Horse Cart in Xizhou, Yunnan

I'd like to add yet another example to my posts on various modes of transportation in China (two on this blog here and here, and another here as a guest on James Fallows' blog).

While traveling between some of the villages in Xizhou, Yunnan I made use of this form of transportation:

As I rode the "horse cart taxi", I saw that numerous local people were also using them to get around. I particularly enjoyed this mode of transportation as there was no apparent pollution -- at least during my ride.

Ai Weiwei: A Chinese Artist With Real Problems

Several days ago, to celebrate the April 1 holiday I wrote a post about a Chinese artist.  In it I refer to the very real challenges faced by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.  Not long after my post, I discovered that Ai Weiwei had been detained in China prior to boarding a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong.  France and Germany have already called for his release and others are voicing their concern in other ways -- for example an architect refusing to take any additional commissions in China until Ai Weiwei is released. 

I will very soon be back to posting regularly and will comment more on Ai Weiwei's predicament and related issues.  I feel that China being so concerned about an artist speaks volumes.  Unfortunately for Ai Weiwei and others like him, China is not playing an April Fool's joke.

China's Great Firewall Inspires a Chinese Artist

I've been posting quite a bit on China's Great Firewall and related issues (most recent post here).  The Great Firewall has had much impact in China, not the least on artists.

In Handan, Hebei a local artist unveiled a piece of art in a public park to express his views on the Great Firewall:

The artist described the piece to me:

"The concrete square represents the Great Firewall encircling a China that is still building.  The bench represents those breaking through the Great Firewall by thinking outside of the box.  And not least, the bricks which are mostly outside of the square represent the ideas for building a better China that remain out of the reach of many because of the Great Firewall and other policies of the Chinese Government."

I'm glad I was able to speak to the artist.  Otherwise I'd be bewildered as to how something that appears to be so "wrong" could be constructed.  I'm sure you can find additional symbolism in the piece.

That such a display of art was in a public park came at a great surprise to me.  I'd be worried there could be undesirable repercussions for the artist, such as those apparently faced by Ai Weiwei (see here).  Maybe for this reason the artist, Hei Pofu, said it would only be displayed as above for today.

[Additional Info:  Since time has passed, please note the special date of the post.]

China Scenes: Quanzhou, Fujian

Finally made it to somewhere with a manageable Internet connection.  By middle of next week I should be back up to regular speed for posting.

Today, I'll share some photos from Quanzhou, Fujian.  Quanzhou is across the water from Taiwan and its administrative area has a population reportedly of 7-8 million.  I'd argue that some Chinese cities' administrative areas are more similar to counties in the US and that population numbers in China can be "fuzzy", but those are topics for another day.  Regardless, Quanzhou has plenty of people and here are glimpses of into some of their lives:

Shopping street

Street/Sidewalk Market

Alley

Which catches your attention more?  An iPhone 4 car?

Or a Counter-Strike car?

Families at a park

Baby bottles on poles & fish?

A fun way for kids to feed the fish

Two girls working at a mobile phone shop

Small lake in the city center

College student playing her violin outside to take a break

More on Dairy Queen Inspirations in China

I'm currently having problems accessing the Internet freely and can only connect intermittently.  However, I am not sure that is due to a poor connection in my temporary remote location or Great Firewall issues.  I'll do a quick post while I'm connected.

Previously, I wrote about a Dairy Queen in Guiyang and its neighbor with a remarkably similar name, DU.  However, there exists another example of Dairy Queen's apparent influence in China.  See here:

I saw this Mango Queen last fall in a large central shopping district in Tianjin.  At least it may offer an alternative for those who have been to DQ, or DU, too often.

China Scenes: Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang

I'm still working on some potential material regarding China's Great Firewall (previous post: What Google, Baidu, and Sogou Results for "Witopia" Say About China's Great Firewall).  For what it's worth, I have not been personally affected by any changes during the past week.  So far, the adjustments I'm using are holding up fine.

