Another Refresher Post

As I did once before, I will share a variety of older posts that are now buried by many others but may be of interest to newer readers.

1.  A Most Amazing Payday in Shanghai & A Most Delicious Lunch Without Meat -- These are two stories about a young woman I met who moved to Shanghai to pursue some of her dreams. She could only marvel at how her life has improved since she was a child in southwest China.

2.  Discoveries Leading to Questions: "Sansumg" Computers and Bilingual Notes in Nanning -- Here I provided a light glimpse of one of the research methods I have used for companies such as Microsoft in China. It emphasizes a key point: research is not only about finding answers. It is also about finding the right questions. I followed up this topic in the next post -- A Computer at a Hair Salon in Liuzhou, Guangxi.

3.  Facebook, Taiwan, and a Waitress's Comments on Censorship in China -- This post shares an example of how knowledge about what is permissible in Taiwan can impact a Chinese person's views on censorship. Later when I was in Taiwan, I had an experience that further highlighted how Taiwan differs from the other side of the Taiwan Strait. -- Facebook Contrasts: Students in Taiwan and Mainland China.

That's all for now. For more you can find the previous "refresher post" here.

A Woman and Baby in Changsha

A couple of months ago while taking a closer look at a street market in Changsha, Hunan province, I briefly met a woman and a baby.

Other than it being a pleasant experience, I don't have much more to say. But I do have plenty more to say about what I learned in Changsha that I have not yet covered here. Someday I will "return" to Changsha and many other places I have visited in China. But first I plan to finish some half-written posts on other topics--including a fascinating discussion I had today with Malaysian woman. She said she doesn't plan to revisit her son in the US because of her bad knee. But it sounded like she had other concerns.

More soon...

China's Great Firewall Raised Higher for a Party

As Paul Mozur noted last week:

...in recent weeks concern about the Internet has taken primacy as access to websites – especially foreign websites and virtual private networks, or VPNs, which allow users to circumvent Chinese Internet filters – has deteriorated.

The likely reason is the weeklong 18th Party Congress, a highly scripted but nevertheless critical political event scheduled to culminate with the unveiling of Communist Party’s next generation of leaders.

Chinese authorities routinely move to exert more control over the Internet around big meetings and politically sensitive dates, including by disrupting traffic to foreign websites outside the country’s censorship system, commonly referred to as the Great Firewall. But a number of users have complained of unusually frequent disruptions in the run-up to the 18th Party Congress...

See the article here for more details.

I too have had growing problems using my VPN during the past several weeks and have needed customer support from the U.S. on several occasions to resolve them. My impression is that some of the methods being used by the Great Firewall are more sophisticated than what I have experienced before.

At this moment, I can only maintain brief connections to my VPN before being disconnected. However, unlike previous times I can't rule out that there isn't a more general problem with my Internet connection. So I will apply a method that seems apt for this hour: I will go to sleep. My recent experience is that things will be either be much better or much worse when I wake up.

FYI -- without a functional VPN I am not able to post here since Blogger remains blocked in China. This and the fact that I have spent much time trying to better understand the blocking are some of the reasons I have not gotten around to several posts I had planned for this week. They're still in the pipeline though.

I will only be able to publish this post by waiting for a brief window during which I am connected to the VPN--assuming one opens again.

So far this is not working. Hopefully this can slip through on one of the tries...

More later.

Pundits and Teepees

I typically only post about U.S. politics here if it relates to China or one of my other "big" interests. Like many other people, the topic has attracted an unusually large amount of my online attention over the past few days due to the upcoming presidential election. My mind has been flooded with news reports, analyses, polls, pundits, polls of pundits, pundits on polls, pundits on pundits, and so on. I have also been occasionally distracted by other topics friends send my way such as $88 cat teepees. Although I have no plans to buy a cat teepee, it made me more aware of the benefits brief diversions can have in the midst of an information overload.

