This website will migrate to eng.yeeing.com

If you notice the domain name ya.iyee.cn is registered in China under my private name, but this is not allowed by CCNIC which has recently restrain the application procedure and asking existing users to verify their application documents and resubmit. ( source)

I don't want to get trouble, though I really like this short domain name very much, the government's determination on controlling all websites accessing to China makes me have no choice but to escape. I will try my very best to keep my new English blog updating as frequently as possible.

the new address:  eng.yeeing.com
Feedburner feed will redirect to new blog, so you don't have to change anything on your rss reader.

Buddha Bless China!

YouTube being blocked for the 5th time

Chinese Origin: YouTube第5次遭GFW封杀，本次更被域名劫持  via GFW Blog

YouTube was blocked again on the evening of 23 March 2009, and this time with the highest level of blockade, including: IP block, "URL keywords censors" and domain name hijack, among them the most powerful one is domain hijack which cause OpenDNS to fail.

What makes YouTube being treated in this way again and again? Perhaps we can have a brief idea about the reason behind from here. But more or less one thing is clear, that is,  the river crab has determined to exterminate the grass-mud horse. Will the grass-mud horse survive in the end? I'm not sure, but I'm afraid it's the most hopeless.

I tried to nslookup www.youtube.com, unexpectedly found 8 fake IP: 4.36.66.178 202.106.1.2 216.234.179.13 209.145.54.50 203.161.230.171 211.94.66.147 64.33.88.161 and 202.181.7.85

After investigation, YouTube has 5 usually used IPs: 208.117.236.70 208.117.236.71 208.117.236.75 208.117.236.76 and 208.65.153.238, among them two of most frequently used 208.117.236.71 and 208.65.153.238 is not accessable.

From the route tracing photo below, we can see the real IPs are blocked. Everytime I Ping/nslookup youtube.com will show out fake IPs, only after repeating for several times will find the real ones.

Now, the other reserved IPs (such as http://208.117.236.76) are still accessable, but once you want to watch any videos, it will always shows an error: We're sorry this video is no longer available. This is one the fuctions of the "URL Keyword censors" mentioned above.

Last time YouTube being blcoked was on 3 March this year, it last for 3 days.

Train did not stand at platform long enough caused an ill passenger die

The Beijing News 22 March 2009, Yesterday morning, a man’s epilepsy recurred on the T168 train from Nanchang to Beijing west station. Later on, the train stopped at Xinxiang station, when his family was about to move him out of, the train restarted. One hour after, the train temporary stopped at Anyang, but the man was already dead.

[08:05 Zhengzhou Station]

Sisters could not wake up her brother

Based on the saying of two sisters of the dead, his name is Zhang Xiaoping, 48 years old, had a 10+ years’ history of epilepsy and recurred every year. The siblings got on the train in early morning yester in Hubei, and planned to visit Beijing. 08:05, after train left Zhengzhou station, sister Zhang Xiaowen tried to wake up her brother to have breakfast. According to her description, her brother was lying on bed at that time, “feet became hard, chest feels hot and his mouth was matted with blood. Couldn’t wake him up by every mean.”

According to the chief conductor,  they reported to Nanchang railway station immediately and contacted 120, planning to transfer the patient at next stop Henan Xinxiang.

[08:13 Xinxiang Station]

Train restarted when the patient was about to be moved out

The train stopped at Xinxiang at 8:13. According to the description staff at Xinxiang station, after the chief conductor reporting the situation, local 120 ambulances hurried to the station and kept waiting at No.1 platform.

Zhang’s sisters recalled that they lost their presence of mind, until train stopped. They tried to lift brother out under the assistance of a passenger and a vehicle police.” Train restarted when we were approaching the door!” said by Zhang Xiaowen,”brother’s bed was in the middle of the compartment, 4\5 meters away from the exit door”

About this, the staff of Xinxiang station explained,  after the train had stopped at their station for 7 minutes, their signal tower did not receive any information asking them to extend standing time.

[09:20 Anyang Station]

The man had passed away for more than one hour

The chief conductor explained the train left Xinxiang at 08:20. Originally the next stop is Handan, but after they sent request to Anyang station, they were about to stop there one hour later, ”there are some small station between Anyang and Xinxiang, but ambulances can’t drive there, so it’s meaningless to stop”.

Unfortunately, when they finally got the patient out of the train, local 120 first-aid persons claimed he has been dead for more than one hour…


Arguments

Chinese netizens associate this news with another one that had similar situation, but with very different results. On 22 August 2008, No.2220 train temporary stopped for one minute to help 7 Japanese passengers catch up their flight, and informed local police to pick them up and head direct for air station, even the Japanese praised “No other country in the world will do that (for us)”.

Some netizens complained that if the passenger was a foreigner, he would have a big chance to survive, because the Train system always provide foreigners with services that are superior than local citizens. Foreigners’ life value (or even time value) worths much more than the Chinese people’s.

