East is Relative

Google and censorship are not friends

It looks like Google might be packing up and moving on, having decided that it can’t work within the framework of China’s Golden Shield project (otherwise, and more famously, known as the Great Firewall of China, or the GFW). I’m not sure when this will happen, but given that the only way China can keep Google (which it really doesn’t want anyway) is to stop censoring the internet, it’s pretty inevitable that it will happen. That said, I won’t be able to access my gmail accounts anymore. If you need to contact me, the best (and possibly only) way to do so is through my email address at this site, which is available on the Contact page. Sorry for any inconveniences this may cause!

[ETA: If you want another foreigner's perspective on this whole thing, check out this great post at Sinosplice about how this affects China, with further links to news postings.]

In other news, my friend Echo invited me to the opening of a new restaurant, of which her husband is part-owner, last week, and I added the pictures to the Shimen photo set. The concept of the restaurant is to have all the food prepared and cooked in an open environment, on outside tables, and with windows into the kitchen, so people can see the cooking process and see the locally-purchased goods. It’s their way of being “green” and local about their food choice and process. They also have indoor “hut” style rooms with fire pits in the middle where they cook the hotpots, and the smoke from the fires smokes the meat they hang from the ceiling to be prepared later. These are “traditional”-style cooking methods, apparently. It was really interesting and the food was delicious.

I have also updated the Location map to reflect my recent trip.