Wonderful China! Facebook and Twitter big no-no's

Very wonderful China! 棒极了中国! Yep, we can’t get into Facebook or use Twitter here in China any more, or for the time being. This is apparently due to the recent riots in Urumqi. We can certainly read about the riots in the (state-approved and monitored) newspapers such as China Daily and Shanghai Daily. I assume the blocking of Facebook has to do with preventing discussion threads about what is really going on to leak out overseas or within Zhong Guo, China, literally the “Middle Kingdom” with its suggestion of being at the centre of everything.

The blocking of Facebook also prevents online groups forming whose views would be contrary to the central government’s wishes and policies … and therefore the will of the people. Mainland Chinese don’t understand sarcasm and irony but I hope you get my drift (unless you are one of my semi-literate visitors). This blog will probably be read by slanted eyes as well. Therefore, I would like to make it clear that I would love to see peace restored to Urumqi and elsewhere and that the grievances of the minorities, particularly the Muslims, will be addressed. May it be sooner than later.

My reasons for visiting Facebook are of course perfectly innocent. I just chat with friends and find old ones. Facebook has been great, also 棒极, hen bangji! Translation: really wonderful, like my four and a half year stay in China. Because of Facebook I have met up with old mates from my varsity days and even connected again with my best school friend, who I first met thirty two years ago at the age of thirteen.

Right now all I want to do is go onto Facebook and connect with an old University of Cape Town colleague, Justin, but am unable to do so. I have received his messages via Facebook on my Gmail, but cannot respond. Justin, if you’re reading this …

Sure, there are free proxy servers that allow one to surf anonymously in China. But they are forever being found out and blocked by you can guess who. People were first using proxyforchina.com but the name was pretty obvious and that got quickly blocked (note my careful choice of words, I never said I used the proxy. Of course I don’t.) People then used freeproxyserver.com. Heck, it was the most obvious name for a proxy server and came up first on Google, or so I am told. I, of course, never ever used it, but that proxy eventually got blocked. The new proxy server, the best one thus far, which is called something or other, works fairly well but when it comes to Facebook people can apparently only visit pages, not write comments on people’s walls etcetera. This new proxy server is, apparently, chockablock with adverts to download various smileys and avatars which look suspiciously like spyware issued by you know who. I wouldn’t know though as I have never used this apparently delightful server. Oh, and this week I am going to go and get some rhinoplasty done (medical-speak for nose job). My beak is now so long it is starting to trip me up when I look down and lift ladies’ skirts when I look up again.

My memoir of China is probably due out in January 2010. The title, of course, is Cracking China. I am going to suggest that we use the closest translation into Chinese of the title and put it on the cover, or on the inside subtitle page. The closest approximation to “Cracking China” is probably Tai bangji le Zhong Guo! which is the Chinese I wrote above: 棒极了中国! It literally just means “wonderful China”, but of course the translation cannot suggest all the possible definitions of “cracking”. However, that subtitle should really get the approval of the censors in China as many of my pals here wish to order the book online once it is available. It is not inconceivable that copies of the book will get stopped at customs — it happened to my friend Robert Berold’s book on China, Meanwhile Don’t Push and Squeeze, though that was a whole shipment of books, not just one or two copies. On that note, intriguingly enough, the manuscript of Cracking China never made it to South Africa from here in Shanghai, though I have successfully posted many other manuscripts and letters to South Africa. I had to email it to my publisher.

Enough said. This still remains my disclaimer: 棒极了中国!