So in that spirit, during the next day or two I will do a series of very brief but more frequent China-related posts. They can serve as moments for some readers to flex their eyes on something different while allowing me to share with everyone more of what I have seen in China.

Soon, I will return to earlier themes here, such as college dormitories, and also reply to some readers' questions. In the meantime, though, I will keep things relatively simple.

More soon.

Updates for Assorted Posts: Panties, Great Firewall, and a Treadmill

I have updates for several posts that don't require a full post on their own and will be missed by many if I now append them to the original posts. So I will share them together here in a single post.

1. After a photo of a fan and hanging clothes in the post "College Dormitories in China: Central South University of Forestry and Technology in Changsha" I wrote:

If you are now fretting over me sharing a photo of the young women's underwear, don't take your panties off.

If that struck you as a peculiar choice of words, I would agree. After recently rereading the post I realized I had messed up a potentially timely use of words. I am not sure why fretting over the photo would have caused anyone to take their panties off. That sentence in the post has been edited to what was intended:

If you are now fretting over me sharing a photo of the young women's underwear, don't get your panties in a bunch.

I apologize for any misunderstanding due to my mangling of an idiom.

2. I have already made four updates in the post "The New York Times and Google Searches for 'New York Times' Blocked in China". Go to the post to read them. The gist was that James Griffiths in the Shanghaiist hypothesized The New York Times was not really blocked in China and the site was merely experiencing difficulties due to heavy traffic. I explained why that made little sense. In response Griffiths retracted his traffic problems theory and later in response to another post he also retracted his skepticism that The Times was blocked in China.

But I have yet another update now. I recently retested and The Times remains blocked, at least at my location in Changsha, Hunan province. Also, a search on Google for "New York Times" still leads to no results and only a connection reset error page (the exact wording depends on the browser used). And as before, no such blocking occurs on either Baidu or Bing and both provide results including links to The Times website.

3. Finally, in the post "A Stationary Child in Motion" I shared a photo of a young girl running on a treadmill. I passed by the same treadmill today, but it was being used very differently by a young boy.



At least he's still getting some exercise.

Back in Service and Photos Revisited

I am happy to say that I have now restored all of the 400+ photos on this blog that had become unavailable (thankfully another ~1000 photos were not affected) due to a recent online calamity. So now instead of this appearing in place of some photos:

Should Picasa use something snazzier?

All photos should properly display like this one:

Kids in Xining, Qinghai province

However if you still notice any problems, please let me know. I have not had a chance to fully explore some remaining issues so again I will refrain for the moment from commenting further about what I have learned.

Since I just unexpectedly had to revisit a variety of posts with photos, I will provide links to a few of the photo-heavier posts. They may be of interest to newer readers who have not seen them or to older readers who may feel inspired to revisit them.

1. From Guangzhou to Zhuhai to Macau -- I describe the various forms of transportation I used to travel between several cities in Southeast China. The Guangzhou South Train Station is a good example of the new "big" architecture that can be found in China.

2. Bailian Dong Park in Zhuhai, Guangdong -- Scenes including a hillside temple and youth rollerskating show some people in China enjoying their free time.

3. A Random Bus Trip to Zhuhai's Nanping -- The results of me taking a random bus led to a variety of interesting discoveries -- including some buildings from a different era and as shared in another post an Android Store.

4. Existential Threat Posed to U.S. by Chinese Tiger Mothers' Continued Relentless Training of Children -- The title says it all. So does that fact that it was written on April 1.

And now I will get back to working on some newer material.

Picasa Photo Problem

[UPDATE: I have updated the photo links for the most recent and visited posts. Still more to go. Unless you visit a certain range of posts you will not now notice the problem.]

Apparently my interpretation of certain aspects of Picasa's functionality and terminology was disastrously incorrect. Due to this disconnect, a great number of images are now not appearing on my blog. At the moment it appears a major amount of effort and time will be required to resolve this issue. I apologize for the problem.

