What does China Censor?

Here is Part 1 of an email I sent after arriving in Beijing. Looking back, this was my first experience with China Censors. It is now 5 years later and I will be making comments about what had happened.

I am having the biggest problems with the internet. Everything here is censored or at least it seems that there are things interfering with me and communication. A weird thing is television here. One day there is a channel and the next day it is gone. (At this time there were protests in Tibet. All the new stations or websites that had key words around anything that could relate to the protests it was decided in China to censor those sites. Since this was big news, and many sites were covering this, it seemed to me that everything in China was censored, but turned out to only be temporarily blocked. Weeks later many of the sites were uncensored and accessible. An interesting thing was YouTube was still available at this time for another couple of months until it was censored permanently) 
One of my language partners’ friends just came back from a tour of the US and had a ton of questions for me. They visited New York, Los Angeles, and Washington. The first question she asked me was if all Black people in the US asked people for money on the street. She said everywhere that her friends went they were harassed and they pretended not to speak English, but the people just kept on harassing them more and more. She said that they loved New York for the shopping, Instant noodles were the greatest food, and they went to a church mass and said the songs were very beautiful. (In China the homeless hardly ever approach people and ask them for money except on the subway where they walk by people. The homeless in the states I feel are definitely more aggressive then in China. The comment about black people in America was very shocking, but other than on television this was the only time they would have ever seen anyone of African descent so even if it was only one person it probably would have seemed like it was everyone to them.) Continue reading this post…

I have looked at old emails and journal entries and here is what I wrote two weeks after being in Beijing about the Chinese culture and Chinese studying English and scams in China

One thing that is odd are a lot of people want to practice their English with a native speaker. With this being said it is really difficult knowing if that is all a person wants to do or if there are other motives. Examples of this is a guy at the school was given what he thought was a free English tour and then wanted to treat the guide to lunch as a reward. The guide took him to a restaurant that was a small hole in the wall place and after the meal the waiter presented him a bill for 600 yuen, about 80 American Dollars when a normal nice meal here would go for 1/10 that price- a total scam. Then two nights ago a women followed me and my buddy around telling us she just wanted to practice her English. She had on a normal business outfit and spoke really good English. Well, it turns out she was a prostitute and actually got really mad at us because we really thought she just wanted to talk to us in English and when we took her to a bookstore to ask what language book she thought was good, instead of a club or whatever, she got pissed. Another instance was a girl insisting that I help her brother with English and that we go off the campus to meet him. I kept telling her that I wouldn’t go and that she would have to bring her brother to the campus. Continue reading this post…

I looked over my journal for the first couple of weeks when I first lived in Beijing and here are some of the things that I feel you might be interested in.

First couple weeks I lived in Beijing:

One thing that I have noticed is that I have no contact with any news about the celebrities in the US. There are no pictures of Paris Hilton or Britney spears, they just don’t exist.

So here is a list of all the foods that I have tried while I have been here: Some of these were accidental with me not knowing what they were until after they were in my stomach–mainly because I thought I was eating something and it turned out to be something else: snake, scorpion-black and the little ones, silk worm, cow lung, duck, duck brain, sea shell, grasshopper, pineapple rice bowl, and kelp. I have also had KFC, McDonalds, and a some other street food which I can’t really describe, but the locals like them and they taste really good.

I also went to another market where people where selling the most amazing jewelry and handmade crafts. Bargaining was such a big part there. I have to get used to it because here everything you have to bargain for and the first price is always so extreme. I bought a Mao bag that the lady who originally wanted 350 yuan at first, for only 30 yuan and then my buddy bought one for 20 from the lady right after me.

I also met a guy that does martial arts and wants to give me lessons for English lessons; he wanted an English name so I gave him the name Ryan. He was really happy. We also gave him the nickname Panther. So Ryan Panther now has the coolest name in china. We gave his buddies some names such as Jack Gun aka Gun Jack and another buddy who is chainsaw. I can’t wait till they enter the business world. (Don’t worry I’ll take care of everything, I’m not going to screw anyone over with name and that)