CHINA TRIP Day 15: "Does anyone remember J.Lo's ass from The Wedding Planner?"

Tuesday, June 1

The lecture today was one that I felt would be directly applicable to our current stay in China and would actually explain some of the problems we’ve found when accessing the Internet. In our pre-departure meetings, Hong and the students from last year recommended installing Notre Dame’s VPN. However, the first time a group of us got together and tried to access the Internet, there was a variety of results. Some people didn’t bother getting the VPN and so their access to the Internet was limited. I had noticed before that without the VPN, regular Gmail worked, Notre Dame’s Gmail didn’t. Apparently Yahoo didn’t work either. Most of the students with VPN, particularly those with PC laptops were able to access Facebook and YouTube; those with Macs, such as myself, were still denied those websites. I never imagined that any particular entity would be able to basically control the Internet, which is something that has grown and is so vast that it cannot even be run by a single entity. And yet China has it’s “Great Firewall” and is fairly successful at implementing censorship.

While I knew that certain websites were blocked as well as information about the events at Tiananmen Square and in Tibet, I didn’t really know the extent to which censorship extended on the Internet. It’s a valid assumption that extremely talented people need to be behind the operations of the Firewall and a group of people monitoring the Internet constantly. I didn’t realize that certain words such as “truth” and “dictatorship” were banned as well. I could see foreign residents and individuals trying to post real news or discuss future events but for the most part I didn’t think the general population really cared. Last week Dean Moses confirmed this by explaining how certain groups of people have found ways to get around the banned language by using code and also explaining how the most of the Chinese population are more concerned with online gaming and are generally unaware of the censorship. They don’t really pay attention to news either because of their general distrust of the media that we discussed last week as well before going to Reuters.

I still wonder why the general population doesn’t know about the censorship. Is it that they are generally unaware that certain words and websites are blocked (understandably they have their own versions of Facebook and YouTube, but the rest of the world doesn’t) or is it that they generally don’t care? I wonder how history books are twisting the facts and if they even mention Tibet or the Tiananmen Square events. I can’t imagine that Chinese people can be blind to these things for their entire lives, especially if they are forward and modern-thinking individuals who’ve studied or stayed abroad for any long period of time (as many tend to do). Without growing up in China myself, I don’t think I’d ever really know how they perceive the Internet censorship.

We had the afternoon off today and a group of us headed to the Beijing Zoo. A couple of us went to the market across from the Zoo instead and I found it to be an interesting one. We were able to stay only for about an hour because it closed at 5pm (which we didn’t know ahead of time). I found many of the same things that are sold at the Silk Market, except at a fraction of the price. It wasn’t really a bargaining environment and the posted prices were generally the final price. Merchants didn’t call out at me or follow me around either; only a few spoke English. There were very few foreigners, I’m not sure I saw any. Later we realized that this was where the local Chinese go to shop, which made me think of a few questions. I wondered if the items here and at the Silk Market were the same, or were the ones here of lower quality because of the cheaper price? I know with the women’s clothing at least the items were mostly consistent if not only of slightly lower quality. There were fewer options for men and shoe quality wasn’t as up to par. I also wondered if the articles at this market were more reliable because they were sold to locals.

Since we didn’t know the market closed so early (it might’ve been the first time I’ve heard of a 5pm closing time in China that wasn’t a bank), we didn’t quite want to head back to campus. We met up with the group that went to the Zoo and split off in the subway station and went to the Silk Market. I wasn’t interested in spending any more money because I had already spent a bit at the previous market but I got caught casually looking at a pair of shoes and was eventually convinced to buy it once we had bargained a low enough price. As we were negotiating, a foreign gentleman was heading out of the stall and on his way out tapped me on the shoulder and said, “My friend would like your phone number.” I turned to see who his “friend” was and it turned out to be the brother of the woman who was negotiating shoe prices with me. I was glad I didn’t have to lie when I said I didn’t have a phone but I felt really awkward when the merchant told me, “Okay, your price and you can borrow my brother.” I was stunned and immediately said, “I don’t want to borrow your brother,” and laughed it off. In retrospect that might’ve hurt his feelings but at the time I really wanted to pay for my shoes and get out of there. The audacity of some of the locals still surprised me to no end.

For dinner we met up with a few other people at The Den, near the Beijing Worker's Stadium. We started talking about my thoughts on my career prospects and wanting to be an event planner popped up. JiaHua, out of nowhere, busts out with "Does anyone remember J.Lo's ass from The Wedding Planner? It was HUGE!" We all just cracked up.