In the spirit of helping others to avoid my mistake (and possibly getting a quick genius solution from someone), I will briefly share what I can piece together. The album containing photos for this blog was listed as "Limited, anyone with the link".  In short, I did not want people to be able to view all of my blog's photos at once in a single glance on Picasa. Some reasons for this include that I sometimes want/need to keep photos private until a post is ready for publishing and I want to encourage people to view photos through the blog where more context is provided.  My understanding was that the "Limited" setting enabled me to embed the necessary links to photos on my blog for readers to view individually, but without a special link the album would not be viewable as a whole. For a time this all seemed to be true.

But recently I noticed curious numbers in Picasa that suggested people might be able to view the album despite me having no awareness of ever sending the album link to anyone. A friend of mine checked this out and indeed she was able to "follow" my Picasa account and see the "limited" albums, despite them being clearly marked (to me) as limited. She did not have the link though. This baffled me.

On the limited album's page in my account I discovered a "Reset secret link" option. I figured resetting it might resolve the issue I was experiencing. After clicking it I received this warning:

Are you sure you want to reset the secret link to this album? This will remove access for everyone who has the current secret link.

Since I had no awareness of sending the "secret link to this album" and had no awareness of using it myself I had no worries. I was not worried about the individual photos since my understanding was that they each had their own secret link. This belief was supported by the fact that when I embed the images in my blog Picasa provides an option to "Hide album link" which I always chose. I only embedded the individual photo's link.

Needless to say, after reseting the album link it appears all the embedded links for images in my blog from that folder are now nonfunctional. That certainly was not my expectation.

*sigh*

Again, if any readers know of any quick solutions I would appreciate it. You can email me -- isidorsfugue at gmail. Otherwise, I will likely need to replace over 400 photos one by one. Again, that will take some time.

Fortunately, I have a post that will likely serve as useful for when I complete this task. More on that later.

Technical Difficulties

Two days ago, after putting my laptop into "sleep" mode it decided it did not want to wake up no matter what I tried. Since then, I have taken a ferry from Zhuhai to Hong Kong and my computer is now under expert examination.

In the meantime, I will continue to have very limited Internet access so posting will be sparse at best. Please be assured, more is on way. Hopefully, I will soon have a rejuvenated or a new laptop and life can return to normal.

From Video Mishaps to Hong Kong, Open Plan Offices, and Text Messaging Legal Woes

I had hoped to have a post today about the parade in Taiwan I mentioned here. However, I am having some bizarre problems creating the video. It looks completely fine in the edited preview, but in the final version some sections get stuck rapidly alternating between just a few frames. Other sections are fine, though. I will give it a whirl again this weekend. If all goes well I will put up the post on Monday. Otherwise, maybe I can just add some techno music to the video, and it will go viral.

For now I will do something I have not done in a while -- a quick review of some random links I had been holding onto for potential deeper commentary. Since I may never get to them, here are a few in no particular order (previous post of assorted links here):

1. I have previously discussed (here, here, here, and here) the barriers mainland Chinese face visiting Macau and Hong Kong. Bo Gu of NBC News describes her own first visit to Hong Kong. Her story about how she obtained the necessary permit highlights both some of the challenges in obtaining a permit and provides a taste of how "official processes" can work in China.

2. An article by Julian Treasure on The Sound Agency website discusses research indicating that open plan offices can hurt work productivity, even when they have been designed in the hope they can promote "creative thinking and better problem solving". I have not yet had a chance to review the original research papers, so I do not want to comment specifically. I will just say that what is reported is consistent with other cognitive psychology research I have conducted/reviewed in the past.

3. A Reuters article by Patricia Reaney warns:

Couples who may be heading for a nasty break-up should be careful about texting because it could end up as evidence against them in divorce court.

