It’s been a while since I’ve been blogging, mainly since my schedule for the rest of my stay in Asia has been quite tight. But after a visiting an exhibition of Ai Weiwei 艾未未 in Roppongi 六本木 this week which left me with conflicting feelings, I figured I should give some thoughts on what I have seen.

A little background knowledge first: Ai Weiwei is a famous contemporary Chinese artist with an interesting past. He grew up in Beijing and Xinjiang and lived in New York for more than a decade. In the West he is best known for his collaboration in the design of the famous ‘Bird’s Nest’, one of the stadiums for last year’s Beijing Olympics. Not always uncritical of the Chinese government he certainly had his share of trouble. Only this year his blog was shut down when he tried to publish material relating to an investigation into the number of students who died during the 2008 Sichuan earthquakes.

I have to admit that I only heard his name once in a while, but largely ingored him so far. Yet, perhaps owing to his huge reputation, even I occasionally stumbled across his works and, although much of modern Chinese art is said to be overvalued and superficial, I liked what I saw. Now I am the last person who would qualify as a critic of art, but being a more-or-less average guy who has some knowledge of East Asian history and speaks Chinese reasonably well, I think I could be a good average measure.

I only stumbled across his exhibition by chance while paying a visit to the Chinese embassy in Roppongi, running into a huge billboard at the exit of Roppongi Station on the Hibiya Line. I didn’t follow the Chinese art scene much, but I went to my share of galleries and art centres while living in China, so I figured this could be a good opportunity to check out the much-talked-about artist. I went to see the exhibition the following week. It was held in a rather fancy location: in the Mori Art Museum 森美術館, located on the 53th floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower 六本木ヒルズ森タワー. Students get in for 1,000 Yen, which includes free admission to the observation platform. Quite a strange way to get yourself in the mood for an exhibition, but not necessarily a bad one.

As good a location as Roppongi may seem to be, at least for me it is the least attractive part of Tokyo — particularly the central parts along the main street and Roppongi Hills feel like anything but Japan. At daytime the area is full of foreign Yuppies, everything from restaurants to clothes stores is incredibly expensive and, simply put, the place gives off bad vibes. At night Roppongi turns into a little Pattaya. There are night clubs catering especially to foreign men and Japanese women, host clubs and plenty of massage parlours. Violence, dirt, human trash. That and the fact that there was no Chinese throughout the whole exhibition made me wonder what this was all about when I entered the first room.

Nevertheless, I found that the exhibition managed to get off on a good start. Items were placed in an enormous white room with lots of natural light. Everything was kept very simplistic, reduced to its basics, which I found very appealing. There was plenty of space between the objects, leaving enough room to contemplate them without being distracted by anything around you. Photographing was allowed, too, which I liked. Art is something liberal, so it should be treated that way. Citations of Ai Weiwei were dotted sporadically along the white walls and short explanations next to each object contained useful information on each piece without overwhelming casual visitors like me. Sometimes they would reveal small surprises — for example, by telling you that the big cube you are looking at is actually made of compressed tea leaves.

But after a while things got somewhat trivial, or even banal. Although Ai Weiwei certainly has an aptitude for presenting art in a very light, accessible way, his next pieces were disappointing. After a tea cube came a model of a house … again made of tea. Further on, there was a room where a movie was shown of a day when Ai Weiwei was driving through Beijing on Chang’an Avenue 长安街, stopping every 50 meters to record a one minute video. The concept certainly had potential, but was executed poorly. The stops were too close to one another, ‘one minute’ was a rather rough guess (scenes turned out to be around two to three minutes long) and all in all it simply wasn’t very interesting, since the camera was stubbornly pointed in the same direction all the time, sometimes recording a new, unoccupied apartment block for two to three minutes where not a soul moved. The result was a film which was hours long — and who, of even the most serious art fans, is going to watch more than half an hour of this?

