I'm From China!

haha. of course i can speak mandarin but bu shi hen hao. wow! so you're a june baby. i see...a gemini? my chinese is still so-so compared to people from mainland. their mandarin is excellent! i bet you speak well too.

Yup,I'm a gemini!haha~~
hm.....actually I speak cantonese more than mandarin!
Can you speak or know cantonese?

i understand cantonese but i cant speak. i only know yat yi sum say hm lok cha ba kau sup. haha. do you understand what i'm typing? so when are you graduating?

Haha....I know what you typed,that's one to ten in cantonese!It's funny!
There are still two years I need to stay at my Uni.
How abt we talk in Mandarin after this post?
I think you will speak it cutely,haha!

haha. 有点不习惯说华语而切华语很差。我本来想在上个月到hong kong for a holiday but then ended up in shanghai cos there are no hotel rooms available there due to the convention. maybe at hongkong, i can 顺便到深圳和广州。好想好想在回到上海去。听过那首歌夜上海吧？ 夜里的上海果然非常的漂亮。哈哈! so hows my mandarin?

i wonder if you can read the chinese i input? by the way, do you have msn messenger? maybe we could chat there?

Here's what u typed......-__-||
[email protected] <--That's my msn,you can add me.

Wanna know why? Because they choose to put servers on Chinese land. Google moved their chinese search engine into China and then had to censor it.

I will never do that with A2K.

hahahaha! i think there was some problem with my chinese input software. but nevermind. i was saying my chinese is lousy and i was actually planning a trip to hongkong last month but hotel rooms were fully booked. i thought if i went to hongkong, i could go to shenzhen and guangzhou. i also said i miss shanghai dearly. i cant wait to go back.

Last month? You got a vacation?
You travel alone sometimes?
And I wonder how do you know to type chinese Pinyin?

Yes~~I also love the place of Jiangnan.Compare to Shanghai, I prefer to Hangzhou.It's peaceful and quiet just as its name--Heaven.And some ancient myth stories of love were taken place there,so it got another name--romantic city.

We Americans always suspicious as to why some Chinese threads just STOP...like this one on May 10th. Raymond, are you still out there?

er........cos I got a little busy these days,and I had already added her MSN for further conversation.

And of course,I would like more and more ppl to read this thread and show their views on it. And I also like to answer the questions abt my country.

I am from the u s and a! We have many good jobs here! For man, you have fireman, accountant, and athlete. For woman, prostitute.

......-__-||

I'm not quite sure what Slappy is up to....Maybe he will explain.

slappy makes a joke. If you do not understand the joke ignore it. It is often hard to translate humour from one culture to another, especially slappys kind of humour.

(although i do find his posts sexually arousing and would do him in a flash)

I think he is the man with sense of humor!
From his foto,i can see that! ha!

So many misunderstanding here.

Once we were very addicted to American modern life and different lifestyle. We had think Americans all liked Feixiang(an U.S. born chinese singer). In the U.S., every girl was very "open" when it comes to sex. Yet when we grew up a bit, we know from our foreign teacher( from America) and other foreigners that Americans is different from each other just like Chinese.

It is true that most of people in China(and in the world) like money. And every construction which costs a lot of money. And every diamond which costs a lot of money. But still China has its own unique attraction to the world.

China is like a bottle of Brandy. The more time you keep it, the more you like it. This is true especially for foreigners living here. Because China is open-minded and kind. (when people in metropolitan become more and more selfish----this is not true in many cities as well----. you will find it true in many rural areas.)

I don't know why you will be in jail if you talk about something. But I still will remain free even though I said "hell with the Communist Party" in the street, the only thing happened is passengers may think I'm a crazy man. And in many domestic forums, something not so friendly to China government is said, some are deleted by the administrator of the forum, some are not.

Yes, the Chinese government blocked google and wikipedia, that makes me not happy as well. But you can download some free software. You can still visit them. That's not very serious.

Modern China is the sea. Everything runs into it. There is polluted water. There are dead bodies. Yet it has a bright future. Although maybe we can't enjoy it. We can still work for it.

And I'm still reading this thread, so much for now. Thank you for reading.

Welcome to China, my friends.

(I quote this post but not in reply only to this post)

Thanks for that post trans, and I want to add something.