This next week or so I may not be able to post as regularly due to once again being in "remote" locations in China.  After that, there is much I am planning to share and it should be smoother sailing.  Though, with the Great Firewall between me and this blog one can never be sure.

For now, below are photos from yet another city in China that sees relatively few foreigners, Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang Province.  It's best known for the beautiful nature nearby, but instead I'll share some scenes from the city center to give a small taste of Mudanjiang life.

Shopping district

Newer section of shopping district

Street food with an American touch

A gateway to a colorful Oz?

No, to a place dedicated for wedding photography

Another scene for wedding photos

A crowd listening to a variety of people sing at a riverside park

Mudanjiang River

A college student with an Elmo backpack

A college couple taking a walk

What Google, Baidu, and Sogou Results for "Witopia" Say About China's Great Firewall

Previously, I wrote that some cheap/free services openly distributed online in China for gaining access to an uncensored Internet were not apparently impacted by the recent expansion of China's Great Firewall (see here for who was affected and here for comments on the timing).  I also suggested the possibility that they were spared because they allowed China to maintain a degree of monitoring (see here).

There is one particularly intriguing candidate for a program that the Chinese Government may have wanted to spare.  It is called "Witopia" -- not the Witopia based in the US but a "copycat" program being distributed in China with the same name.  At least one person familiar with VPN services (I'll withhold their name unless I can be sure it is OK to share) has said it doesn't appear to be encrypting data -- a significant and striking failing for a VPN (again, for how VPNs and the Great Firewall work see here).

Is there any evidence the flawed fake Witopia is being promoted in China?

Today, I checked Baidu (Google's main competitor in China), Sogou (another search web site in China), and Google China's search service.  I conducted a search for "Witopia".

You can see a capture of the full first page of a search for "Witopia" on Baidu here (click to see a larger version):

Here is today's first page for a similar search on Sogou:

And finally, on Google China:

Yes, those are really 3 different search web sites.  I'll save a discussion of Copyright/Trademark issues for another day (if you can't wait... for a potential Dairy Queen example in China see here and for a "Google Hotel" example in Vietnam see here).

Of relevance to the current topic, Baidu didn't return the legitimate Witopia web site in even the first 100 results.  Based on a search for "www.witopia.net" I strongly suspect it was not there at all.  Likewise, on Sogou the real Witopia web site did not appear.  However, on both sites there were numerous links to apparently fake versions of Witopia.

Google China was the only one of the three sites readily displaying the real Witopia site -- in fact it is the very first link.  This page was not being blocked by the Great Firewall (however, the Great Firewall would block any attempts to actually access the Witopia site).

It is not particularly surprising that Baidu and Sogou apparently don't include the real Witopia web site in their search results since the Witopia site itself is blocked in China and the Great Firewall's recent expansion impacted Witopia's services.

However, it is notable that numerous links for apparently fake copies of "Witopia" remain on Baidu and Sogou.  Why show them if they work as advertised and China wants to stop people from getting through the Great Firewall?  The programs are obviously not hidden from view and are being heavily promoted on Chinese web sites.

Again, as I mentioned above it is possible the Chinese Government wants the fake Witopias to be used because of their "flaws" (such as a lack of encryption) that enable some sort of monitoring.  It may be for this reason they remain clearly displayed on Chinese web sites that have taken the trouble to remove the real Witopia web site.

I'm in the midst of some other explorations on this and related topics.  More may come soon.


Additional notes:

1.  The real Witopia site was listed first on the Microsoft Bing site for China as well (and the page was not censored).  There are some subtle twists in how Bing censors for searches in China/Chinese so I'm not yet comfortable interpretting my results (see here under "Regional censorship" and "Censorship in China").  For that reason I left it out of the above examples.

2.  I have not tested the fake versions of Witopia or other "VPNs" apparently developed in China.  I don't have a spare computer and I don't feel safe putting them on a computer with my work/personal information.

