:: a special thanks to Danwei for helping me learn that this image is actually an Ai Weiwei photograph. I honestly had no idea. For the longest time I thought it was just a Zuo Xiao Zu Zhuo (左小祖咒) album cover, which, incidentally, hung framed on the the wall of my Beijing apartment from 2003 to 2006. Does anyone know where I can find more information about this photo? // AjS
:: I blame Ai Weiwei, of course. In addition to the ongoing inaccessibility of Blogspot.com and Youtube.com, Twitter.com and Flickr.com now both appear to have been blocked in mainland China. At the time of writing, Twitter was still (sorta) accessible via desktop clients such as Tweetdeck, Twirl, etc., but I think that was because the API URL hadn’t been fully harmonized yet. That being said, these clients were definitely not acting normal – very spotty and unstable. The desktop clients will likely be rendered useless soon enough if this is a real blockage and not just a massive coincidental glitch in the Chinese Internet – highly unlikely. None of the major local Chinese microblogging platforms have been affected: Fanfou.com, Jiwai.de, Zuosa.com, etc., but that’s probably because of internal content monitoring systems that have long been in place. If you are in China, please feel free to comment below about accessibility to these sites (and others) in your locales. Thanks. // AjS
Also, as always, Danwei.org is following this closely – head over there in case I have missed anything.
[UPDATE 1: Microsoft properties Live.com and Bing.com are also inaccessible in China. MSN instant messenger to follow?]
[UPDATE 2: It appears Twitter is not working via desktop clients, rendering it completely blocked.]
[UPDATE 3: It appears Hotmail.com is also inaccessible. That makes three major Microsoft property down in China.]
[UPDATE 4: It may just be cached files in my browser or something, but it appears 56minus1 is displaying Flickr-embedded images – the site wasn't doing that earlier. Can anyone else in China confirm this? The Flickr domain itself is still inaccessible.]
[UPDATE 5: Chinese microblog service Fanfou.com and P2P download service VeryCD.com will be performing "technical maintenance" until June 6th. H/T Jason Zhan Jia]
[UPDATE 6: Yawn.... Can we move on?]
:: the Chinese government’s pet dissident and well-known conceptual artist / designer / all-around decent guy Ai Weiwei (艾未未) is now on and Fanfou (a China-market Twitter clone), and has just launched a new blog. In order to verify his identity to the netizen community, Ai Weiwei posted the below semi-nude / grotesque photographs of himself. Hmm…I’m still not convinced. Mr. Ai’s grand entrance into the China Twitter-sphere is likely a tipping point: Twitter will be blocked in China soon enough. // AjS
:: a 0300TV interview with Chinese communist party pet dissident and well-known conceptual artist / designer Ai Weiwei (艾未未). Recording in Beijing in May of 2008. // AjS
