More from China

Ethnic Minorities, etc.

Here is a snippet from the Global Times, an English-language newspaper published in Beijing, from an article about the Western media bias against China regarding the treatment of its minorities:

"Western journalism has a deep distrust of governments and tends to view them negatively. This is in stark contrast to the Chinese media, which is largely in harmony with the government."
You didn't know, did you, that this kind of journalism was called
"harmony journalism"?

In the same newspaper, a "special report team"
explains to the grateful tourist in a lengthy article how
"the 55 ethnic minorities of China have been benefiting from decades of kindness and generosity by the ethnic minority policy.
The benefits they have to (sic!) savor
exist not just in one, but all areas of life" 

The Global Times, "Lucky minorities..."

The interesting thing about internet censorship is that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are blocked, but that you can access reports about it via Google. For example, I was able to access this site, including the video about the riots in Xinjiang, which supposedly is not available in China:
Internet blocked after riots
I think it's also interesting how the censoring is done: if you try to open YouTube, for example, after nothing happening for a long time, there will be the default message for server failure - as if YouTube was having problems...
The Turkish government also blocks YouTube every time they think Ataturk or "Turkishness" are being insulted (which Orhan Pamuk was also accused of), but at least they are honest enough to tell you who blocked it, and why.

Enough of politics -
a few glimpses of Beijing through my eyes instead.

Bicycles outside the Temple of Heaven: they all looked the same to me, but their owners seemed able to tell them apart.

My favorite rickshaw man in front of the Forbidden City.

My favorite sign inside the Forbidden City: poor relic, what if it had an itch and needed scratching?

Our (luxury) hotel was incongruently situated in a rather rundown neighborhood; right outside you could see the lady with her sewing machine,

and another candidate for my
"gained in translation"-collection:
"tamous" - if this word does not exist, it has to
be invented (especially for describing wines!)

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.

Punny Turkey

Dalyan (Southern Turkey):

a treasure trove of imaginative signs

I did not find out whether their quest for happiness made their guests happy...

ICE (buz) being sold in the FIRE (ateş) market  

İztuzu Beach - my favorite beach, not just because it's out of control:

  

  sign in front of a restaurant in Dalyan

Name of a hotel in Dalyan: can you guess what it's supposed to mean?
*Solution see below  

Istanbul, intellectual metropolis

"Don't park here, and don't ask!" (seen in Beyoğlu)
This meant double smiles for me, because I lived nearby in a street that had previously been called Sormagir Sokak, "Don't ask, enter!"-Street; it used to be colorful transvestites street, I am told, but they had been driven away by the authorities, and the name replaced by boring Başkurt Sokak, which only means something to nationalists.

Istanbul's literary animals

"Untitled"

Look closely at the photo, and you'll figure out what a "BAKSIR" is...

*

*the Turkish name gives it away: "gizli" means both "hidden" and "confidential"