I appreciate the concern from a legal perspective, but it strikes me as somewhat ironic. I am no relationship expert, but it would seem to be that if one wants to save a marriage that reducing lines of communication may not be in a couple's best interest. Also, the advice to not put anything in writing seems easy to follow -- just speak your thoughts. However, sometimes people are better able to express themselves through written means (and sometimes very specific forms of writing). I have conducted research that... well, I cannot share details so I will just say that I think there may be some opportunities for innovations here. And they will not necessarily only apply to troubled couples.

That is all for the links. Now hopefully I can sort out the video problem.

Posts Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

I haven't had a chance to post recently and when I was ready the Internet and/or Chrome decided to go haywire. I am now using Firefox with a slow Internet connection, so I'll do a preview of what's ahead.

Before continuing on the themes started with the stories about Xiaoxin, I will take a detour early next week with a couple of Taiwan-related posts. One is a post I've already promised about Michele Bachmann. Why would this, um, "colorful" Republican member of the U.S. House Representatives come up in a discussion I had with a friend of mine in Kaohsiung? Stay tuned...

A later post will be about a parade I saw in Taipei a few months ago. It will be particularly appropriate to share at that moment since the parade was about an issue of great concern to Michele Bachmann -- although I doubt she would have agreed to participate. Again, stay tuned...

After those posts, I'll get back to the earlier theme and share a story that can add some perspective to why Xiaoxin was so excited about her payday.

To finish off this post I was going to add some gratuitous photos of cats in local Guangzhou shops. However, now Picasa is behaving very peculiarly. I'm using a VPN at the moment so I don't think my problems are related to blocking from the Great Firewall, but I can't be sure.

I'm just going to go to sleep and hope this is all magically resolved when I turn on my laptop tomorrow.

Cheerio.

A Refresher Post

Even though I've been blogging for less than a year, I've already noticed that one relative weakness of the blog format is that older but still relevant posts get buried quickly and newer readers who may be interested in them may never become aware of their existence.  To try to deal with this issue, I have several areas on the side of the blog web site that highlight or index posts.  However, they each have their own weaknesses, none of which I can easily address.  I also see that Blogger is now offering some new blog formats that look like attempts to deal with the burying issue.  While some of them seem to be a step on the right direction I'm not yet sold on them for a variety of reasons ranging from usability concerns to them not yet fully implementing some standard features.  Regardless, any changes to the web site won't likely impact those who read posts through readers and such.

So, I'm going to try something new with this post and reference some "old" posts that I think may be of interest to newer readers.  For those who have been reading this blog from the beginning, consider it a trip down memory lane and fear not, new material is on the way.  In addition to simply providing links, I'll include brief summaries and sometimes some additional thoughts.  In no particular order, here are 5 posts:

• Google's Problems in China: Perceptions of a Chinese Internet User in Guiyang – The reason a young lady in Guiyang, Guizhou is worried that she may lose access to Google shows how sometimes people’s pragmatic concerns matter the most.  Her feelings of why Google is having some struggles in China shine a light on a key issue in China.

• China Scenes: Villages Around Kaili, Guizhou – One of my favorite photo posts and it shows a side of China that is very different from what is seen in Beijing or Shanghai.  It's also where as I was leaving a village one of several traditionally dressed villagers came up to me unannounced and insisted I drink something out of a ram's horn.  I think they were there to welcome some visitors but decided I shouldn't miss out on the fun.  The most surprising part was that the horn contained a very strong alcohol and she poured the entire contents down my throat.  Sadly, I have no photo of that event so maybe I'll just have to go back someday.

• Facebook in China: A Chance to Connect and Understand – The post uses Facebook as an example, but really it's about how Facebook or similar services with international reach such as Google+, Twitter, or even Amazon.com (though that may not be as obvious from the piece), could meet a key need for some in China (whether or not they'll be allowed to so is another matter).  It's one of my longest posts (and also one of my most visited), but there's actually much more I could say on the topics it raises.  I will likely be writing more on some of them in the near future.

