.

This may seem strange to a foreigner. What’s the difference whether people have sex before or after marriage? According to the traditional view, which many Chinese still hold as true, if a girl loses her virginity her value will drop and she wont be able to find a good man.

These social and moral restrictions, combined with highly tabooed sex culture in China, result in many young people reaching their wedding night knowing almost nothing about sex, feeling apprehensive and bashful.

When I was in college, there was one guy in my dormitory who had never seen pornography, never experienced anything sexually, including masturbation, and had no idea what semen even looked like. The rest of the crowd was really no better than him, most of them were utterly clueless about the female anatomy.

Am I getting off subject? What about those crazy games? lol My father worked as a wedding photographer for almost 10 years, and during those years experienced a lot of crazy wedding night games. The games are usually played on the wedding night in their new house, after a tremendous dinner in a hotel, with several close friends and family numbers.

There is always a reason for every thing, even for crazy wedding games. I think people have created these games as a tool to help newly-weds overcome their shyness and also maybe to educate them a bit about sex. So without further ado, here they are:

1. Hang a banana underneath the belt of the groom and ask the bride to eat it. Don’t forgot ask her how good it is.

2. The bride holds something in one hand. She then puts her right hand through the opening of the groom’s right pant leg, and her left hand through the left. Then she must exchange whatever she is holding to the other hand and take it out from the opposite pant leg.

3. Place a bottle of beer on the ground and hang a chopstick from the back of the groom. Have the bride guide him to stick the chopstick into the beer bottle. While the groom is trying really hard to get the chopstick into the bottle, he’ll be continually asking the bride, “Is it in yet?” and when they make it, the bride finally answers, “Yes! It’s in.”

4. Groom and bride sit face to face. The bride takes off her shoes and puts one foot on groom’s crotch, which is called ‘stepping on the gas.’ The groom reaches out his hands to grabs bride’s breasts, which is called ‘steering.’ Two other people stand behind them and push their backs. When the bride gets pushed, she must say “Ri” which simulates the sound of the engine. When the groom is pushed, he says “Bibi” which simulates the sound of a honk. When you play this in a particular rhythm, you will hear them saying one after another:” ri bibi…ri bibi…~~~” (In Chinese, ri means fuck, and bi or B stands for female genitalia.)

5. Put a chopstick into a bottle of beer, leaving only 1 cm outside of the bottle. Ask the newly-weds to work together to take it out with their tongues.

Last week on Wednesday, May 12, artist and activist Ai Weiwei posted a three and a half hour long recording “NianNian”, which made by 3,412 volunteers from Twitter listing the names of every student who died in the Sichuan earthquake. This list has been strongly guarded by the Chinese government due to the tragedy’s obvious connection to corrupt and inadequate school construction. Those of you who don’t know the cruel reality of China’s freedom of speech may have difficulty understanding just how brave these volunteers are for doing this.

Just a few days before the “NianNian” was released, Ai Weiwei invited all of the Twitter users to have dinner together in Hangzhou on May 7. One of the dinner organizer’s emails was hacked by the government on May 5, and all the RSVP information was revealed. The domestic security department of Hangzhou started sending requests to those who had RSVPed for that dinner to “have tea” with them. By 4:00 p.m. on May 7, more than 32 people had had conversions with the domestic security department and were threatened for planning to attend the dinner.

What the domestic security department didn’t know was that the “tea” action had gone live on Twitter under the tag #5/7tea. These real-time reports of the security department’s repeated interventions encouraged Twitter users from Shanghai, Dalian and other provinces to join the dinner party to show their support to Ai Weiwei, and to deliver a massage to the government that having dinner together and chatting is a basic human right.

After 5/7tea, it has become clearer and clearer that a new wave is appearing on the Internet in China. This is especially the case on Twitter, which, due to its decentralized nature and API policy, has become the frontline of China’s democracy and human rights movement. The theme of this new wave is this: do not be afraid to exercise your human rights, especially the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly; do not be afraid of the government and its domestic security department; plead, appeal, do everything in your power to ask for administrative review of the government for its illegal behavior, abuse of power, and so on.

The seeds of this fearless new wave first appeared on December 10, 2008 on the 60th anniversary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On that day, Charter 08 (named after Charter 77 issued by dissidents in Czechoslovakia) was published and signed by over 303 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists to promote political reform and democratization in the People’s Republic of China. Hours before the online release of the Charter, police detained its author, Liu Xiaobo. He was later arrested on June 23, 2009 on charges of “suspicion of inciting the subversion of state power” and sentenced to eleven years in prison on December 25.

Despite the Chinese government’s tight-lipped approach to the Charter and the strict punishment of its draftsman, a great deal of Chinese from inside China and abroad signed the Charter. Many of them have been forced to “have tea” with domestic security officials, which is the first time “having tea” (he cha 喝茶) became a phrase describing the forceful “heart to heart” conversations with Chinese security. Now, with the majority of these politically active citizens online and using Twitter, details of this disgusting process have begun appearing live on the internet. People update their Twitter page on the way to the local security bureau, while talking with officers, or on a short break in the bathroom. They write blog posts immediately after returning home, receiving advice and sparking discussion online. A few have even begun attempts at educating their tea “partner” on democracy and human rights, sparking a competition over who can give the best speech to the heavily brainwashed security officers. When the mysterious mask is ripped off, together with the fear, the man behind is just a normal guy with basic human needs.

Following Charter 08, the Citizen Investigating Movement, and now the recent 5/7tea and NianNian, many are becoming more educated about human rights violations and Chinese security practices. With the new wave of political and social activism online, the human rights movement in China is growing and many are becoming bolder in exercising their right of free speech. The future is bright for sure, but the path is twisted and dangerous. We must keep moving forward.