I had a similar problem with Typepad after trying to view Letters from China earlier this morning.

It’s not just my browser’s cache, either, by the way. I verified this by getting Nanny to kill the site on one browser and then immediately trying the same site on another browser - no luck, for about a minute. It’s definitely Nanny’s automated timed punishment function.

China can be so TMD 土!

Tags GFW, Internet Censorship, Censorship, China

“Ayh? You can use chopsticks!!! Now you are half Chinese.” How many times do I have to hear this line? 我真受不了！

Pizza Hut is the place in China to eat with a knife and fork. So, how exactly does that 20 year-old student who just complemented me on being half Chinese for my ability–a westerner, no less–to use chopsticks fair with western eating utensils?

1. Fork: stab pizza.
2. Knife: slice oversized chunk.
3. Fork: hold up non-bite-sized chunk at 180 degree angle to table, cheese face down.
4. Mouth: work around edges of pizza.
5. Repeat.

What do I want to say to her? “It’s not a 串 for crying out loud, it’s a fork! You’re supposed to use it for bite-sized bits, not eat off it like a stick.”

What do I actually say? Nothing. And even if I did lie and say something like, “I am impressed how good you are with a knife and fork,” she’d probably say something “modest” along the lines of, “I’m not special, everyone can use a knife and fork.”

And lest I be accused of being an ignorant, arrogant, racist jerk who has “problems“, I’d just like to point out that it was my wife, a mainland Chinese girl, who encouraged me to write this on my blog.

Tags China, Chopsticks, Fork and Knife, Pizza Hut

Some observations:

0. Apples to Apples: Both Blogsome and WP.com are running WordPressμ. μ, or mu, stands for multi-user.

1. Customizability: Blogsome offers the ability to edit the index.html file. Blogsome also claims you can add plugins, “To install a plugin you generally just need to put the plugin file into your wp-content/plugins directory”. However, I suspect this is a bit dubious, as I have not yet figured out how to access the wp-content/plugins directory. Anyway, WP.com does not offer either of these features. For a savvy user with the required knowledge and a desire to tweak, Blogsome may be a more attractive choice.

2. Import and Export: WP.com offers importing and exporting of entire blogs; Blogsome does not. Blogsome does, however, offer importing of blogrolls, as does WP.com.

3. Themes: While WP.com offers more themes, 39:27 at the time of writing, Blogsome offers many themes WP.com does not, such as Darkfire, extreme2 and Human Condition. Unfortunately, I could not get Darkfire to tie some links to images in my posts, though I tried a variety of tricks and browsers. Using other themes I found this was not a problem, so the problem most likely lies in Darkfire. Too bad, I liked Darkfire.

4. Blogroll Categories: In WP.com, when you choose a category for a specific link in the blogroll the link shows up under that category in the blogroll on the blog, easy-peasy. In Blogsome, it is not quite so straightforward. A trip to the support forums yielded a few tips and tricks:

Question: I was wondering about whether the categories in the blogroll section could be displayed in the blog itself. What I mean is something like this:
Friend’s Blogs
John
Fabian
Jamine
Richard
Interesting Blogs
Blog1
Blog2
Blog3

Answer: Try this code:
<h2>Links:<h2>
<ul>
{get_links_list category='-1' before='' after='' between='' show_images='0' orderby='_id' show_description='-1' show_rating='0' limit='-1' show_updated='-1'}
<ul>

Not quite as straightforward as WP.com’s solution, though if you want to hack it it does offer more flexibility.

5. Managing Links: An advantage of Blogsome over WP.com is that it allows users to assign a set of links to a category. In WP.com this must be done one link at a time, though you can work around that in WP.com by exporting your links as an OPML, username.wordpress.com/wp-links-opml.php, editing that file and then reimporting. The same trick works in Blogsome too, username.blogsome.com/wp-links-opml.php.

6. Sidebar: WP.com offers a simple way of creating and editing sidebar widgets with a GUI under Presentation > Sidebar Widgets. It seems that the only way to do this in Blogsome is via editing the index.html file, which again is more powerful in the end, but requires quite a bit more technical knowledge and time.

7. Saving and Publishing: When I click the Save, Save and Continue Editing or Publish button in WP.com, WP goes ahead and does what it is told and then reloads to the appropriate page. When I do the same in Blogsome it saves the changes I made, but then just spins forever without reloading. I have only been using Blogsome for three days though, so this could just be a temporary problem with their servers. Alternatively, this may be an issue with the web in China, but I find it happens even when using a proxy.

8. Tracking: If there is a tracking feature built into Blogsome I have yet to find it, though I am sure one could add a third-party tracker via editing the index.html file. WP.com offers built-in tracking of both page views and RSS subscriptions.

Simply put, Blogsome is neither as easy to use nor as robust as WP.com. A lot of the time I feel like it’s working against me more than with me. As a Mac user, this is not the philosophy I subscribe to.

In conclusion, Blogsome’s main strength over WP.com, aside from being accessible in China without using a proxy (for how much longer?), is that it is more customizable, offering the ability to add plugins and edit the index.html file. Simultaneously, the inability to do this in WP.com is perhaps WP.com’s greatest weakness, although WP.com disables these options for security reasons, which could also be seen as a strength.

Tags Blogsome, WordPress.com, WordPress, Review, Blogging

Tags Apple, Mac, iBook G4, RAM, OWC

Softdrinks aren’t very thirst quenching, in fact, but when you first open that carbonated can and hear that pleasing little implosion of air and drink that first cool tingly mouthful down they can be quite addicting.

I remember my first time in China, I must have drank more Coke than water. This wasn’t because I like Coke all that much, but rather because it was always offered to us at meals. Needless to say, I assumed that Chinese were crazy about Coke after that first short trip I took to China.

It wasn’t until coming back to live in China that I realized that most Chinese don’t drink softdrinks very often, though many Chinese, especially young Chinese, do drink softdrinks from time to time, especially if out to eat at McDonald’s/KFC (surpise, surprise).

Well, it didn’t take a PhD in astrophysics for me to realize that my Chinese hosts from that first trip must have thought that Americans drink Coca~Cola three meals a day.

Last summer I had the opportunity to briefly accompany a group of American college students who were on a one month trip to China. We were on our way to Wuzhen from Hangzhou and were stocking up on drinking water for the trip. Their Chinese host selected the Coca~Cola brand of spring water. Seeing this, I mentioned to her that many of the students had mentioned to me how much they liked the local Wahaha drinking water. She said to me, "Oh, I thought they would like this one better because it is from Coca~Cola. Thanks for letting me know."

Yep. We Americans love our Coke. We love it so much we even need Coke brand bottled water. Actually, sarcasm aside, many Americans I know do, in fact, drink way too many softdrinks. Still, I’m willing to bet most foreign tourists to China are willing to take the plunge and try something local, like Wahaha (which is actually owned by the French company Groupe Danone, of Evian fame).

Tags China, Softdrinks, Intercultural Communication