"Street Farming" in Luoyang, Henan

One day while I was walking down a street in Luoyang, Henan I saw an example of what I'll call "street farming".

First, I noticed a man on the street holding a very long pole:

I looked closer and saw he was trying to snag some fruit:

Once he was able to pick off a fruit his street farming partner helped take it out of the net:

And then she added it to their fruit collection:

From my experience this is not at all typical.  But maybe it isn't very different from going to the woods to collect blackberries.  Regardless, I'm happy to see the fruit isn't going to waste.  Nothing deep here other than some people in China can be very resourceful -- no matter the environment.

Google's Problems in China: Perceptions of a Chinese Internet User in Guiyang

In the latest chapter of Google's challenges in China, Google has accused the Chinese Government of interfering with its Gmail service (see here).  That an American company would face "special" problems in China is not surprising.  Recent reports indicate that a growing number of American companies are listing "bureaucracy" as their main concern and complaining that they are discriminated against (see here).  

I certainly have my own thoughts on these topics, but first I'd like to share the thoughts of someone else -- a 26 year old female in Guiyang, Guizhou.  She recently completed a Masters degree and is working full time in the real estate domain.  I will refer to her as Rui Rui, not her real name.  I've selected her for a variety of reasons:  her comments were made recently, she lives in one of the numerous regions important to fully understanding China yet often ignored in research, she was completely comfortable with me sharing her thoughts in this manner, and what she said reflected much of the spirit I've heard from many other Chinese on a variety of subjects.

I asked Rui Rui if she was aware of any events this or last year involving Google in China.  She first commented that she was extremely concerned last year that Google would pull out of China.  Because she was concerned about censorship on the Internet?  No.  Because she wanted to see Google stand up to China?  No again.  The main reason for her concern was that she was writing a thesis for her Masters and needed to seek information sources outside of China.  Without Google she felt that her research efforts would be seriously hampered.

Rui Rui said she uses both Google and Baidu, Google's main competitor in China.  However, she does not use them similarly.  She uses Baidu to search for material within China and Google for material outside of China because she feels Baidu is very poor for searching non-China based information.  In the research I've done across China, I have found this pattern of usage is common for people who desire to access web sites based inside China and web sites based outside China.  For example, here is a photo of the computer screen of a college student in Harbin, Heilongjiang, Dalian, Liaoning, a very different part of China, who also uses Google and Baidu in a similar fashion:

The tool depicted above allows quick access to user-selected web sites.  Baidu is in the upper left rectangle and Google is next to it.

Rui Rui also said that she didn't care that Google "moved its search" to Hong Kong because it didn't impact her search needs and she noticed no obvious differences (technically speaking, Google directed its search services in China to its servers in Hong Kong).

Her thoughts about why Google was having its various problems with the Chinese Government were particularly intriguing.  Was it because Google refused to censor its search results?  No.  Instead, she believed the source of Google's problems was that "Google was taking others' profits".  In this case, "others" meant Chinese companies.  She accepted it as being obvious that the Chinese Government would get involved in business matters to help or hinder companies.  Especially in her new field of work, she often sees examples of how government officials, often influenced by who is most connected to them, can "unfairly" make or break crucial aspects of getting business done in China.

That Rui Rui's thoughts regarding many aspects of Google's situation in China appeared to be primarily influenced by her day to day needs, desires, and experiences is typical for what I've seen across China.  Rui Rui remains pragmatic on such matters even with exposure to non-Chinese media and some negative feelings toward the Chinese Government and some of its policies.  For example, she readily shared that during the Cultural Revolution some of her family fled from Shanghai to Guiyang to avoid expected persecution from Communist Party members.  Regardless, her primary concerns today revolve around her immediate desires to improve her quality of life and gain new experiences -- goals she seems to be effectively achieving in her own way.

For now, I'd like to close with one of Rui Rui's related thoughts on fairness and the legal system in China since it sheds further light on how she now views the predicament not only faced by American companies such as Google but also faced by Chinese who aren't well connected in China.

