InsideGFW

In October I went to the Zhenjiang Midi Music Festival during the national holiday. Because everything fun was happening at night and the rainy weather had covered everything in mud, there wasn’t much to do during the afternoon. So I decided to do some research and conducted 12 brief interviews with the underground rock crowd at the festival. The interviews focus on the Internet and censorship in China, people’s opinions toward the Chinese government, and the on-going sexual revolution in china. Some of the questions are more “scandalous” than others, and it was up to interview subjects whether they wanted to answer all of them.

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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…)

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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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.

1. Once, a Communist Party newspaper journalist went to a poor remote village to interview the villagers. He found a poor old man and asked, “Have there been any big changes in your life these years?” “Oh yes, big change!” said the old man. “In the old China, our lives were worse than those of cows and horses.” “And how about now?” the journalist asked optimistically. “Well, now we are just like them,” replied the old man.

2. The Vice President of the Urban Construction Bureau of Xin City, Liaoning province, was killed in his office after being stabbed seven times. After hearing the news, a netizen commented: “Kindergarten Kids sent a message of congratulation: Uncles and Aunts, you finally found the right person!”

3. From the perspective of the killing power of weapons, the world’s first ranked Weapon of Massive Destruction (WMD) is Chairman Mao.

4. The Chief of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau said:”Without getting rid of all the unemployed people, Shenzhen will not have peace.” A Twitter user comments: “Don’t worry guys, the Chief just can’t stand his wife anymore.”

5. Hundreds of Chenguan from Pinddingshan Henan province driving their government cars all the way to Beijing due to default in payments. A netizen commented, “Those who have dogs, but don’t feed them are just as guilty as those who torture animals.”

6. Yes, we have more tanks than potatos, more rockets than sausages, but we can’t eat rockets every day, fire a nuclear bomb for Spring Festival.

7. Such a nice shaped ass crack*, such silky long legs* yet the dick* shrinks.

#Groin in Chinese is gu gou股沟, a nick name for gu ge谷歌, which is Google.

#leg in Chinese is tui腿, very similar to tui推 that is short for Twitter推特.

#dang裆 in Chinese is the place where a normal man’s dick should be located, which is the homophone of dang党, the Communist Party.

8. Some rumours say that Facebook is going to be imported to China, but what should the Chinese name of it be? How about just call it “shu书” (book)? As long as you enter China, you are losing face.

9. Some oversea Chinese supporters of the PRC government enthusiastically back up the phrase “Only distance creates beauty.”

10. Wen Jiabao visited Beijing University on the 4th of May, many students invited the Prime Minster to come back again next month!

11. Where can you find Chinese people’s old friends? If they are not in the People’s Great Hall in Beijing, they must be on the dock in the International Court of Justice in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands.