The Earthquake I forgot to mention, and the blog I'll be censored for

Here's another post I never posted

I should break for a minute here to talk about current events. I’m sure when I go over this later, I’ll find a much smoother transition, but for now, lets just hack it off at the knee and throw in a foot. (this was part of a bigger thing)

On December 26^th, 2006 at 12:26:21 (UTC) and about 9 pm here in China, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Taiwan. (Oh yeah, we felt it)

Before coming to China, I lived for many years in the Earthquake home of southern California, and am quite used to the occasional platonic shimmies of that zone. But this was different.

In my apartment on the 7^th floor I suddenly felt like I was on a boat, rocking slowly back and forth like the ground decided to turn to rolling water rather than solidconcrete. It lasted a remarkable amount of time, followed by a shorter but just as noticeable after shock a few minutes later. It felt like the waves of movement that came off the San Diego earthquake in 2004 when I was in LA; slow and almost relaxing if it wasn’t for the motion sickness.

Although, this being China, we couldn’t be sure it was an earthquake both during and after when the communication problems came down. It was just as likely that the maintenance men were in the basement pulling and banging at pipes trying to fix the sewage problem, and in effect shaking the whole building. These buildings aren’t exactly pillars of stability and structure. But no, it was an earthquake. The effects of the earthquake didn’t happen until the next day. Aside from the two reported deaths(I haven't checked since I wrote this on the death tole, so if I'm wrong, it's because this is out of date) the only real casualty was communication. The (fiber optic) wires that connect China, Japan and Taiwan were damaged in the quake and all internet and international phones went down. E

But I’m in China, so we all suspected a mass censorship from the Chinese government was the cause and not the earthquake (that we still weren't sure was an earthquake anyway, given the calming swaying that we felt). This was worse than ever before; everything was down, accept for Google of course, and that didn't make us feel any better. Why would Google be there but no other Western Site? Of course Chinese sites were doing just fine.

Everyone knows China censors. Every now and then, China decides a certain website or a list of key words are damaging to the Chinese people or threaten the security of the Chinese government, and those sites and links just go down, brining up an increasingly annoying “this page failed to load” message.(This post probably ensures that I'll never see my blog from China again) You get used to the censorship. People here joke about watching the news, absorbed in a news story just to see it get unceremoniously cut off in mid report with a commercial for breast enlargement or magical height enriching supplements. There’s no niceties about it; it’s just cut off and when the story’s over, the commercials end and you’re back to watching the news fit for China. Anything that insinuates China’s weaknesses, arguments within, human rights problems and even the weather is usually simply not shown. It’s not edited and sent out with a party line twist, it’s just not there. When there’s something to argue with China’s stance of nonexistence on an issue, China simply changes the facts and assures the people that yes, it’s always snowed here, there’s no meteorological changes going on, no, no one is sick, and China is as great as it’s always been.

The funny thing is that half of what they censor is harmless or at least wholly beyond their control. The only result would be that a few people would think about the global effects of emissions or taking better care of their bodies or possibly rethinking the sewage system (which could only be a good thing at this point....ehghghc). Things completely out of China’s control are censored if it happens within China, as though the government could actually be so powerful as to control the weather or star patterns. It’s as though the dirt itself of China needs to remain infallible in the eyes of its people, which is impossible as it’s a large mass of land with many ecological zones and everything on earth goes through changes. China is the only country that can see a natural disaster as speaking ill for the competence of the government. (how you react to a natural disaster; sure). I’m sure if the earthquake happened here, it would have been recorded as something like a 4.0 with little to no architectural damage and if there was any communication troubles, they’d spend the first week explaining how it couldn’t be their fault, the wires were fine before it happened and in reality, there’s no problem here at all.

I was actually relieved to hear it was the earthquake that did it. I know that sounds horrible, but if China really had decided that this time, no western site was fit for China other than Google, that would mean something serious was going on. They’ve shut down a few sites at a time before, but nothing as wide spread as what I saw a few days ago. I was worried the US had pissed off China while I was sleeping and wondered whether or not China was itching for a fight. And with the recent talks with Japan, perhaps it wasn’t just a fight they were after, but revenge. Whatever it was, if shutting down the internet was China’s doing, that meant China wanted to stop everyone in the country from getting any news from anywhere other than China proper. The internet lets the Chinese people be informed, and more importantly, offers clear and abundant arguments against current Chinese censorship. If the Chinese people read it, they might question the word of their country, and the government sees that as a one way trip to civil revolt. Either way, if it had been China’s doing, I had no idea how long it would last, and I had little I could do to get out of the line of fire while our passports were still being held hostage by my boss.

An earthquake, on the other hand, has no political motives and with Hong Kong rather China Proper coming to the rescue of the wires, I could rest assured that the fix would be sooner rather than later.

It wasn’t until yesterday that our internet came back up (this being January 2^nd), and our international phones are still on the fritz half of the time, but progress is fast and I’m no longer fearing a war where I’m cut off from any safety lines.

Natural disasters have nothing on insecure communist countries.

Let's see if my blog just disapears now. I'm sure I'll never be able to see it from China now. Oh well. China has it's problems, but you learn to deal.