A Broken Onion

I never thought my happiness and well-being would one day depend upon a small green onion.

For those of you who are still not familiar, it is an application, which will allow you to access the Internet using an IP address being bounced back and forth within the community. The project called TOR (http://www.torproject.org) was started to help people in areas of heavy network surveillance to get round the firewalls and communicate to the outside world. The network relay is constructed by volunteers who donate certain bandwith and leave their computers on just for the purpose of helping people in places like China and Iran. The icon of the software takes on a form of an onion, which quickly become a must-have household item in many Chinese homes.

Today, life in China is described and distinguished as inside and outside the Great Fire Wall. Often times for a very simple research type of question, I am forced to turn on the little green onion and climb over to the other side of the Wall. That is not at all sensitive information, but merely things like an artist showing me some images on flicker or a video on youtube.

A certain number of this vast population has become very good at climbing this GFW; and encountering a friend on the other side of the wall is also like meeting an old friend embraced in sunshine.

This morning, as I open my computer, I found a broken onion, left me in the complete darkness. Especially after the brief demonstration on Chang’An Road yesterday carried out by Aiweiwei and some artist friends from my village, I was dying to find out the follow up stories.

Being over 2500 kilometers away from Beijing, and heartbroken from the pictures I received the night before of a real attack to our village held by local mafia, I couldn’t help but burst into tears, quiet certain that the government shut down the Onion; and I could only imagine what happened to those people. After all, a demonstration with no application can easily throw you into jail.

After a reboot of the computer, my dear onion magically revived itself. I am now back into my daily life maybe not described as happily but rather willingly.

In writing down these words, I hope that all of you who live in a normal world outside the Great Fire Wall would consider becoming a relay to the TOR Project. As the government is constantly closing know IPs, which are used as bridges. You have no idea how much we depend on your willingness to help. Please refer to details on the Tor website.

http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en

Feel free also to forward this email to your friends who might be able to help.

Many Thanks,

On behalf of a large population who live on a little onion on the other side of the WALL.

Red Underwear Year

As the Chinese New Year falls on the same day as Valentine's Day, many businesses had to make a very important choice as which Holiday to honor this time. In Kunming, the choice has been very clear to everyone. A big dinner with family bombarded with fireworks is lot more traditional and patriotic than cheesy chocolate cakes with candles reads "5-2-0", which in Chinese sounds very similar to "I love you". Many guys might be saying, "Thank God, I would not have to spend Feb 14th with my girlfriend this year!" With the perfect excuse in hand, roses are even exempted this year, since all shops including flower shops are shut all day today. I literally had to steel some bread and cake out of a bakery late last night.

Learned from some hard past experiences, we decided to stock the home fridge with fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs and all other necessary alimentation, almost enough for an entire week. In reality, not all restaurants are closed during the holidays; the bigger ones actually choose to stay open, as Chinese have grown to celebrate New Year's in nice restaurants avoiding all the hassle of hosting huge group dinners at home. Even hotels are booked during this period for night entertainment such as poker games and MaJong challenges together with Karaokay on the side. Yet, to actually consume and enjoy these facilities during this time might just be a bit too much effort to my regular taste.

This New Year is the year of tiger, for those who were tigers, this new year is believed to be a year filled with difficulty and threats. In Chinese, we call it "Ben Ming Nian", to somehow tone down all these misfortunes and dangers in this coming year, we tigers are to wear red underwear from now on during the entire year until the last day of the year. My old aunts has started burning incense and praying for me in temples since few months ago. I have no idea if the red underwear would actually do anything, but somehow, disrespect this old tradition on the first day of the year seemed a little unwise, even for me.

As I walked into the first lingerie shop last night on our way back to the apartment looking the proper gears, I saw this interesting expression on my boyfriend's face as if to say, "cool! hmmmm....but did you want to surprise me for Valentine's Day or are you trying to get me to buy you something?" As I walked into the second one and then the third one, looking through only their red underwear section, the interesting expression on his face became even more interesting, silently but I can read what he wanted to say, " okay, red is nice, but I actually prefer black!" "Are you crazy, I am only buying a red underwear to save my life! You have no idea how dangerous it is going to be for me, this year of Tiger!"