Beijing's standout bloggers (like its natives) are an intrinsically grouchy lot. No surprise then that they’ve been griping on and on about Olympic-related hassles of late – though in many cases more offline than on.
“Achhhh, we’ve been spending half our days erasing posts,” groused the founder of one of China’s edgier blog forums, reached by phone earlier this week. Come Olympic time, he said, “I’m not even sure we’ll be operating.” He asked not to be named and declined to elaborate. “Please don’t ask me to talk about it.” (His site, incidentally, is still up.)
“I can’t really say what I want, so I’m not writing much at all,” carped a fellow blogger over an iced cappuccino a couple days later. A journalist with a large online cult following, he was planning to flee Beijing for China’s deep south to take care of some unfinished reporting during the Games. The shortage of non-Olympic-related cultural activity permitted in the months beforehand, he said, had left him with far less than usual to cover. He too declined to be named. “Please, don’t make things harder for me.”
Members of the foreign press corps arriving in town this week also are coming to grips with the reality that they won’t have completely “free and unfettered access” to the Internet during the Games, contrary to what Beijing Olympics organizers and their International Olympic Committee counterparts seemed to have promised. What a shocker. Welcome to Beijing!
The bigger surprise came Friday afternoon, when Beijing unblocked a number of sites after hashing out a new deal with the IOC (which later denied there was ever a previous “deal” sanctioning censorship). The unblocked sites include those of organizations the government has long treated as its personal nemeses: Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and the BBC’s Chinese service. Meanwhile those of others deemed “subversive” enemies of the state, like Falun Gong and the Free Tibet Campaign, figure to remain off-limits.
The Great Firewall of China can actually make for a thrilling tour, once you get used to the bumps. The unacquainted visitor may learn the lessons of forbearance and a handy tip or two from Beijing’s subculture of dark-humored bloggers, mostly thirty or forty-something and male. For them, playing volleyball with Web forum monitors and Internet filterers is a daily exercise. Their sociopolitical commentary can get them into serious trouble with the law, granted, but for most the consequences seldom amount to more than getting a blog shut down, at which point they decamp to a new hosting site. Through some sick perversion of Confucian dynamics, the whole gambit cultivates in many a sense of make-do kinship with Communist Party speech police, along with an abiding awareness of what is and isn’t politically correct. This is not all that unlike the way a grounded adolescent resents the “old man”, or a p-whipped husband the “ball-and-chain”.
Officialdom is projecting some serious Olympic harmony over the Internet, at least on the surface, via the home pages of China’s major private Internet portals (QQ, Sina, Sohu, Netease), which have been carrying strikingly similar firey-hued background motifs. Many official billboards look about the same. Hmmm.
The pressures on dissent have inspired the blogosphere to new feats of linguistic gymnastics. So as to deride by indirection and escape the radar of post scrubbers (not to mention humorless patriots), bloggers are up to their old tricks again. They're trying farce, spoof and other forms of couched criticism, rearranging compound words and entire blocks of text, and in particular, coining various snide twists on the Chinese for Olympic Games, ao yun (奥运) for short.
Many of these turns of phrase have multipile interpretations. Keyword filters have not caught up with them. There’s nao yun (闹运), which could be defined as “troublesome Olympics”, the “make-trouble Olympics” or just plain “no Olympics”. And there's bi yun （避运), literally to “shun” or “avoid the Games”, is also a homophone for the Chinese for contraception, and thus a dig at the snug wrap of security over the Games. Ergo a biyuntao, or condom, is the current tourism industry slang for a "package to avoid the Games". The blogger heading South may be about to head on one.
I myself am partial to an expression that I began using on my own: ao yun (熬晕), as in 我熬晕了, which in my mind roughly translates: “I’m so sick of the Games I could faint.” My Chinese friends generally don’t seem to get at first. Maybe that's because of the tonal discrepancy with the ao yun for Olympics. More likely, it's just not that funny.
On Thursday, the acclaimed journalist Chen Feng took to blogging a series of Olympic news satire named for yet another derogatory expression for the Games, the gong wai yun （恭外运）. Literally, the coinage is an abbreviation for an “event where foreign athletes are respectfully received.” Alternately, it’s a homophone for “extrauterine pregnancy”.
