Tag Archives: China

The great moment – Attending WordCamp China in Beijing

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(Photo by LemonED)

It was really a happy day. Good weather and great bloggers from all over China. The more exciting thing is that Automattic sent Matt Mullenweg and Hailin Wu to us. WordPress is really a great platform that makes almost everyone (who uses it) benefits from it. I've been a WordPress user since Feb, 2007 and the ifgogo blog is also built using WordPress from the very beginning.

Like a lot of other "WPers", I've been contributing to some themes and plugins of WordPress as well. And fortunately that I got a chance to contribute to the upcoming Video feature of WordPress.com service. That's really a great experience to contribute to such a big community.

As the idea of WordPress is everyone contributes and everyone benefits, I hope the ifgogo project would follow the same way. We don't blog for money and fame, we just blog for the readers especially those who leave sweet or critical feedbacks to our interesting (or even bored) stories ;) - Though the ifgogo blog is currently still very young and simple, I am sure it will bring you happiness and friends every author blogs.

However, for some infamous and ridiculous reasons, people in China seldom express themselves to the public but the WordPress system really give everyone a chance to do, or at least to try, and finally becomes a blogger :) The WordCamp then gathers the great bloggers together to meet, and share.

To share, to contribute and also to get the friends, responses and sometimes benefits, that's why we blog for today, and tomorrow.

The invisible man in China (Chinese contemporary art from Liubolin)

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Here are some interesting pictures from a man named "Liu Bolin". The author was born in 1973. Here you can find more works from Bolin. I loved the package of photos so much not only because he really looks like an invisible man but also due to the metaphor behind the photos.

FYI: After China shifted from a closed state to a more opened one, there are more and more great arts from the Chinese people. If you are in Beijing and want to know more about this, I can be your guide :)

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U.S. is a "small" country

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U.S. do be a "small" country, at least for its media.

After China won the women's gymnastics, especially beat the American team, almost all the media in States focus on the "underage problem" of Chinese women team. They try to figure out any possible "evidence" to prove that those girls who attended this competition do not fit the age limitation decided by IFG (International Federation of Gymnastics). To achieve this goal, some journalists even try to "trap" Chinese gymnastics athelets by their questions. Questions such as "Where did your 15th birthday party hold on?" were asked, which were laughed at by journalists in other countries.

It looks that Americans are really jealous of China's success -- the only thing I can infer from tons of "news", or actually I should say "stories", blaming Chinese athelets are too young to attend Olympic Games. It might be acceptable if it is a chick talk just between some American women athelets, but when it appears on so many headlines of American newspapers, I do think it shows some negtive attitude of Americans.

Like a former French forgein minister said, a country can be named as a "great country" only when its value are accepted by the world. At this point, I do consider this jealousness of U.S. makes it look so small. By the way, if there were two kids competing with each other and the youngger one won. How would you feel about when the elder one were crying and weeping "Mummy mummy, I cannot win this because he/she is so young~"?

Websites On Chinese Culture

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I would like to introduce two english websites on Chinese culture for you guys. Have a quick view on them will help you understand the culture of China and how people live in Beijing better.

The first one is China Culture Information Net.

http://english.ccnt.com.cn/

Most of the Chinese traditional festivals and folk arts are assorted.

Another website called Chinese Literature Classics.

http://www.chinapage.com/classic1.html

I bet not every Chinese native has gone through these mater pieces.

Try talk about Yijing or SunZi's Art of War with your friends, they gonna be jealousy for your range of knowledge.

:-)

PS: I just cann't write long, but I am trying.

China blocks all electronic devices delivery for Olympics 2008

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Yesterday I went to a post office to send a video-camera to my friend with EMS.But  the employee there said that I can't send a video-camera since it's being blocked while Beijing Olympics goes on.

So i turned to some other express service provider.Unfortunately all of them told me that i can't send out a video-camera during Beijing Olympics.

And finally a provider which name:Shentong Express confirmed my suspects.They said that all electronic devices delivery are blocked during Beijing Olympics.

I also bought a PSP on Chinese C2C website 'Taobao'.Today the seller called me to tell me that he couldn't deliver my PSP to me.Because the express service provider said it's being blocked.

oh what a pity!It seems like you can't deliver any electronic devices in China during Olympics.it makes me feel angry about the Game.

It's reported that there's an other earthquake in Xiamen, Fujian China on July 5

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When I was reading some posts at a forum in China, many people were talking about "another earthquake" in Xiamen, Fujian.

The reports are from Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou .. and some are even saying that most place in South China had felt that shaking.

I am in Beijing now and did not feel anything. I just hope the "other earthquake" this time could be over asap... The people already lost a lot in Wenchuan Earthquake...

FYI: There is NO post in any mass media site currently (9:54AM in Beijing) and the people says the quake is happening in around 9:37 AM. I will update this post to follow.

Facebook blocked, but Wkipedia Chinese version is now available in China, wtf?

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While Facebook's finally crashed inside China, the zh dot Wikipedia dot com comes back. It's really ridiculous and I am puzzled. As for as I know, the Wikipedia is much more "sensitive" and "harmful" than Facebook (considering the content), but the block and censorship to Facebook might be due to the sensitivity of the "social effect"? All, maybe the censorship itself is Who knows, just let it be.