• The Different Colors of China – An experience I had with a friend from Hong Kong in Guangxi provides an example of how China's diversity makes it challenging to understand, even for Chinese.

• Writing on the Wall: China's Implicit Communication – This is actually one of several guest blog posts I wrote on James Fallows' blog at The Atlantic.  It's about how some writing on a wall in Xiapu, Fujian province highlights the roles implicit communication and fake products can play in China.

That's all for now.  If this seems to work, I'll do it periodically in the future.  Feedback is definitely most welcome.

Update on Missing Post

Time for a a brief update on the still-missing post "Mobile Phones in China: A Variety of Options" (see here for previous update). I want to keep the topic fresh particularly for when people come to this blog's main page after seeing the "Page not found" message.

One sign of progress is that the combo-label with the curious number boxes on the "Posting - Edit Posts" panel (see here for description) has gone away.

I know as of this past weekend I was not the only person still missing a post.  I also saw on Twitter that some people were finding their posts replaced as late as the end of last week (at least that is when they found them, I'm not 100% sure when they actually reappeared). I will take it as a sign Blogger is still working on the issue.

I'm hoping for a general announcement from Blogger or a reply to any of my attempts (using a variety of methods) to report the issue. Even a "hey, we've lost it, sorry, how about we ship you a free box of cookies?" would be appreciated (note: those chocolate-mint girl scout cookies would be great -- can't get them in China).

Anyways, hopefully I can end my meta-posts soon.

Still Waiting for Missing Post

My view while I waited for something else -- lunch in Zhaotong, Yunnan

As before, my post "Mobile Phones in China: A Variety of Options" has still not reappeared after it was taken down by Blogger as part of their response to a problem they were having with "data corruption".  In its most recent update on the incident Blogger wrote:

Update (5/15 10:55PM PST): Blogger should be back to normal for the vast majority of people affected by this issue -- if posts are still missing, please check your drafts (you may need to republish). We are in the process of restoring comments made during the affected period from 7:37am PDT on 5/11 to 1:30pm PDT on 5/12. If you still have other issues, please contact us via the temporary form we’ve set up for this particular issue. Thanks again for bearing with us, we’re deeply sorry for the inconvenience we caused. We’ll share an incident report later this week.

I do now see a draft of the post in my Blogger "Posting - Edit Posts" panel but it is definitely not the final version.

Also, on the same screen I see that I supposedly have a posts label with a rather long name.  I can't get the symbols to appear in text so here is a screen capture:

It appears to represent the combined labels for a draft of yet-to-be-published post that now exists as two different copies in the "Posting - Edit Posts" panel.  While the combining of labels is interesting, I'm most curious about the meaning of the nifty boxes of numbers.  Anyone have some insights?  For more context, I was working on the relevant post when Blogger unexpectedly shut down, and I wasn't able to save the most recent version in Blogger (however, luckily I was able to save it on my computer).

Anyways, at least Blogger is providing a form to report remaining issues (which I have done).

A few readers have kindly noted that the missing post remains in at least some RSS readers and that it could be copied from there.  I will re-post myself if at some point there is information from Blogger indicating it's the best option.

So far, the message seems to be that all will be restored.

Blogger Downtime and Missing Post

I haven't posted for a while due to Blogger's extended downtime.  See here for Blogger's recent comments on the incident.  During that period of time, this blog, like others hosted on Blogger, was viewable but I was unable to write posts, edit posts, etc.  Additionally, to fix the problem Blogger removed a large number of posts.  My piece "Mobile Phones in China: A Variety of Options" apparently fit in that category and is still missing.  Blogger is reporting that most posts have been restored but based on Twitter activity I see I am not the only one waiting for a post to reappear. 

I'll likely wait to post anything substantial until my missing post reappears and can feel at least somewhat confident more fun isn't in store.

And best wishes to what I suspect is now a very stressed Blogger team.

Wondering if my post is still in the Cloud