Fanfou report earthquake first, in 57 seconds

China-based twitter simulator fanfou published a post today on how soon did their users report earthquake in China. Obviously, fanfou wrote this post with a purpose that they want to show confidence that their platform is no less efficient than twitter (especially on disaster reporting), and also indicating they have a relatively large scale of local users in China.

Showing below is the translated from fanfou development blog.

According to the CENC, a magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck Siping City, Jilin Province at 2009-03-20 14:48:52.9

The first earthquake related message appeared in fanfou was at 2009-03-20 14:49 (database shows the accurate time is 14:49:49 )

In another words, fanfou user“红棉812” reported the earthquake in 57 seconds! Later on, more and more messages about this quake from other fanfou users has been coming out:

People who are concerned with the Jilin earthquake can try fanfou search to be updated with the latest news.
http://fanfou.com/q/地震

'Bullest' protest in history

On February 20, 2009, the Anhai Town Government of Jinjiang city, Fujian province was besieged by dozens of ox. According to the report, Anhai Town Government demolished the farmer's no-licences temporary cowshed by force in the morning. Unexpectedly, the farmer drove his ox to the entrance of the town government as protest.

 

  

  

 

(photo credit: bbs.163.com)

2009 is the year of ox (in Chinese zodiac), and in northern China "ox" has the meaning of "cool", hence this small scale protest is called as the " 'bullest'(coolest) protest in history" （史上最‘牛’抗议） by China netizens :)

10 handy tools to bypass GFW

China is one of the few countries that have internet censorship, and this nation is unofficially "protected" by a mysterious and high-tech system which is called "Great Firewall", or "GFW" by netizens. Just like any other computer firewalls in the world, the GFW system is keep on updating itself everyday and becoming more and more powerful, the few old methods we have introduced before to get through the Wall may not be practical any more. But don't worry, EssencialBlog writes a great list of 10 handy tools to bypass GFW, the article includes independent proxy software, web browser based proxy, google and web based proxy, each of them is quite easy to use and do not require too much technical knowledge.

Chinese origin: 操 GFW 十大简易招式

Tool 1 - GAppProxy

It's very simple and fast, just download GAppProxy, upzip and then set HTTP proxy as 127.0.0:8000 and that's all.

For downloading and detailed introduction, please refer to http://code.google.com/p/gappproxy/

Tool 2 - Go2

Just login Go2 website, key in the web address and, you will be able to slap the GFW.

A shortage of this service is the format of every original url will be changed.

Tool 3 - Tor Browser

A very well known software combination of Tor and firefox, simply download Tor Browser and then double click the onion icon, it will start working immediately.

Inevitably, this heavy tool got 2 shortcomings, one is a new firefox will pop out as soon as it's launched, the other one is it working damn slowly.

Tool 4 - Hotspot Shield

everything about this tool is fine, except too many annoying ADs. For more instruction and downloading, please go to the official website : Hotspot Shield

Tool 5 - Tor + FoxyProxy

Zola has wrote a very detailed tutorial on how to use both of them to get over GFW, but the article is a little too complicated, not as easy as Tor Browser.

Of course, you can directly install Tor and FoxyProxy and do your homework without reading the tutorial.

Tool 6 - Gladder

Only suitable to Firefox users. After installing this addon, go to "View - Toolbars - Customize" find gladder and drag the icon to toolbar, when the ladder is shining means your firefox is ready to bypass GFW.

Addon page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2864

Tool 7 - Wujie

Only works on IE browser, but works very fast.

Download from Box.net, then unzip and double click u94.exe, and that's all for your IE to jailbreak.

Tool 8 - Language tools

Go to the google language tools, paste the URL you want to visit into the "Translate text or webpage" box, choose the language (tanslting between same language is ok), than click "tanslate", done!

Tool 9 - PHProxy

Similar to Tool 2 - Go2, it's another web-based online proxy, visit PHProxy website, input the URL and then "go".

Currently, there is no Ad on PHProxy.

Tool 10 - psiphon2

According to sesawe's introduction, "send a email request to english@sesawe.net, saying 'can I have psiphon2 access' and tell us which country you are in. You will get an email with psiphon2 invitation code". (their English webpage seems is not up-to-date, only provide psiphon 1 in the homepage)

If you hate him...

when you have a son

and you don't teach him well

you are doing harm to your whole family

when you have a daughter

and you don't teach her correctly

you are doing harm to other people's whole family

so if you hate somebody

huh, it's very simply

just spoil your daughter

and marry her into your enemy's family

and his whole family will be all up

so your revenage is easily done

via

The biggest threat to China is not social clash but social collapse - part 1

This is a popular article that recently widely spread on web 2.0 media in China. Different from other political articles that only examine the appearance of China society, the author has a unique understanding on social stability and corruption, like the title says, social clash is not the serious threat to China but…

Chinese origin:  对中国最大的威胁不是社会动荡而是社会溃败
English edition: The biggest threat to China is not social clash but social collapse - part 1
Translated by: Yee

1.    Are we worrying about the wrong problems? Nowadays people are all concerning about social conflicts, social clash and group events. The rationale behind those concerns is the worry that social unrest is going to happen. But in fact, the most serious threat to China society may not be social unrest, but social collapse.

