Tag Archives: civil rights
Interpreting the Grass-mud Horse
The sudden popularity of the phrase Cao Ni Ma (草泥马) or Grass-mud Horse in the Chinese cyberspace perplexed many non-Chinese speakers. If you can understand it, you will gain such penetrating insights into the cyber culture in China.
What is a civil society
The civil society, from my understanding, is a society in which citizens have the necessary resources and effective constitutional protection to fully exert their civil rights and fulfill their civil duties. This includes, but not limited to, the formation of ‘sectors’ or organizations for the citizenship related functions.
Sourceforge.net is allowed to pass the “Wall”
Sourceforge.net is now unblocked by the G.F.W of China, and netizens from the mainland can now visit this largest repository of Opensource with little hassle. The site of Notepad++ is also left untouched by the seemingly impenetrable “Wall”, and its almost blasphemous attitude toward the Holy Olympic Games is visible to the people from the [...]
Officials Admit Existence of Grievances Before Violent Protest
Here is the official explanation to the protest happened last week, which was sparked by the controversial death of a young female student:
Chinese Netizens Breathe New Life into Common Phrases
“Who cares, I am just buying some soy sauce” said a pedestrian, when he was asked of his opinion about the leaked porn photos of Hong Kong celebrities. Perhaps because of the public attention on the widespread porn photos, the man’s response sounded very funny for netizens. Now the saying “I’m just buying some soy [...]
Rape or Push-up Exercises?
I am very surprised to read about the large-scale riot happened in Wengan County, Guizhou Province on June 28th. Not believing an incident like this happened again in this already troubled year of 2008, I did some googling about the news. As expected, I received the “Connection Interrupted” error prompt in my browser, reminding me [...]
About the Programmer of Notepad++ (Notepad Plus)
Many netizens believe the blockage of Sourceforge.net is due to the political opinion expressed by one of its projects – Notepad++ which is hosted on Sourceforge. The whole site of Sourceforge became inaccessible in the Mainland China as a result of this censorship.
Why Sourceforge.net is blocked again?
As of June 25, 2008, sourceforge.net is no longer accessible in the mainland China. I noticed this when I tried to file a bug report to my favorite task management application Task Coach. Then I realized that the headquarters of Open Source Software is blocked again. It took me a while to figure out why [...]
What is a Fenqing?
Fenqing is a Chinese word which literally means “angry youth”. This word has many translations in English such as cynical youth, young nationalists, hysterical youth and angry young men. I personally like to call them mob youth or ignorant angry youth. It is impossible to understand China without knowing what Fenqing is and what role [...]
Dr. Lin Yutang on Fenqing and their Patriotism
I wrote my own definition and analysis of Fenqing in this post — What is a Fenqing. The quote below is from the preface of My Country and My People by Lin Yutang. I quote Lin Yutang because I am disgusted by the so-called patriotism of the self-righteous Fenqing (literally means ‘angry youth’, who are [...]