I visited an Expo for the first time as a kid, when my school took all my class together to Seville ‘92. Spain was living a crazy year, the Olympics where happening at the same time that Summer, and the Expo was designed to be one of the largest ever. Like now in China, there was some debate about the corruption and the money squandered, and people didn’t really know what the show was all about.

In many ways, that first Expo was very similar to the one China is doing now. Spain had to prove something,  it had passed its own 改革开放 (reform and opening) in the late 70s with the transition to democracy. Then it went on to  join the European Union in the 80s, and by 1992 it was finally starting to look like a developed country. The old pessimistic phrases “Spain is different” and “Europe starts behind the Pyrenees” felt already like something from the past.

Granted, the Reform here has “Chinese characteristics”, and massive population of China needs more time than Spain to complete the Development.  But overall, there is a clear parallelism between Spain 92 and China 2008-2010, and that is one of the reasons I am so excited about the Expo. It was great stuff in 92, and I have some cool memories of chunks of icebergs in the Chile pavilion, or an outdoor temperature control system that was unseen at the time. Click to continue »

The case of Google’s new approach to China is moving slower than expected, but I have the feeling that we may see something happen pretty soon. After the New Year, the Double Meetings are almost over and the Chinese government will probably want to have this cleared before the next big item in the agenda, the Shanghai EXPO. If we are going to see an end to the Google case, my money is on March/April.

And really, the sooner we close this the better. The media are getting bored of the wait, and they are filling it with a wave of horror stories about cyberwar, all of which may be hurting Google, hurting US-China relations, and generally insulting the intelligence of netizens.

There have been reports of all kinds regarding the cyberwars, from the crazy wingnut ones to the relatively relaxed. All follow in the line of a completely muddled Google message and subsequent speech by Hillary Clinton. This article by the the “liberal” Wapo was one of the first to come out, and right from the opening paragraph it sets the mood for all the other cyberwar press that followed. Click to continue »

This weekend I have taken a break from my exhausting research into the the sex of Chinese conservatives, to update old parts of the site and finish implementing some new features I had been trying lately.

The changes in version 2.0 are not related to design, so they may not be immediately apparent to the eye. But they are rich in content and they will have important implications in the way I blog from now on. See the following points for what’s new:

Switch to Real Identity

Ever since I started blogging, and especially since I started using the Google sharing tools with my real ID, I have suffered from split personality on the net. Those who have been following from the beginning might remember the big fuss about this last year, as I was never completely comfortable with my internet persona. Click to continue »

Reform through labour camp in construction. Pending forced evacuation of previous residents of the area.

Welcome to the 劳动改造 Camp for Reform through Labour. You have been sent here to receive treatment for your 思想僵化. You don’t know it yet, but you suffer exactly the same illness as the people here. Don’t worry, it has a cure: all you need to do is relax, read some books, make some friends, and get a normal life outside the internet.

While you are in the camp, you should practice self-criticism and ardently study the Thought of Youren:

• This blog is about China, I don’t care what you think of my country.
• I’m not from 外国, and I don’t represent the official position of 外国.
• This blog is not against anything except lies and foolishness.
• The internet is a means of communication, not an ideological weapon.
• Communism does not work, if it did then the Communist Party of China would actually use it.
• China suffered injustice in the past, caused by the greed and brutality of some foreign countries, and also by its own selfish leaders. I am quite familiar with the history of China and I don’t need constant reminders of these disgraceful events, thank you.

Once you have studied the thought above, go to this website and memorize the complete Thought of Mao Zedong. After you finish your 思想革命化 you can come back to my blog. Congratulations, you are a normal person again!

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This is the page where I put all the posts that I am planning to write, or any off-topic subject that someone might want to discuss. If there is any new topic that you would like to discuss unrelated to existing posts, just write it here.  If it gets interesting I will open a post about it, or you can do a guest post if you have something interesting to say about it.

I don’t guarantee I will do these posts in the specified order or even that I will do them at all. But here is the Roadmap:

1. Review of my favourite Chinese film of all times (title undisclosed for surprise effect)
2. Page of short book reviews with all the China books I have read.
3. STFU post to the internet warmongers who are scared of the Red Army cyberarmy.
4. Story in Chinese designed to go viral on the Chinese BBSs .
5. Fiction Story in Shanghai 2050 that I started last year and I am stuck.
6. The Gitmo page for braindead bigots and the 劳改 page for braindead revolutionaries.
7. Write about how many foreigners live in China ( I have no idea, help!)
8. Revamp the section on Chinese characteristics with my long list of  language related observations that is today handwritten on my bedroom table. (this will be various separate posts at different times). New Section Language Thursdays already started.
9. My calculation of the number of spaghettis in a 拉面 bowl.
10. Another post about the importance of the internet following the “map of the internet one”.
11. A section on Shangainese food (not sure I will do this, need to do the books first).
12. Some stuff I got about destruction of buildings in Shanghai
13. My calculation of the importance of gender selective abortions in China.

Any other suggestion?

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