Reflections on a month spent wandering the Chinese Internet:
China was hit hard about a month ago by the big Boxing Day earthquake in Taiwan, which knocked out or hindered access to most foreign websites from behind the great wall. As one Chinese acquaintance of mine put it “This is really a big inconvenience for you foreigners, not having access to foreign sites.”
“Yes, it is,” I said “But I’m sure it was a much bigger inconvenience to many in Taiwan during the quake.”
It’s kinda sad how the loss of internet gets the big headlines, when the 2 that died and the 40 or so injured are relegated to a footnote. And that’s not just the Chinese media either…
That said, yes, it was an inconvenience not having access to my favorite sites for a month. I’m not a big fan of the propagantastic CCTV9 here in China, so I usually watch the Canadian daily newscast in the morning. After the quake I couldn’t watch that, or much of anything else for that matter. Bummer, eh? What’s a man to do?
So I decided to check out the Chinese internet. My language skills aren’t great, but I can get by well enough to surf around a bit. Though I had never really spent any intimate, quality time on there before. Probably due to the fact that the official Party stance on net content doesn’t include titties… But here are a few of my thoughts on sizing up the Chinese net in a bit more depth:
Chinese video sites kick Youtube’s ass hands down
Tudou, Yoqoo, 6rooms, 56.com, UUME, 5show, Pomoho, and Tvix are all basically the same deal as Youtube, only not in english. But, as you might expect, there’s about a bazillion times more copyright infringement as there is on youtube, if you can believe that. My new favorite TV shows are yuèyù/越狱 and 英雄/yÄ«ngxióng, which incidentally are Prison Break and Heroes respectively. Click on the links to check out the piraty goodness for yourself. These aren’t just those tiny bitch-ass snippets of clips you find on youtube, these are full shows! Mind you they may be served in two halfs…
I mean, given the fact that nobody in the west seems to pay any attention to the Chinese internet, these sites are pretty lucky to be prospering as they are, full of such free content. Considering all the troublesome mafan that is thrown Google/Youtube’s way for hosting copyrighted content, I’d say that Youtube should just re-locate to China, where it seems websites are immune to such nonsense as “laws.”
Holy topic-change Batman!
Am I against all this wonderful free media, you may ask? Hell no. I love all the free mp3s from Baidu. What I am against however, is the immunity that the Chinese websites and netizens seems to enjoy from other things. For one, the amount of racism that occurs on the Chinese net is amazing. Any political incorrectness at all is cause for alarm in any developed country, but here, in the fastest growing world economy, racist remarks can be heard/read all too often. Sean’s recent post on this site about the uproar over Zhang Ziyi’s “foreign devil” boyfriend would be laughable if it weren’t so fucking sad.
I’ll throw in another example for good measure:
ä¸å›½çš„æ»æ•Œæ—¥æœ¬……ç日是æ¯ä¸€ä¸ªä¸å›½äººçš„愿望.
China’s enemy to the death, Japan…. Extinguishing Japan is the desire of every Chinese person.
The source is from some comment on a Japanese comedy video on yoqoo.com.
Now, I know the circumstances with Japan are somewhat “special.” But anytime I encounter this kinda stuff, I always make sure to ask, “Do you hate the government or all Japanese people?” And you would be surprised at how many reply with the second answer.
Here’s another example from real life: I attended a rock show here in Dalian once. Before one of the songs, the singer got up and spoke a short two minute prelude that I didn’t quite understand. When I asked the guy next to me to explain what the singer had said, he told me that this song was about killing Japanese people. Fucking wow… Needless to say I got out of there pretty fast. Stuff like that is just shameful.
Intolerance is scary. And I know that despite instances like this, most Chinese people are not intolerant. But there are, to say the least, more than a few bad apples.
What gets me is not just these intolerant few…
But it’s the way that the general population seems to tolerate those intolerant few…. The way that no one seems to stand up and say “Hey man, that’s wrong!”
Well, to me, that’s just as scary.
“But it’s the way that the general population seems to tolerate those intolerant few…. The way that no one seems to stand up and say ‘Hey man, that’s wrong!'”
Though I’m sure there are those that do stand up and resist the intolerant, one certainly gets the impression that intolerance and blind hate, especially towards Japan, is acceptable in polite society in China.
The thing I noticed the most while surfing the Chinese net is although they hate many things Japanese, they have a strong desire to look at half naked Japanese women.
The ratio of Chinese to Japanese women on the Chinese sites that are the “Chinese” style of super-softcore-commie-endorsed porn are leaning to the Japanese side by a huge percent.
Objectifying your “enemy’s” women is as old as strife itself. Plus, Japan’s got a better dental plan 😉
Cool post Rick.
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