Back in the bracing but very clean air of Thetford in Norfolk, I find myself enjoying the local fayre at the Red Lion in the centre of town. Tis a tad 'down to earth' but they do a rather pleasant vegetarian English breakfast for the negligible sum of £2.49, topped up with endless cups of refillable coffee for another 80p, which seems quite reasonable even after months of relatively cheap Chinese offerings The internet is somewhat slow here, as befits such an establishment, but still many, many times faster than anything I experienced during my time in Dongguan.
Interestingly, and somewhat bizarrely, the Chinese hosted an internet conference in the final weeks of December in the ancient town of Wuzhen, a pleasant if atypical spot criss-crossed with canals in Zhejiang Province, in which the main subject under discussion was censorship and freedom on the web. It seemed somewhat incongruous to yours truly, even a little Orwellian (as in double-speak) for the Chinese government to be expounding on such a subject.
The minister in question, one Mr. Lu Wei, succumbed to the need to wax lyrical on the question of web censorship with the rather oxymoronic statement that China does not censor the internet but merely blocks access to sites. This rather mind-numbing notion passed with barely a comment on the Chinese state's media outlet, the Global Times, the correspondent penning the article apparently unaware of the rather startling contradiction in the minister's statement.
If one's internet search in China is limited to the commercial or the completely non-controversial, then the experience is merely frustratingly slow. If one dares to start to investigate issues that may be in any way even slightly controversial or, perish the thought, critical of the CPC (Communist Party of China), then it can take an age. I am sure that in this day and age the search goes through all sorts of algorithmic checking, but one feels almost as if there is some spotty clerk sitting at a desk in a gargantuan ministry in Beijing, peering through a pair of thick-lensed spectacles, going over the query word by word, searching out any potential problems. Tis the stuff of paranoid fantasy, of course, but it does indeed often feel that slow.
As ever with these issues, there are levels and levels. I recall that a certain W.S. Churchill said of the Soviet Union that it was 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. One could think of China in much the same way, but one would need to add a few extra layers. They routinely reject the entreaties of the likes of Twitter, Facecbook and Instagram, usually hinting at security concerns, but the reality probably has more to do with protecting monied interests inside China. The likes of Baidu, Weibo and Youku are now enormous, helped to a significant degree by the simple fact that they do not have to compete with their Western counterparts. One sometimes wonders about the mutual connections between those who run such enterprises and the higher echelons of government inside China. Although I would imagine there are no direct connections, I would not be at all surprised if mutually advantageous links existed nevertheless…
Censorship is such a difficult issue, and much of the reaction to various situations is very culturally dependent. I remember a few years back the huge outcry in the US when one of Janet Jackson's pendulous bosoms happened to escape her apparently insufficient bodice during a Superbowl interval (I say 'apparently' as it is quite likely, being the US, that the whole episode was something of a publicity stunt). Given the reaction, one would have thought that the sight of a woman's near (only 'near') naked bosom was a harbinger of the apocalypse.
On the other hand, American films quite happily will show scenes of people being blown up, shot, stabbed, beheaded, garotted, strangled, minced, sliced and diced with barely a raise of the eyebrows from the censors. This is particularly the case if the victims of such violence are some kind of foreigners. I remember attempting to watch an early 'Rambo' film. The basic premise was that one American had been captured by the 'gooks', those inhuman Vietnamese who, apparently, never had a mother or a father, never went to school, never had an ambition, a first love, girlfriend, wife or lover, never suffered all the trials and tribulations that are the very stuff of being human. Essentially, their only role in life was as cannon fodder to the ever diligent Rambo, conscientiously engaged in his attempt to rescue said American from their evil clutches.
Of course, the Americans are not alone in doing this. The Thais do it, the Chinese do it, even educated Brits do it (...let's do it, let's exterminate a foreigner...). In fact, it is a phenomenon one finds in many countries across the globe. The dehumanizing effect of labeling people as Nips, Yids, Towel-Heads or Gooks; Goys, Farangs, Dagos and Cooks; Spics, Chinks, Gweilos and Spooks seemingly renders it 'OK' to impart great violence unto them, with ne'er a thought as to their humanity.
It seems so strange to yours truly how barely anyone raises any sort of objection to such violence and racism yet… show a breast on daytime TV, a mammary gland that has, to the best of my knowledge, never actually hurt anyone, then there is hell to pay.
Strange World…
Back in the Red Lion, the lunchtime clientele are now chatting happily enjoying some post Christmas merriment. It is good to see that for one week of the year at least, people are released from the onerous chores of the 9 to 5 to enjoy a little rest, a little socializing, a little time to simply be. It seems something of a shame that this privilege is granted to them only in the very depths of winter, but it is still to be enjoyed. For my part, I am finishing my third coffee and thinking that it is probably enough, even for one so inured as myself. Time to take a stroll back to where I am staying, perhaps taking the river and the bridge in en route. The walk along the river bank is all very beautiful at this time of year, even if the water levels are rather alarmingly high at the time of writing. Hopefully, the centre of town remains unflooded. The current plan is to write next weeks episode from the hopefully pleasant environs of Exeter in Devon, but the weather being what it is, there may be a few challenges to overcome before achieving that. We shall see...
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