Another odd piece was a snake made of school bags. I wasn’t sure what to make of it (snakes evoke different meanings in different cultures), so I read the explanation and found out that it was supposed to be a memorial to the school children who died in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake in Wenchuan 汶川. While the earthquake was a big tragedy, I didn’t particularly like seeing this in an art exhibition. It made me think of all the media attention the earthquake and the aftermath have received, so it was a little like watching the evening news on TV, not like walking an art gallery. I am not saying that art shouldn’t reflect upon real life happenings, but I found that this piece didn’t fit here. Think of it like going to a gallery of modern art and finding a huge memorial dedicated to soldiers fallen in World War II. After a house made of tea, you would most likely feel upset in some way, however creatively presented the piece would be.

In the next room things picked up a notch. Ai presented pieces with fascinating background stories relating to his childhood in Xinjiang. But then you turn around only to see a big piece of wood in the shape of China and you can’t help but think “Come on, try harder, Ai Weiwei!” I was starting to get annoyed by the occasional patriotism in his works, but thankfully this feeling didn’t last long as I turned towards more interesting objects, such as an old table cut in half and propped up against the wall, which was refreshing after so many pieces loaden with context and political connotations.

Nevertheless, what I had seen up to this point was still rather mediocre and lacked innovation. But then, I thought, does art necessarily have to be creative, profound, deep? Does it have to entertain us and suit our tastes and values? Can’t art just exist for itself? I can’t say that I liked everything in the exhibition, but on the other hand I have rarely given so much thought on what I have seen at an art gallery before. Still feeling confused I continued reading Ai’s explanations, only to find out that many of his works are made of Chinese antiques. In this way, I found a series of photos quite disturbing which portrayed the artist dropping an antique vase, thousands of years old. In a quote on the wall, Ai said he does this to destroy the values of authority and tradition, represented by these objects, and to question their meaning. Hell, I understand that he has a certain artistic intention and tries to create a new piece of art by doing this, but in the end he still destroyed a vase and with it thousands of years of cultural tradition!

Only after a while did I really understand what Ai tries to convey. I went over his explanations again a few more times, but it wasn’t until I came back home and started reading more about his life and his past that I came to understand him. Although art shouldn’t need any explanations, this background information was essential. The Sichuan earthquake, for example, is of special imporance to him as it relates to an quarrel with the Chinese authorities who would rather not let people draw conclusions about the corruption involved in poorly constructed school buildings. The reason Ai ‘abuses’ Chinese antiques in the way he does is because he tries to discover new meaning by dismantling and transforming cultural objects. This becomes more clear after looking at the objects featured towards the end of his exhibtion. I especially liked two pieces: a small Tang Dynasty 唐朝 statue in a bottle of Absolut Vodka and a pottery jar with a Coca Cola logo painted on. As Ai points out himself, these objects symbolize changes in tastes, aesthetics and human desires, the contradictions between traditional crafts and mass-produced objects, the past and the present, the East and the West.

The last piece in his exhibition was an enormous structure assembled of parts leftover from previous antiques. The explanation was somewhat vague, but the central point was something like ‘if you look at the structure from above, it resembles the shape of China’.

I can’t help but look at Ai Weiwei and get the feeling that I am looking at an honest, nice and creative person. Yet I also feel that he needs to free himself from his traditional ways of thinking in order to create something truly exceptional. ‘According to what?’ is something I tended to ask myself quite a few times during his exhibition.

> Mori Mueum: Ai Weiwei – According to what?

Chinese Internet Censorship is yet another very mysterious aspect of everyday life in China. When first coming here, my primary concern was how to get round the censorship and the so-called “Great Firewall of China“, sometimes referred to by its Chinese name — the “Golden Shield” 金盾工程. But in fact, censorship is not the primay problem when living here — it’s the general Internet and information infrastructure that need improvement.

Observations

Chinese censorship of the Internet is not as strict as one might imagine. In fact the English version of Wikipedia, Blogger and even the website of the German magazine “Der Spiegel” are free to access. The problem is just that almost all foreign websites take way too long to load. It’s not impossible to access them, but it takes around three to five minutes for one single webpage to load. The Chinese Internet, on the other hand, is really fast. Youku and Baidu open up right away, whereas Western websites often timeout or are not loaded at all.