2.    Social unrest means serious social conflicts will threat the basic framework of a regime and political system, while social collapse means the putrescence of a society's cell and disability of its function. Take human body for instance, 'unrest' is like a healthy body being wounded, while 'collapse' is the body or the cell got serious problems. The concepts of Mr. Fei Xiaotong's "social erosion" and Huntington's "Political decay" could improve our understanding on this phenomenon, though these two concepts are not exactly the same as "social collapse", but the latter will be closer.

3.    The opposite side of social clash is social stability, the opposite of social collapse. These two are commonly connected, but need to be distinguished. Now the problem is the misjudgment of the former usually becomes the barriers for curing the latter. It is like a cancer patient who need a surgery, but the doctor misjudged he has serious heart disease that is not able to do a surgery. But actually this person may not have heart disease, even have but very slight. However, the misjudgment of the former absolutely will alter the action to the latter. In real world, some necessary reformations against social collapse are suspended due to the worry that they may threat the stability of the society, which make things worse.

4.    In the recent articles I have emphasized again and again that currently there are many social conflicts, some may even be intensified, but the possibility of large scale social unrest in China is low. About this saying, I already wrote related articles 10 years ago. There are also two interviews on the newspaper South Weekend in the beginning of last year where i emphasized this point of view. In the past decades, because the unstable factors and the possibility of occurrence of crisis are overestimated, we formed a thinking orientation that stability is the top priority. Under this thinking orientation, stability seems to be an ultimate negative factor, everything should make way for stability. It results in that many things that should be done cannot be done. In reality, in a year of 356 days, there will always be situations any time; disasters (big or small) are unavoidable to a nation with 1.3 billion people. If they purposely look for unstable factors, of course they will get some. Besides, the runaway powers will continually create "group events". The key is how they look at those problems. How many countries are purposely looking for unstable factors like us? Handful. But only we have the organization that can make everything "stable".

5.    In recent years, the sign of social collapse has been appearing. The most vital one is the runaway of powers. In the process of 30 years reform, though the base framework of market economics has been built up, the (political) powers are still the center of our society. Hence, the social collapse will firstly appear in the runaway powers, corruption is just the outside appearance. The runaway power here means the powers are unable to be controlled neither by outsiders or insiders (central government?). In the past, thought there is a lacking of limitation from outside, but it's relatively effective from inside; the base of authority is being weakened, as far as few years ago there was saying that government orders can't pass through Zhong'nan'hai. The regional powers an departmental powers is becoming something that have no restricts from senior or supervision from citizens, in the mean time there are no other powers to balance with them, this indicates the fragment of national powers; Government officers are not to work responsibly, but will satisfy the political system's interest for a rise. Under this background, corruption is uncontrollable and ungovernable.

6.    The collapse of society has extended to every area of society life: "the hidden rules" are popular in the society, and even become the basic attitude of dealing with affairs. Mr. Wu Si has a good analysis on this: the bottom line of a society is lost, moral bankrupt; the strongly interest groups already become unbridled, the Sicilian lifestyle trend comes out; the unbridled interest groups has make serious erode the justice of society, the losing of professional ethics is a widely existing phenomena; the whole society’s information system is highly distorted, the falsification of statistic data represents a systematically distortion on information. There is a vivid saying,”Village lies to country, country lies to county, so on an so forth until they lies to the state council.” which may be a more reliable fact compare to the official statistic data.

7.    Social recognition and social centripetal force are fading rapidly. The fire accident happened to CCTV in January caused a loss of billions of RMB. However, netizens are gloating over the fire. No sadness, no heart broken feeling. What the gloat reveals is an unspeakable happiness. Somebody says, this indicates how cold people are; somebody says, there is no hope left for our nation; somebody asks, who don’t those gloating people think that a part of the burnt billion RMB belongs to them(after all CCTV is a state-owned asset)? But somebody argue that even if the money was well kept, it will be eaten by the officers in the end. The truth behind this discussion is, a mental estrangement, that is, those “things” are “theirs”, not “ours”. The mental estrangement is reflection of structure estrangement.

8.    The society is losing the ability to think for the long run. The interest group formed under Crony capitalism only focus on the short run benefits, they don’t have the responsibility that ancient emperors are to their coming generations, nor the transcendent spirit that noble has. In our society, there is a trend, which is exaggeration on short term problems together with numbness on long term. On the resources and environment problem they behaved like a lousy gambler, trying their best not to amend the systematic problems as long as it’s beneficial to them. For government officers, the powers they owned and allocation of interest means everything to them, so they don’t have much time to really do “things”.

(to be continued)