Author Archives: Aw Guo

Youtube is finally blocked in China (updating)

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Update on Mar 23: Now it's blocked again :( - even with OpenDNS, I cannot access Youtube in Beijing!

Update on Mar 07: Now the block has been removed, we're still now sure why this happened. I really hope that we could stop updating this post by now.

Update: Now Youtube is finally, finally, completely unable to access even in Beijing (northern China). Fuck GFW!

Well... many friends told me (via IM and Twitter)  that Youtube, the most popular video sharing site is now blocked in southern China. The ISP is China Telecom, which covers mostly in southern China.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=youtube+blocked+China

I am so sorry to hear this news. It's such a sad March. As far as I know, Youtube (Google) is doing a very great job in China and paid a lot for a CDN in China. Not matter what ISP you use, Youtube is as fast as any local video site. And the most outstanding feature is that Youtube offers a "embeddable" version with smooth fullscreen-mode and search support!

PS: Fortunately, I'm in Beijing now, so I can still visit Youtube. But I am not sure whether I can still enjoy the clips from Youtube tomorrow.

God bless Youtube!

Huge fire burning near CCTV headquarter building on Feb 9

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It's Chinese Lantern Festival today, but we've got a very bad ending tonight: A huge fire striked the CCTV (China Central Television) headquarter buildings (actually the North wing building), around 9:10 PM. Chinese Twitter users reported this and uploaded photos to Google docs at the very first time.

Update: This video is from Youku, a very important evidence by a witness at the very first time:

Here're some photos from the Google Doc.

 

People were watching and worried about the situation:

Two video clips from Youku:

Well, if you've been living in China, especially in Beijing, you would heard of the custom about fireworks/firecrackers – it originated thousands of years ago, and it's still very popular among elder Chinese people. I can even hear firecrackers from almost everywhere when I write this post in Wuhan, 10PM, Feb 9.

As the population goes up, the security issues are also a big problem! Cat Chen, an author of us also wrote something about this early in 2008. I'm also looking forward to some more reasonable but restricted policies for the firecrackers in China.

Wish everyone a safe, happy Chinese Lantern Festival!

Update:

Zhang Jianyong, a fire fighter from Hongmiao Fire department died in this accident. He was born on Feb 26, 1979, from Shenyang, capital of northeastern Liaoning Province. It is really a big sorrow that there're only weeks to go for his 30th birthday!

May He Rest In Peace!

How the Chinese bloggers use a creative way to express

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It's been discussed that the censorship in China would come to a climax for some special reasons this year. And actually, the anti-vulgarity movement early in 2009 has showed how they can dominate our internet. Even Google was branded as the most vulgar site in China due to its image search results. It sounds ridiculous but that's the very current situation here: if you got some naked girls on your web page, no matter where it is from (eg, uploaded by registered users or externally back-linked in search results), your site could be judged "vulgar".

As our servers were host in China, I have to check and review the posts and comments on ifgogo carefully to avoid "being harmonized", but some smart bloggers here found some very interesting way to express their attitude to this ridiculous anti-vulgarity movement, here're some interesting pictures from Douban:

Continue reading →

A day in Beijing zoo

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Some days before, I went to Beijing zoo with my family. Here are some interesting photos and videos to share with you:

Some photos:

The Panda and me :)

A shy panda:

Two golden monkey, enjoy their sleeping together!

A lynx maybe, I don't remember its English name…

Mother and child (just the monkeys in the video above)：

Japanese-style moustache…

White tiger：

rhinoceros, enjoy his dinner lonely…

A penguin from Peru：

penguins waiting for the dinner in a queue :)

An elephant, very huge!

He must be hungry …

Zebra, white on black or black on white? That is a question :)

Star tortoise from India:

Gecko – the name is very cool, isn't it? :)

Snake：

Another snake：

Millions of people going home within a week every year

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It' a very important time for our Chinese people, especially those working/studying far away from their hometown like me.

We call it "Spring Festival Transport", aka 春(Spring)运(Transport) in Chinese.

I don't know whether there's something similar in the western world, but in China, spring festival means time for home. Millions of people will travel across the big country for home. No eariler, no later, just within about one week, only once each year!

As you may imagine, the traffic system will hit a very high load. Tickets are sold out in a very short time every day. Just to get a piece of train ticket, thousands of people have to wait in a queue 24 hours beforehand, in spite of cold winter rains! And for the unchecked scalpers over the country, some people may have to pay 2,3 times higher than the original price for his ticket. I am sure many of the ifgogo.com writers have the experience of buying higher tickets in China.

If you are traveling by train, then there's something even worse! Getting a ticket is not the final rescue! Mostly, you may have to stay in a very crowded carriage, jostle each other tightly. Keep in a same pose for hours and no toilet available! That's like true nightmares, especially for female passengers. And that's why I suggest my friend to travel on air, no matter how rich the air ticket is.

The worst thing is, after a tired-through struggling and  finally arrive at home, you only got two or three days to stay. After then, you have to struggle back to work/school again!

Anyway, to stay with family during spring festival is such a important custom for us. No one dares to disobey it or even to discuss about an alternative way. Though we all know it's a very low-efficiency family gathering, we all have to go with it. Personally, I will leave for Guangzhou on Jan 25 to meet my father and get back to Beijing later in Feb, that would be a very tiring trip

(Guangzhou station, photo from Chinanews)

(Photo by namelz52 – you may take a look at this blog, though all in Chinese, you may also read the photos)

Happy "Niu" Year of 2009

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As some of you may know, we Chinese people has a brand new "calendar-system", the Chinese New Year, rather than the world-wide used "Gregorian calendar". It is the most important festival among all the traditional Chinese holidays.

Though there are still a couple of weeks to go for the real Chinese New Year, people around are already celebrating for the "Niu" Year. Yes, the "Niu" Year, I did not misspelled it :)

Niu means Ox (aka, "牛" in Chinese). It is one of the twelve Chinese Zodiacs. In modern Chinese language, it means "very good, very strong".

We Chinese people experienced a lot, like hosted the 2008 Olympic Games for a first time, and won the first position in the golden medal standings. But we also suffered a lot in 2008, like the Big snow and Wenchuan earthquake, and many many other troubles for our current situation. Anyway, we really need a Niu Year of 2009 so much.

There're still some hours to go for saying farewell to 2008, and I'll be a little earlier than those who lived in the U.S. Well, let's enjoy it! Happy Niu Year!!

Harmonious Society Tee from Chinese designer "nusea"

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Well, I have to admit this designer a real genius!

Anyway, take a look at this picture:

Picture source: http://www.ggtee.com/

This tee is designed by "Nusea", who is a 26-year-old man located in Guangdong.

However, if you are confused about why I admit this designer a genius, take a read on my introduction:

"Harmonious Society" is first proposed by the Chinese government under the Hu-Wen Administration during the 2005 National People's Congress, the idea deviates China's focus from economic growth to overall societal balance and harmony. The idea is clearly visible in banners all over China.(via)

The idea is of course good, at least not a bad idea literally, but not long later, the word "harmonized" became rather popular among Chinese internet, which means a website is blocked or a sensitive phrase is filtered. For example: Technorati and Facebook are all harmonized in China :)

Technorati is blocked in China

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I am really so sorry to admit the fact: "technorati.com" is completely on the black list now.

Actually, the "www.technorati.com"(with the www-prefix) had been blocked inside China for years, but the technorati.com was always working. But this time, when I try to access the "technorati.com", it shows "This page is not available".

Well, seems blogging in China is really a hard job :)