Absurdity, Allegory and China

The Chair I can’t begin to tell you how often over the past ten years traveling within China that I’ve wished I could … just … sit … down. Knee pain? Lower back stiff ‘n sore on another cold morning? Nerves a little bit edgy from the crowd? Be nice to have a place to [...]

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Photo 03353 If I could post the photo I write about here, I would. But I can’t. It’s China again, those little rascals. They’re still blocking. They just can’t help themselves. But blog posts are going through, at least for now. I could probably upload the photo, but since I have no way to view- [...]

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Posting-in-the-blind test. We received word this morning that blogspots.com has been opened in Beijing, the first time since October 23, 2007. These windows seem to only stay open for very brief periods as the Chinese get more and more security-minded (read “uncommonly paranoid, though well within the historic bounds of Chinese government.” If there had [...]

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I just read on Danwei.org that Blogspots has been unblocked, and one has to wonder why. It is Day Two of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a jittery time which has been the latest excuse for major crackdowns against anyone who is perceived as having an ax to grind [...]

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Last night we got a taste of what’s to come over the next year. For the last several years we’ve watched from our 10th floor perch as a new stadium has been in the process of being built across the street to host football (soccer) competitions for the 2008 Olympics. There has been a rush [...]

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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 [...]

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I wrote this piece yesterday and posted it to a listserv I belong to before I realized that yesterday blogspot.com had been unblocked here in China. Or maybe the block was just in Tianjin. Hard to know who blocks what and where the blocks originate. Some seem to be national and others local. Controlling access [...]

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The Flickr site came back within a couple of hours, which was reassuring … at least for the moment. The problems with access to the Internet have been very problematic since the end of November when the only ISP we can possibly use started chugging to a near-halt. Email was difficult to download, though if [...]

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Went to the Flickr site at 5 AM this morning, and no photos display. Perhaps it’s a problem with Flickr, but there is always that nagging feeling that it’s now blocked. One never knows. And it’s not as if there’s anyone to call and ask, “Excuse me, boss, is this particular URL now on the [...]

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I uploaded a slug of photos to the Flickr site last night, and it got me thinking about the first time I went to Lhade and Tongmer. I looked through my journal and found the following notes on that day. March 31, 2006Visited Lhade and Tongmer with Dorzha today. Both schools are first through sixth [...]

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