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This feeling is not available

Last month was a special day for the in love Chinese, it was Valentine’s Day, known as Qixi Festival (七夕节). The legend tells that a cowherder (牛郎) and a fairy seamstress (织女) fell in love without the Goddess of Heaven’s approval. When the Goddess found out about their marriage, she decided to punish them, separating the two lovers forever. Once a year all the magpies in the world take pity on them and fly up into heaven to form a bridge (鵲橋) so the lovers may be together for a single night, which is the seventh night of the seventh moon (Qixi literally means “The Night of Sevens”)(chinatravel.com).

In the past the most conventional way to express true feeling was by giving the gift of flowers. The Internet has changed all the rules: sending cards online and writing romantic sentences on the wall of a social network site are now becoming the norm. This year the most touching online demonstration was a picture posted on renren.com, kaixin.com and sinamicroblog made by an internet user who collected a dozen Chinese love songs. According to the picture, the lover plays them in an audio tape, positioning the song titles in a semantic order to declare his love. The song, called “Dear” is first followed by: “(I) Just want (to)”“Love (you)”, and “forever" (China Daily).

Valentines Day often sparks a range of colourful and clichéd emotions; glee, sadness and anger dominated netizens’ profiles on renren.com, kaixin.com and other popular blogs. The net is an efficient tool, giving comfort to the full spectrum of valentine’s day victims: from lonely hearts to bitter, angry individuals; “I only have my computer” wrote one microblogger. Furthermore, especially for the embittered individuals, “anger-release” stores were created; about 400 online stores offer crestfallen individuals a chance to “get rid of high pressure”, paying just 1 RMB for 10 minutes of pure venting (China Daily). The service provides a client the opportunity to complain of his or her daily troubles without any constrictions (relationships, work pressures and family members relations) and remaining anonymous. “I was inspired by my female friends who like to confide their troubles about family, study and work. I prefer to call my store a 'recycle station' for pressure and annoyance” said the owner of an anger-release store in Shanghai (W. Ping - newkerala.com).

The advent of the internet has transformed Chinese society so deeply that it seems impossible to fully grasp it without understanding the nation’s cyberspace: as written in WSJ (24^th August - China’s netizens criticize crisis response), the middle kingdom’s internet is a barometer of the Chinese public sentiments. Guobin Y., professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Columbia University, calls these manifestations “online activism”: the Chinese have created  “a world of carnival, community and contention in and through cyberspace which have transformed personhood, society and politics” (Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online - 2009).

Nevertheless not all can be expressed, especially if it concerns the Communist Party’s behavior. Even if article 35 of the Chinese constitution protects the freedoms of speech, assembly, association and publication, such provisions are subordinate to the government’s interests. The censorship strategy operates a different agenda utilizing different techniques: technical filtering (by keyword), pre-publication censorship (profiling a list of taboo topics), post-publication censorship (which is able to cancel blogs within 24 and 48 hours of their posting) and proactive manipulation (“50 Cent Party” or “Red Vests”). Violating these directives could result in a range of possible sanctions, including criminal and financial liability, detention and loss of a business license (Freedom House Report).

Youtube, WordPress and Blogspot cannot be accessed directly. Facebook and Twitter were banned in 2008. Gmail and Hotmail are frequently jammed.  “This webpage is not available. It might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address” is the message given when someone attempts to access a blacklisted site.

The latest instrument of control is GoSo.cn, the “People’s search engine” (人民搜索 - literally “Go Search”), which was launched officially last month in order to “create an authoritative search engine […] providing trusted search result[s]” (CNN international). Very similar to Google’s interface, GoSo provides the users with news, webpages, pictures, finance info and blog/bbs access. But if one gathers information, for example, about the Tian’anmen crackdown, one will get results completely unrelated to the controversial event. China - accused a Chinese blogger - ironically educates its people to develop technologies to prevent them from being free.