Censored from China (July 09)

Beijing: Dancing without YouTube Finding internet access is easy in upscale hotels, but that doesn't mean I get  what I'm used to having: Facebook is blocked, and so is YouTube. In order to beat the Chinese censors I asked a friend in the US to publish my reports on Facebook, and she did, of course: that's how absurd censorship is! What did I do on my very first day in Beijing? Checked out the dancing, of course! I went to the park of the Temple of Heaven early in the morning (7:30), and lo and behold, it was  teeming with people already, most of them dancing. There were about ten groups doing ballroom dances, or at least Chinese versions thereof (to me it looked more like martial arts - cf. the photos of Tai Chi and the Sword dance - because in most of the groups they were all doing the same thing at the same time, more often than not mechanically, without listening to the music much). People in the hotel told me afterwards that the Chinese see dancing as a form of exercise, like they would do Tai Chi, and not  so much as entertainment - which I can easily believe, because I did not see many smiles on the dancers' faces (no wonder, with temperatures in the nineties and humidity close to 100% Tai Chi Sword dance The old lady, however, who used to be a professional dancer, had a beautiful smile! The sign at the entrance of the park, on the other hand, did not make me smile, no sirree: I tried my best to be self-restraint (for once!) and mold my imagination so that it would be wel-mannered at last... (spelling taken from original) Other activities people do in the parks: singing of folksongs, playing of traditional instruments, playing cards, chess, dominoes, juggling.