Chen pegs every dead-pan installment of the Gongwaiyun Express to some breaking news item about Beijing’s preparations. The security and environmental stopgaps are favored targets of ridicule.
Here’s Gongwaiyun Express No. 1, which Chen wrote after the city urged subway passengers to leave their bags behind:
"Authorities are bolstering subway security checks to ensure security during the Gong wai yun [read: Olympics]. In order to avoid congestion caused by security checks, relevant officials have urged the public not to wear clothes when taking the subway.
A reporter asked whether the measure would cause inconvenience to the public, questioning why such a strict measure was being introduced.
A Gongwaiyun spokesmen acknowledged that this would cause the public to feel inconvenienced, but pointed out that the during the 2008 Beijing Olympic period, authorities already have been urging the public not to carry bags when taking the subway. The spokesman noted that it is commonplace as well as necessary for the public to carry bags when they go out. Since the Beijing Olympics can still urge the public not to carry bags, there is also nothing wrong with urging them not to wear clothes.
The spokesman also pointed out that not carrying bags would in reality not resolve issues of security. It is entirely possibly for terrorists to conceal bombs in the crotch of their pants. So in order to ensure that the Gongwaiyun is 100 percent safe, it is only proper for the public to sacrifice some convenience. It’s a noble act accommodate the Gongwaiyun."
Look for more kicks from the Gongwaiyun Express to come in further posts on this blog.
Meanwhile, Chen has been doing some serious thinking about Olympic developments as well. A career muckraker, he won fame for his 2003 scoop of the death of a young graphic designer named Sun Zhigang, which fueled a media uproar that led the government to abolish the 20-year-old procedure by which migrants without proper residential permits could be held in detention centers and forcibly repatriated. After stints as a senior editor at The Beijing News and Sohu.com’s news channel, he’s now with the financial news portal Hexun, where he also keeps his blog. He calls it 'Journalistic Education' (新闻性教育), itself a flick of whimsy at the Advanced Education, Communist Party chief Hu Jintao’s 2005 propaganda campaign to reinvigorate the Party ranks and reincorporate basic Party values. Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of Chen’s 'Journalistic Education' were eventually shut down. The Hexun version is 3.0.
Recently, Chen revealed over noodle stir-fry, his own Web site rubbed out a couple of his more scathing entries on the Olympics. He responded by reposting them using vertical typesetting. The classic form of printing Chinese has become a tool for Netizens to circumvent censorship, and it’s not as much trouble as it looks, Chen noted. “There are programs to do this for you.”
Chen’s post from July 13 opens:
│屋│七│ │浪│就│ │性│人│执│太│都│，│抢│太│理│桥│今│ │然│前│
│﹂│旬│ │的│因│ │？│到│法│太│要│在│没│，│了│下│天│ │后│天│
│ │老│ │自│为│ │ │底│者│，│被│桥│骗│都│。│的│新│ │来│来│
│ │太│ │由│奥│ │ │有│的│可│清│下│，│７│这│流│京│ │了│了│
│ │告│ │都│运│ │ │没│妈│以│出│有│靠│０│位│浪│报│ │抓│查│
│ │别│ │没│，│ │ │有│妈│当│去│一│捡│了│拾│户│又│ │狗│暂│
│ │桥│ │有│我│ │ │一│的│这│，│个│废│，│荒│也│刊│ │的│住│
│ │下│ │了│们│ │ │点│，│些│这│小│品│没│的│要│出│ │。│证│
│ │小│ │。│连│ │ │点│这│所│位│窝│为│偷│老│被│来│ │ │的│
│ │﹁│ │ │流│ │ │人│帮│谓│老│，│生│没│太│清│，│ │ │，│
Translation:
"The day before last they came to check temporary residency permits. Then they came to capture the dogs.
Now today The Beijing News is reporting that the vagrants under the overpasses are going to be cleared out as well. This old lady who collects scrap, she’s 70 years old, she hasn’t stolen or looted or swindled, she survives off of picking up waste, she has a tiny nest underneath an overpass, and even she has to be cleared out. This old lady could be the mother of these so-called executors of the law. Do these guys not possess one shred of humanity?
Just because of the Olympics, even our freedom to be vagrants is gone…"