Especially blogs are suffering a hard fate. Most foreign blog hosting services are inaccessible from Mainland China, even DianMo — the official magazine of the Department for China Studies at the University of Leipzig. Only blogs hosted on Blogspot seem to have been exempted. Another way to make your content available to a Chinese audience is by moving it to an unblocked domain, e.g. by uploading it to your own webspace — just like the blog you’re reading here. Unless you’ve done something to make the Daguan (大官, n. dàguān – high official) angry, this is the most reliable way to keep your website accessible.

All this is no coincidence. Although restrictions on Internet access seem to loosen gradually over time, there is a reason that China is on the list of the “Enemies of the Internet“. This is, however, not the whole picture. The Great Firewall is not only a political construct, but also a result of poor infrastructure with lots of people usually sharing just one connection. It’s rather a cultural wall than a wall of censorship. People living here either look for ways to get around the problem or ignore it. Gradually, Youku replaces Youtube, Baidu Baike replaces Wikipedia. Using Skype is rarely possible.

Censorship is not like a function or an equation with a fixed number of variables. It depends on time, location, Internet service provider and even political circumstances – i.e., it was stricter during the Olympic Games. It’s fluid, multilayered, diverse. It depends on the province you live in, the county or city and sometimes even the part of the city. Different methods of filtering are applied, e.g. IP blocking, DNS filtering, packet filtering and connection resets. Circumvention of the firewall isn’t rocket engineering, but it’s not an everyday task either, and a nuisance to say the least.

It should be noted, though, that almost all Western countries also censor online content to a certain degree. Especially Germany and France tend to censor a lot of Nazi content. Google removes webpages from its index that violate a certain country’s laws — which includes intellectual property laws. Internet censorship is certainly a broad topic. I understand that these are all issues of concern, and I understand that steps need to be taken in certain cases, e.g. child ponography. But in general, no government has the right to decide which information is available to an individual.

Bypass Internet Censorship

The easier ways to bypass online censorship include switching locations, e.g. going to an Internet café and checking if their connection is a little faster at least. When downloading, try to select the closest mirror. This can improve the download speed a lot — e.g. I got 300kb/s instead of the usual 1kb/s when downloading the latest Linux Knoppix distribution from an FTP server close to me. If Skype doesn’t work, asking your friends to call from abroad is a viable alternative (for the Germans: check out billiger-telefonieren.de ) as call rates to China are usually relatively low. Skype world subscriptions include free calls to landlines AND mobile phones in China. Other than that, IP phone cards come in handy — but have a look first at my post about China Mobile’s various IP calling services.

People using Skype will definitely have a hard time in China. Many times the upstream is too slow for people to hear you, so you will end up replying to other people by chat while they are talking to you over the microphone. It’s also not possible to access the official Skype website from China. Users are being redirected to the website of a Chinese Skype version, the so-called “TOM version“. Take that into account when subscribing to a Skype package before boarding the plane.

Another trick to speed up surfing is using applications that establish more than one connection to a server. This technique was widely used in Western countries when people were still using dial-up or when servers responded slowly. The Fasterfox plugin for Firefox might help here. I personally favour a really old version of “Download Accelerator” when downloading MP3 files. Also, switching to Gmail, more widely known as Google Mail, should be considered. Apart from Gmail being the best free E-mail provider for the time being, it’s about the only Western E-mail service that works relatively fast and stable. Uploading attachments to E-mails works remarkably fast. The same is true for downloading attachments. So if you have friends abroad who can send you the latest Metallica album by E-mail, Gmail is your choice.

Proxy Servers

Proxy servers are the first thing people think of when talking about Internet censorship. A few of them work quite well. However, many proxies get blocked very fast, free proxy servers are much too slow and certain filtering techniques can still keep you from viewing the websites you want to see. The most reliable way I know of is to google for “PHProxy” or “CGI Proxy”, which are server scripts based on PHP and CGI that just pass on the traffic between you and the destination. Don’t forget to encrypt the address or otherwise the Chinese URL filters will kick in.

Commercial proxy servers are also commonly used by local Chinese to speed up their own Internet access (mostly to domestic websites though) and can be rented for a monthly fee. Futhermore, to get round the annoying URL filter, try using escaped characters in your URLs.