A colleague of Rui Rui recently introduced a saying to her that she has found to be true in her everyday work.

Rui Rui emphatically said, "In China, everyone is equal in front of the law."

She then looked at me in silence.  After a long pause she continued, "The differences are behind the law..."

Monkeys in Guiyang

In most major cities in China you are unlikely to see a monkey walking about unless you go to a zoo.  However, at Qianling Park in Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou Province, there are numerous monkeys freely walking about doing what monkeys do best -- which according to what I saw was using various strategies to get food from other animals, aka humans, and generally monkeying around.

During my visit I saw easily over 100 monkeys.  They weren't aggressive although they liked to put on a show now and then.  When my cousin sat down on a ledge a mother monkey slipped past her from behind.  However, the baby monkey couldn't get by.  This led to my cousin being firmly pushed by the mother monkey.  Luckily, my cousin had some monkey sense and stood up.

Some photos:

Watching the strange humans

Presumably the monkey kindergarten class

Pondering the lessons of the day

"May I please have some fruit?"

"Nope."

"Please..."

This baby monkey was lucky enough to have its own food

Interesting strategy: sit on the human until they take the fruit out of their bag.  It worked

A Chinese lady who lives near the park said that occasionally they will see monkeys exploring the neighborhood.  Given the number of monkey babies I saw, I wonder if the monkey situation will soon get out of control.

For now, though, things seem manageable and entertaining.

Bombs in Libya, Ripples in China

I don't expect to comment much on recent events in Libya.  However, I do think think it is worth sharing one way they will likely be viewed by many in China.

Across China, I've had conversations with many Chinese who want to see significant change in the Chinese Government.  However, in the vast majority of cases they don't support a mass rebellion.  One reason very commonly mentioned is the belief that any instability caused by a rebellion could provide an opportunity for a foreign country to take advantage of China, even through military force.  They are very conscious that in the past, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, various countries have invaded or taken advantage of China in one way or another.

Regardless of the results, the actions of the coalition forces in Libya will be viewed by many in China as further evidence that the 21st century may not be so different from previous centuries if the Chinese aren't careful.  They will think "look at what is now happening after many Libyans fought against their government".  Few Chinese would believe that coalition forces are in Libya without expectations of strong personal gain, just as some countries had in China in previous centuries -- in many cases to the detriment of the Chinese people.

My aim here isn't to argue against or in support of the coalition actions in Libya.  I simply want to point out that the reverberations of the bombs dropping in Libya are being felt far beyond their immediate targets.  In China they may be just ripples in the minds of people's consciousness, but they may have the unintended consequence of further dampening any desire Chinese have to take a very active stand to bring about significant changes in China -- some of the same changes hoped for by many elsewhere.

Want Some Ice Cream - DQ or DU?

A break from discussing China's Great Firewall for something lighter, or maybe creamier is the better word.  In a newer mall in Guiyang, China I saw this:

I've seen numerous Dairy Queen outlets across China.  Although there are some apparent modifications for the Chinese market, they offer much that can be found at Dairy Queens in the US.

However, very close to the Dairy Queen was something I don't think you'll see in the US:

Not a DQ, but a DU ice cream store.  Seeing the DU store in such a relatively high end mall and so close to its, um, inspiration was particularly striking.  One Chinese lady I spoke to said she believed DU to be "a copycat store" but also pointed out that she believed DU was first to open in Guiyang.  While there may be reasonable grounds for a trademark dispute, unlike some KFC copycat restaurants at least DU wasn't exactly copying DQ's offerings.  For example, DU seemed to focus on hard ice cream.

So, the big question -- Did I go for DQ or DU?

Well, I decided to find the middle ground.  In this case it was a store in between DQ and DU where I got this:

A peppermint lemonade drink from the Hong Kong based Happy Lemon chain.  It didn't turn out to be my thing -- I prefer Happy Lemon's milk tea or regular lemonade.  Happy Lemon actually has its own imitators.  However, at least none were within eyesight.