1. China is not George-Orwellian, not only because its authoritarianism is not great to that degree, and also that this government, by and large, is still responsible, not a corrupt rotten machine of autocracy as many say.
Most of the their doings do make sense. And I don't feel reluctant to say that they might be the most rational and practical, and thus inteligent government in the world now, IMO more than that of the Bush Administration.
Why? See what Trans and Chan said? There was no absolution in China, Chinese in some way are the best at keeping balance. And it was balance which the world's strongest leader botched in the Middle-East (No offence to pro-Bushians, I merely made a parallel to make you understand the Party)

2. Governing China is one of the most convoluting things. If you object the presense of CCP, please also complete your responsibility of doing "good things" by telling us any workable alternative. Yes, at a certain point, Any Change is better than No Change, but the dynamic and development of China now determine that we are far from that extreme point, and we can steer out of that way by careful and wise administrating.

3. Western media frequently says that Chinese media is "censored". As I understand "being censored" is same as "being biased", that is, leaning toward a certain angle, and here the angle is the dominant force of that media, that voice. In this way, no medium in the world can be avoided of being "censored", since they cannot be "unbiased".
While Chinese media is feeding its people the ridiculous information, I don't think westerners are doing anything better. See how media create an atmosphere that leads people believing that Chinese government will not allow "ANY" dissents to be voiced. So by this and numerous facts we can have a peep into not only the "censorship" of Chinese media, but of the entire world.
It's the general malaise of modern-time information technology, of which I am thinking a lot but I won't say it further here.

4. I have a suggestion: In this world, just as in all the worlds before, if you want to say something, want to know something, or want to register something in mind as "certain", go to see it yourself. Because only what you can see, what you can directly experience is the ultimate truth for you.


JB

JB,

Censorship is not "being biased".

Strictly speaking, censorship is the act of preventing the publication of material. In practice this means that a censor, usually a government official, reviews manuscripts prior to publication, and only those manuscripts approved by the censor may be legally published. Sometimes there is a "Code" of standards that published materials must meet, and sometimes the standards are left to the government censors to determine for themselves.

In either case, the purpose of censorship is to prevent unwelcome ideas from reaching the public at large. In Islamic countries it is probably illegal to publish any writing, radio/television program, or film that does not conform to the leadership's interpretation of the Koran. It is our perception that the CCP has loosened much of its censorship, but not all. JB, can you get a book critical of the Party published in Shanghai? Just how far can a Chinese today depart from government control without risking imprisonment? Not so very long ago just corresponding with us on the internet (where censorship is problematical) could result in charges of high treason.

Censorship is ultimately a tool to enforce a single standard of belief and behavior for the entire group. Writers whose words must pass a censor must be careful not to offend, and so they tend to eventually all parrot the Party line, and very few will advance any idea that is in the least bit risky. When people are unable to fully communicate their thoughts, fears and feelings, the whole society is pretty much enslaved to the censor's concept of what is acceptable. Censorship and self-determination and freedom are incompatible.

One can argue that censorship in some circumstances is justified. During times of war and national crisis the government may clamp down on the freedom of expression to prevent critical information being transmitted to enemy intelligence. For instance, information about a nation's military size, readiness, and deployment isn't something that should be widely broadcast. In the case of China, some censorship may be justified to give the government time to address the many grave problems facing the Party and the country. The unchecked rise of consumer demand can seriously sidetrack important resources needed to improve the nation's infrastructure that is fundamental to China's future development. What is better: to improve agricultural production methods and distribution networks, or that automobiles be available to evey one who wants one? The government censor's job would be to foster one view over the other.

Even to suggest that there might be times when government censorship is not an evil in the United States is almost unthinkable. Our newspapers, magazines, radio/television and film publishers are impossible to rein-in. They publish stories that are important State secrets, and that have the potential to harm the nation. The government is an open target for criticism, and there is nothing to restrain publishers from even publishing false reports about public figures. The publisher alone decides what news to publish, and what to ignore. Treason and sedition, in this country, are almost a dead letter of the law. I know this all sounds ridiculous to folks who live in societies where public sentiment and communications are regulated, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

Our system is founded not on what the government thinks best for the nation, but upon the idea that each individual is capable of making their own decisions in a responsible way. This has led to a nation that prizes the innovative and indulges failure as a means of discovering what works best. We are, because of our openness, constantly on the move both in the material world and in the world of ideas. Individuals seeking their own happiness and satisfaction may order their entire lives at odds with the rest of the nation, and they can do their best to convince the rest of us to adopt their ideas rather than our own.

This greatly restricts the ability of any government administration to have its own way in domestic or foreign policy. There is rarely any clear unanimity of public opinion, and the majority of today may well be the minority tomorrow. The government is constantly working to shore up support for its policies, and yet it has virtually no control over what is published in the nation.