Update: Wikipedia seems to go back "inside" while Facebook seems to return to us. It's really very strange that maybe it's due to some "upgrades" of GFW system?

Anyway, let's keep in track.

UPDATE: facebook.com is completely blocked in China then

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Update on July 10 / 2009:

It's been a year since I wrote this post, now in 2009, facebook.com is again blocked in China. What a pity, what a shame! The same of you all, I want my Facebook and Twitter back!

BTW, this blog (ifgogo.com), aka Chinese in English, is a blog with different authors from all over the world blogging anything about China, Chinese, etc. I'd like to know whether you'd wanna be one of us :)

Update on July 3 / 2008:

It's back again, but not quite stable. There are occasionally package loss in the data transmission.

Anyway, I hope I was wrong, I hope it's just a little mistake of the censorship system. But for the damn censorship, my Application would get more users ;)

Update on July 2:

It’s totally down now. The other 2 IPs are also blocked. Take a look at this screenshot:

My ping result:

however, seems the Application server is "a little safer" than others :)

My tracert result:

C:\Users\awflasher>tracert 69.63.178.11

Tracing route to www.facebook.com [69.63.178.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1     9 ms     7 ms     7 ms  221.223.96.1
2     8 ms     8 ms     7 ms  61.148.36.85
3     7 ms     7 ms     7 ms  61.148.5.209
4     8 ms     7 ms     8 ms  61.148.154.17
5     8 ms     8 ms     7 ms  202.96.12.197
6    51 ms    51 ms    51 ms  219.158.7.178
7   151 ms   151 ms   150 ms  219.158.3.118
8     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Update on July 1: It's okay now, 2:58PM. Facebook.com now changed a new IP at 69.63.178.11. I am sorry if this post cause any inconvenience.

But they still blocked one IP(69.63.176.140) from Facebook: take a look at this pictures:

ping from inside China:

ping from outside China:

It's really a pity that I cannot access www.facebook.com. It's blocked just now on June 30, 2008.

It's "Beijing time 12:52PM".

I am just a web developer. I am not at all interested in political issues. But how can they just completely block a whole site? It's so rude!

My first Facebook Application is going to ship, what a pity!

It seems that only the www server is effected. The app server and developers server are all available and very fast.

some screenshots:

Ping from One of my server hosted inside the U.S:

Ping from China:

Tracert from China:

So, how do the Chinese Bloggers avoid the "censorship"

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As I had mentioned in the last post about Facebook's IP-block in China, the censorship is now becoming more and more "sensitive". This time, even as a supporter (for the Olympic Games), I got a lot of trouble accessing necessary resources to launch a widget for the Olympic countdown. Fortunately, I modified my host file and assigned a "safe" IP to facebook.com to finsih and ship my Application (Beijing Olympic Games countdown)

Yes, censorship takes a lot of trouble to bloggers, but there are many funny ways to avoid the censorship. Let me introduce some of the methods here:

1) An old way - "Spliting-Character-Way"
As we know, Chinese characters are made up of various components regarded as radicals(BuShou, aka 部首 in Chinese"). And some of the components are themselves individual characters. So it's a great way to "split" one character into two or more characters.

For instance:

"软件", aka "software" in English, can be "re-rendered" as "车欠亻牛".

There is even a funny IME software to help you input such characters on the fly:
http://go.6.cn/d379

2) Another old way - "Mars language"(aka "火星文" in Chinese)
This is not originally for getting rid of censorship, but just for fun amoung the young netizens. However, young students are alway like to go against the tradition. By making the Characters in another style, they successfully fooled the adults.

However, people now called it "Mars language", it is said that this name is originally from Taiwan.

For instance:

"游戏里用不了或新闻" can be "re-rendered" as "蝣戲裏苚吥ㄋ吙煋攵"

Also there's an IME helper to let you input such "Mars language":
http://go.6.cn/0r80

3) The latest way - "Classical-Chinese-Style"
Well, as we know that many years ago, Chinese people wrote and read in vertical directions. I'm sorry that I don't know how to accurately explain it in English, but a simple demo would make you understand it soon (the demo is presented in English):
║Ｃ│＇│ｗ│ｌ│ｅ│ｏ│　│　│ｉ║
║ｈ│ｓ│ｏ│ｌ│　│ｍ│ｂ│ｉ│ｆ║
║ｉ│　│ｒ│ｉ│ｗ│ｅ│ｌ│ｓ│ｇ║
║ｎ│ｈ│ｌ│ｎ│ｈ│　│ｏ│　│ｏ║
║ａ│ｏ│ｄ│ｇ│ｏ│Ｃ│ｇ│ａ│ｇ║
║　│ｔ│　│　│＇│ｈ│　│　│ｏ║
║　│　│ｗ│ｔ│ｓ│ｉ│ｂ│ｔ│。║
║　│ｉ│ｈ│ｈ│　│ｎ│ｙ│ｅ│ｃ║
║　│ｎ│ａ│ｅ│ｔ│ｅ│　│ａ│ｏ║
║　│　│ｔ│　│ｅ│ｓ│ｓ│ｍ│ｍ║