Blog moved

After the unrest in Tibet and Nepal began, the Chinese government shut down a number of blogs and news websites, including Google News and YouTube, in an attempt to limit access to pictures and videos of the riots. The Internet–western websites specifically–was extremely slow for almost a week. I wrote a blog about Tibet and some other news but was unable to post it to my website. My computer could not connect to the Apple-run site that hosts my blog. After many attempts on different Internet connections over the next two weeks, I finally gave up. My Internet use is subject to the whims of the Communist Party. As you can imagine, it is extremely frustrating at times.

In the meantime I’ve been getting back into a routine of studying Chinese and now receive some tutoring from a young teacher at school. The process is slow going but it is occasionally rewarding when I can decipher a new sign or speak a few words with a local.
I went to Shanghai on Saturday and picked up my repaired camera (the shutter button had fallen off) and joined Dan Barbato and several Chinese friends of his at his apartment for dinner. His second dog, who was just a puppy golden retriever when I first saw her in the fall, is now nearly full-grown. Dan’s girlfriend prepared a number of delicious dishes, including bamboo with tofu, a crunchy green vegetable that no one knew the English name for, and a simple homemade chicken soup (a whole chicken boiled for four hours) that made for awesome comfort food.

I went out later that night and saw a Chinese punk rock band at a bar with really cheap drinks. As I watched the four Chinese musicians play loud and angry music and the female singer scream her lungs out, I couldn’t help but feel that this is a special time and place at a unique point in history. It feels like the inception of a new cultural identity in a country that is undergoing tumultuous change and self-reflection, similar in many ways to the countercultural movements in the United States in the 1960s or la Movida in Spain in the post-Franco years. Shanghai is the fashion, music, and design center of China and you can feel the creative energy bursting out in so many forms. It was a cool experience.
I’ll place updates on this site for now. Andy Copps arrived in Shanghai a few hours ago and I’ll be in Beijing with him this weekend, so stay tuned…