So, life behind the wall, my dear readers in lands of unfettered speech, is incongruous.

A few days ago, I discovered I could no longer look at my own blog (I like to check that it is showing the most recent photos, and catch typos), or anything else with ‘blogspot’ in the url. Seems this is a widely recognized phenomenon, and it has happened before.

On the other hand, there are reports that a month ago you could get to en.wikipedia.org from Beijing internet. The tagline ‘China’s Net wall falling?‘ seems to have been a little over-hopeful, though.

And, while you can’t easily read what others are writing on blogspot (there are ways around, in most cases), you can still access blogger.com, which is the portal for writing posts.

What’s the message from the powers that be here?

You can talk as much as you want, but no one is listening.

It seems that one of the overarching strategies is to prevent collaborative thought by possible dissenters, though it’s fine to use mass communications — text messages, inflammatory opinion pieces in newspapers, online bulletin boards — to incite the occasional anti-Western riot to let off steam amongst the common masses. But the impression I have (admittedly derived from my oh-so-brief, shallow toe-dip into the country) is that those mob actions don’t happen from independent thoughts of the participants, but from seeds carefully planted and tended by somewhere in the government (though I have no good impression of where in the government). And when they feel the movement has grown enough, before it flowers and spreads seeds which might hybridize into something they didn’t intend, they nip it, and stomp it, and life continues as before, until the next brief incident.

I’m curious about the thought from one of the above links that this has something to do with the Olympics. Close down the factories, prevent pollution of the air. Close down the blogs, prevent pollution of the mind.

On the topic of a different country, I saw a note today about a review of a new dystopian novel set in modern Russia. I still read the occasional bit and piece about things there, though at the moment I’m trying to catch up and figure out what’s up with China (if possible!). Today I’ve been continuing to read Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones, and he mentions a bunch of blond, Indo-European mummies found in the Xinjiang province (out in the west, where Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon‘s desert scenes were filmed, and were the Uighur people are), which made me think of the Scythians, and the question that one of my fellow students explored while we were studying in Russia.

Russia is in a fairly unique geographic position, straddling both Europe and Asia (I suppose you could say Turkey is as well), and my friend Liz focused her independent project on exploring the idea of whether Russia was European or Asian. She had some interesting responses. In St. Petersburg, most felt they were quite European, barring the occasional person originally from Central Asia. In Irkutsk, in central Siberia, I think the question was more murky. She didn’t stick around in Irkutsk too long to investigate, she went back to Moscow and met with Alexander Dugin (the sort of political figure that I would simply call ‘curious,’ if I didn’t suspect he may pull some actual weight), the leader of the Eurasian movement, which hopes to restore the Russian Empire in its great breadth.

In Irkutsk, though, Asia was awfully close, in ways that I’m realizing more, from my Beijing perspective. First, culinarily — on both of my trips in the Russian east, I’ve had shrimp crisps, which are plentifully available here in China. Ditto for pelmeni, which you might call wontons, or dumplings — noodly, doughy bits boiled in broth, and with a filling of some sort. As with Italian pasta, the Siberian version surely originated here. The third main Asian food that I learned to enjoy in Irkutsk is squid bits — dried, shredded, and flavored, they are a little sweet, a little salty, and sometimes quite spicy.

Perhaps the US has exported Hollywood and Coca-Cola around the world, along with Marlboros and innumerable other cultural aspects, but Asian food has also spread colonially, with and without accompanying Asians. No Russian needs to go to a Chinese restaurant for their pelmeni. There are, though, plenty of Asians in Russia, along with many other non-slavic groups. Some are more recent foreign immigrants — Chinese fall into this group — but plenty of groups from the FSU — lots of Central Asians. Plus Koreans — one of the things you can get in the markets in Russian cities is ‘Korean salad,’ which Americans have learned to call ‘kimchee.’

The markets can also be plenty similar, in Russia and in China. Both sport multi-floor shopping buildings crammed with stalls selling clothing, electronics, and other consumer goods of questionable origin. In Irkutsk, my sisters recommended avoiding the street-level of the market, where it escaped the building and sprawled through narrow alleyways — that was where the thieves were.

Last weekend we went to the Russian district of Beijing, hoping for a good meal of Russian food. I want blini. I’ve been wanting blini since before I left Seattle, but never got around to making my own. Unfortunately, the Russian district, as we found it, featured pedicab drivers who call out in Russian поехали, and машина, instead of Hello! to get you to turn your head if you speak English. There was a long line of little shops selling fur coats, each named with a feminine Russian name — Anna, Svetlana, Natasha, Sonia, Masha — and promising high quality. We ended up eating at Uighur restaurant instead.

Blond mummies. Hmm. According to Hessler, they were very interesting, and subject of a couple Western documentaries and magazine articles in publications such as National Geographic before the government here decided they were no longer accessible to foreign media. Why? Again, from Hessler (because I don’t know enough the come up with these theories myself) because of the official emphasis on one united China, forever and ever, through history. Civilization started in Central China, and spread outward, to all the Chinese people. Blond mummies don’t fit the story. But, apparently Uighurs in Xinjiang occasionally turn out blond, for no discernible reason.