Domain Name Server (DNS)

The DNS server is the computer that translates the URLs you’re typing into network addresses, e.g. “www.google.com” becomes 64.233.189.147 — copy that number in your browser’s address bar to see what happens when you call it up this way. Whether you are using your university’s or your ISP’s DNS filter, you’re almost certainly subject to some kind of censorship.

Something that could help here is using a public DNS server, like OpenDNS. To change your DNS servern in Windows XP, open the “Control Panel” –> “Network Connections”, double-click the connection you’re using for browsing and select “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” and change the DNS servers according to the information below:

“Preferred DNS server address” for OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222
“Alternate DNS server address” for OpenDNS: 208.67.220.220

A detailed tutorial is available on OpenDNS’ website.

Virtual Private Network (VPN)

The most reliable, fastest and most widely used method is that of VPN connections. Setting up a VPN connection usually requires paying for a VPN-capable server abroad, e.g. Relakks in the UK (5 Euros/month). Fortunately, most universities provide their student’s with a free VPN connection in order to access services only available from within the university’s own network, e.g. E-books, access to the university library’s website and certain other databases. This doesn’t only make your Internet connection a lot faster but also bypasses the censorship — you will be subject to the censorship of the country where your VPN server is located, though

Most universities in Germany use the Cisco VPN client, available from Cisco’s website after registration. Although being a robust piece of software, its installation procedure drove me to the edge of insanity quite a few times. I suggest creating a System Restore Point (“Start” –> “Programmes” –> “Accessories” –> “System Tools” –> “System Restore”) before taking any steps.

Installing the client is rather easy. Make sure you run the installation from an administrator account. That type of application usually doesn’t like the “Run as …” command too much. Also, the Cisco client doesn’t go very well together with Agnitum’s Outpost firewall or any other type of firewall. Since it’s pretty much suicide not using any type of software firewall when on a local network (LAN) in China, fixing this problem is absolutely mandatory. After installing the client, reboot your system, then stop the Cisco VPN Service temporarily (“Start” –> “Run” –> ’services.msc’) and go to “C:\WINDOWS\System32″ and remove “vsdata.dll” and “vsdatant.sys” from the directory. Now reboot again.

When you have the client installed on your system you should import a connection profile or enter the server addresses manually. Several online message boards also recommend setting up the following outpost rules to avoid VPN server packets dropping:

Rule 1
Policy: Allow
Protocol: TCP
Direction: Outgoing
Remote Hosts: (your VPN host address)
Remote Ports: (your VPN port number)

Rule 2
Policy: Allow
Protocol: UDP
Direction: Incoming
Remote Hosts: 127.0.0.1
Local Ports: 62500-62600

Rule 3
Policy: Allow
Protocol: UDP
Remote Hosts: (your VPN host address)
Local Ports: 500, 4500

The installation procedure is furthermore described in detail at the following website: http://www.uni-leipzig.de/urz/vpn/. The University of Leipzig also offers a web interface for accessing its VPN service at https://webvpn.uni-leipzig.de/. This saves you the trouble of installing the Cisco client and is certainly enough if you only want to browse a few slow/blocked webpages occasionally, although it times out rather quickly and is a bit bitchy sometimes (i.e. you sometimes get disconnected for apparently no reason).

This solution is certainly the best of those presented here, but it’s certainly not the holy grail. Things like Skype work like a charm now, but MSN (a.k.a. Windows Live Messenger) can’t find it’s host server anymore — and if it does it drops the connection rather frequently. Other people are experiencing problems with ICQ or other web services.

TOR and JAP

Two more methods for those unwilling to pay for a VPN connection are TOR (“The Onion Router”) and JAP (“Java Anon Proxy”), both of which can be used with a very handy Firefox plugin or right from this website here: http://www.tor-proxy.net/.

Be careful when sending sensitive data, such as your E-mail passwords, over the network, though, as TOR is basically a peer-to-peer network which is based upon passing information from one computer running TOR to another. This way you will reach an unaccessible website, but it has been proven that information sent over the network can be retrieved by experienced users.

Other Programmes

There are a number of other programms such as Psiphon or the “Anti-Censorship Tools Bundle” of the “Global Internet Freedom Consortium“, which consists of a number of programmes, namely UltraSurf, FreeGate, GTunnel, FirePhoenix and GPass, that reportedly enable users to bypass the Chinese Internet censorship. I haven’t tried these myself, can’t say what their weaknesses are and if they actually work. I just wanted to include them here for the sake of completeness.

