Back to freedom

We’re back to U.S. soil! It is a wonderful feeling to be immersed in a culture that is completely intuitive. Now when we order a hamburger, for instance, there’s no guessing about what we want, how to do it, what we’ll get, etc. We can handle this. We’re Americans.

Something that has taken more than a few days to sink in since returning, though, is the realization that all of our Internet access is back in action. No more blocked websites, no more having to use proxy sites to see banned pages. It takes a little effort to convince ourselves that Youtube is still functional, with hours of hilarious videos free for the watching. Every time we received an email link to a video in China we considered it a cruel joke, knowing that we were completely blocked off from sharing in the fun!

We can also speak openly about places like Taiwan and Tibet. After a year and a half of closely guarding our speech, it feels strange even saying the names of these places out loud! Our thinking patterns were definitely influenced by the Chinese censorship practices.

So we’re relishing the chance to be Americans again for a few months. Freedom to do whatever we want, speak on any topics we please, protest openly about anything we’re concerned about. You don’t realize how great it is until it’s gone for awhile.

Posting by email

Well, we may have figured out a way to bypass the ‘Great Firewall’ for good.  WordPress recently added a way to send blog posts by email, and this is the result!  No more cumbersome proxies. Just a simple email away from updating you with our experiences, and the best part is the pictures come through too!

So, here’s newfound hope that communication will continue unabated into our next year here in Nanjing!

Finally!

Sorry for the dry spell in our postings. We have been rather busy with things lately, moving house, finding work, and finishing classes. But to top things off, Internet connections have seemed to become more strictly monitored. It is getting harder and harder to access blogs; even the list of working proxy sites has been shrinking. It took about an hour before I found one that worked well enough to make this post. So please keep checking our site- we still continue to have the most interesting experience here in China!

The dictionary according to the censors

We found an English dictionary here in town at an imported books store. JM was excited to have a volume with definitions of words like “stochasticity,” meaning it is a pretty good quality volume. It’s a normal Webster’s Collegiate dictionary, printed in America and shipped over here to China.

On arrival at home we were surprised to find some entries.. missing! Someone got to our dictionary first, and was able to remove some of the more ’sensitive’ information from the listings. If you look over at our picture site, you will see what we mean.

http://polis7.blogspot.com

We’re constantly reminded about the difference in freedom of information here. When chatting with some Chinese students about friends of ours who started their own locally circulated newspaper, they were astounded that our friend could do so on his own initiative. The point became clear when our newspaper translation class teacher told us how every single publication in China must be registered with the regional publication bureau to have an official status, or else it’s illegal, i.e.- it is potentially subversive to the national order.

We don’t ever think about the Bill of Rights until part of it seems missing in our life. This reminds us again how we can’t take it for granted what privileges we have in comparison to many others.

Outwitting the censors

As we mentioned before, China does not allow blog sites to function, making this blog somewhat of a feat to keep up.  We want everyone to know that your comments are still emailed to us, so we can read them even if we can’t access our own site.
 
There is a small loophole, however.  Google does keep our blog on file, and thanks to its ‘cache’ function we can see saved images of our webpages, even if we can’t interact with them. It’s like looking at our blog through a glass window, being just out of reach!  So we’ll still see your posts after they’ve been saved by Google, which is usually no longer than a day later.