Chinese Knight from a Polish Friend

It is fun to get a picture from someone who drew it especial for me, especial in a situation that we have never seen each other. Both of us did not put our own photo with oneself on our respective blog. Before I got this picture, I wonder what would be the topic of the picture she – I am even not sure the gender of my friend before I got her works - might draw for me.

Now the answer is revealed - a Chinese knight. Of course, I am happy to have this special gift from another world. This is a really strange but exciting feeling that some person in Poland would draw something for me, a Taiwanese living in Beijing now. I guess this is why the Internet, or blog, fascinates millions of people. However, I can’t help to wonder why she decides to draw a "Chinese Knight” for me.

There may have many different reasons from the impression she get from my blog to her own understanding of the world. I don't want to further analyze the deeper rationale as what an artist psychologist might do. The only thing I want to mention is my strange feeling once I see the title the little painter gave the picture. I noticed myself experiencing a complicated feeling once I read the title- Chinese Knight. It is because the word “Chinese” or “China” has become sensitive in Taiwan. Just a few days ago, there is a controversial "de-Chinese” activity enforcing by the authorities in the society. The Democracy Progress Party, the ruling party of Taiwan, was changing the name of China Post Office into Taiwan Post Office, with the intention to remove all words of “China” in all the state-own companies and public organization. Their conviction is that Taiwan is not part of China so that it is necessary to make this idea clear in all the names of the relevant organization.

I don't think my friend understand so much about the complicated status quo in Taiwan. In addtion, I believe she doesn't know that the official name of Taiwan is Republic of China, instead People's Republic of China. Very few foreigners know about this, and, of course, they don’t have to care about this. Foreigners with deeper understanding about Taiwan would just call my country “Taiwan”, instead of official country name, which is a country name not recognized in international society, whereas Foreigners who don't care about Asian affairs would simply see Taiwan as the synonym of China. This is an unfortunate destiny of all Taiwanese.

Enemy of State – We Are Monitored!

My life in Beijing is very ordinary: I go surfing on the Internet every day, go swimming at times, and hang out with some friends on the weekend. Although I can not say that life here is better than in Taipei, I do feel satisfied with living conditions here expect for the chilling winter. However, this morning I turned into extremely uncomfortable and absolutely furious when , in the early morning, I found an stunning truth that all the civilian people in the country, including myself, are monitored on the Internet. All of the sudden, I have never demanded a freedom of communication more than the moment.

As my previous posts have mentioned, I can not access to my own Blogspot pages. I believed deeply that the Blogspot has been blocked by the country. Originally, I thought the situation will be changed very soon, because this blog services provider is well-known and thus gets some bargaining power to negotiate with the government. Nonetheless, couples of weeks have gone by and the frustrating situation remains. Eventually, I was forced to take some action to figure out a way to solve my own problem. In the process of solving the blocked issue, I validate the saying from some of friends that the government continues monitoring all the activities on the Internet. There is an ongoing X shield program, which designates to filter some key words transmit on the Internet and once probes those sensitive words, the page visits would fail in seconds. What related to this issue is that people in the country can not access to many services provided by Google, or at least would encounter some failure now and then, discouraging people to use Google and turning toward Baidu, a searching engine company which try their best to meet the requirements from the government. Google is not welcomed to the authority because it is unwilling to meet all the requirements about scrutiny of sensitive words typed by the public.

In fact, I am not a person who is eager to talk about politics and I don’t search those sensitive words on my daily online activities. However, the feeling of being monitored is very uncomfortable and annoying. I suddenly missed the freedom of speech in Taiwan.

Blogspot Is Blocked Here

This morning, I try to access my own blog, but fail again and again. This situation is very frustrated. I begun to wonder the problem occurred possibly because my blog was blocked by the government for it scrutinized the content of my blog and found some negative descriptions about the country.
In the afternoon, I tried it once again and the situation remained unchanged. I figure out an idea to find out the reasons. By searching on Baidu, the biggest search engine in China, I read many complaints about the same situation like mine. Thus, it is not my problem- I mean, I am not monitored at the moment. Ha ha ha… According to the opinions I searched, people said the failure to access any Blogspot is caused by the block from the Chinese firewall. I am not sure whether this block is intentional and how long the situation can be solved. Furthermore, I don’t know if people outside China can read my post of today!

Back to Study and Some thoughts about Blog

After more than one week's messy life, I returned to Capital library to study. In the morning I read about 15 SC explanations, and in the afternoon I finished 20 CR questions. Although my progress was quite slow, my status was okay. At least I resumed the preparation. I plan to last this arrangement until February 14, the date I returned Taiwan. I should finish the OG 11 before departure from Beijing.

I can't help visiting SA’s blog again. His writing allures me and his story moves me. I was captured by his gay love story. From his article, I know that he works in Guo Mao, where I worked before my resignation. Now he is a famous blogger with upcoming 3 millions click rate. He deserves the popularity because of his special background, spiritual openness, and writing talent. Living not far away from his place, I wonder whether some day I can meet him or even know him.

I used to have the same thought of meeting a blogger before when I was fascinated with the blog written by Wang Xi, a strange man about my age. At that time, I still worked in Shanghai, whereas he lived in Beijing. Now I moved to Beijing, but I have lost interests in visiting his blog frequently. I guess that my interest is always changing and that a blogger's enchanting story always gets one day to be depleted.