Absurdity, Allegory and China

Well, something has gone awry. Internet access has been seriously altered since yesterday afternoon at about 2 PM. Could not download email from either Yahoo or Google (both of which I have as POP 3 forwarding accounts), though I was still able to get to each email site via the web. The Yahoo website was inaccessible early yesterday evening. This morning, 3:40, I woke and was able to download from Google, but for some unknown reason my Google account has been changed, and my ’sent box’ - I have Google keep a copy of all sent items - downloaded as well. All 288 messages. Fifteen minutes later, access was denied via POP3 to both of the servers again. Yahoo is unreachable on the net, as is Flickr.

I have no idea what is happening. I stated my concern a couple of days back that things would probably get weird after the VT shooting, and I’m sticking with that. I am apprehensive to say that things have been blocked. For now I’ll just say things are ‘inaccessible.’

I received an email yesterday before things went down, a copy of a few paragraphs from the http://www.danwei.com site, which I am unable to get to.

“Xinhua, CCTV, and the Virginia Tech shootings Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn, April 18, 2007 09:47 AM Yesterday Danwei’s Joel Martinsen rounded up Chinese reactions to the shootings at Virginia Tech, translating from blogs and Internet forums: Chinese media reacts to Virginia Tech shootings.

Beijing Newspeak, written by a foreigner who works at Xinhua, has a post about how the state owned news agency treated the story, and the anxiety there before the killer’s identity was confirmed as not being Chinese: Ill-informed Chicago columnist scares the hell out of China.

A commenter who works at CCTV9 added a follow-up: an informative, lengthy and darkly humorous account of how CCTV dealt with the breaking news of the shootings, comparing it to similarly cack-handed treatment of the Beslan school hostage in September 2004.

Finally, the lads at Antiwave got on the phone last night and have posted a podcast interview with a Chinese student at Virgina Tech (in Mandarin).

UPDATE: Chinese journalist Rose Luqiu analyzes the Chinese media’s use of the Sun-Times column, in translation at ESWN.

Also, Shanghaiist reproduces an email that a “Chinese born in Shanghai” sent off to the Sun-Times calling for the resignation of columnist Michael Sneed and her editor for this insult to the Chinese people.”

The email came to me from a person in another city in China, so obviously they have access. This is confirmation that there are levels of blocks - national as well as local. Within the local range I am fairly certain that different ISPs are able to individually fiddle and block access to their own list of forbidden sites. I am surprised that I am able to blog this. Turns out that Blogspot was only unblocked here in Tianjin on Monday, April 16. How long it will stay open is anyone’s guess. I’m betting ‘not too long.’

Curious. And as always, developing!