Useful Websites

Is China really the enemy of the Internet? This is not exactly true. A large part of the so-called censorship is, in my opinion, due to poor infrastructure. And people who have experienced life in China know very well that there is a thriving Internet culture in this county, surrounding the Chinese chat network QQ, various movie websites like Youku or Tudou and a prospering Chinese blogger scene. About everything is done online in China. The following is a collection of websites useful for life in China:

Whenever you travel to a foreign country, exploring the nightlife of a city is usually one of the most vital parts of getting to know and understand a place. After having been to Shanghai for about three weeks now, we still have to learn a lot about the city’s nightlife. Things just work differently over here. But we definitively figured that out: going out here is way more expensive than at home — which doesn’t seem to bother Shanghai’s rich and aspiring young generation.

Our first destination on Friday was Muse, one of the most trendy clubs in Shanghai at the moment — trendy and expensive. It wasn’t necessary to pay cover to get in, but it was also not allowed to sit down anywhere unless you booked a table for 3.000 RMB/night (roughly 300 EUR at the moment). Since the crowd didn’t give us the impression to be in party mood, we decided to go to another club. Relying on a friend’s suggestion and a fairly good review on SmartShanghai.com, we decided to give Babyface a try, another well-known club on Huai Hai Road 淮海路 said to be popular with the locals.

Now I know that local Shanghainese are neither the most open nor the most friendly sort of people, but what happened next was quite surprising to say the least. We asked the bouncer if the 50 RMB cover charge included a drink. They didn’t bother replying until we had asked three times. The place didn’t give us a bad impression at first. Not too upscale, mainstream club music and lots of local people who wanted to have a good time. Trying to order a drink made us realize what this place was really all about.

Drinks couldn’t be ordered at the bar directly. Instead, we had to ask waiters wearing red shirts to show us the drink list and get us something. It is certainly not surprising to encounter an arrogant attitude when you’re talking to barkeepers or waiters — nightlife in big cities is all about money and status. But it was indeed surprising that, after having asked for a beer, the waiter gave us a rude “Mei you!” 没有！ (i.e. “we don’t have beer”), snatched the drink list out of our hands and left. Wondering what was going on, we asked four or five other waiters, trying to order random stuff, in case they had indeed run out of beer Mei you! No luck.

We sensed that something was going on. Me and a Japanese friend went to the other dancefloor to see if we could organize a drink there. Beautiful people in expensive clothes were partying in the VIP area next to the dancefloor, the waiters didn’t pay any attention to us and some girl threw up right in front of us. Suddenly a waiter in a green shirt asked what we wanted. My friend asked for two beers, the waiter promised to get us some, went to the other side of the bar (where we could still clearly see him) and stayed there, doing nothing.

We stopped one of the waiters wearing red shirts. We asked for drinks. Seeing that we’re foreigners, he opened the menu and pointed at the imported champagne for roughly 1.000 RMB a bottle. He didn’t even look at us, he ignored us. We flipped over to the page with less expensive drinks and ordered a beer. Mei you! Okay then, a Cuba Libre please. Mei you! He tried to snatch his menu, but my friend was holding it firmly in his hand. He wasn’t going to let go.

I asked the waiter “What do you have?”, he pretended not to have understood what I was saying. He looked over his shoulder and checked for the security guys. There were two about three meters behind him. I asked again “What do you have?”. He replied with only one word. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I noticed that he was looking at me now. Seeing the hatred in his eyes I realized what was going on. My friend let go of the menu and we left the place.

The next morning I checked Google for Babyface Shanghai. It didn’t take long before I found webpages where other foreigners wrote about similar experiences. The problems ranged from not being able to order drinks to being rejected at the entrance. Sometimes the bouncers deliberately start quarrels and fights with foreigners. It’s supposed to be even worse if you are ‘black’. Anti-foreign behaviour is obviously part of the management’s business concept.

It was an ironic situation. The club was packed with China’s better off youth who were drinking European alcohol, listened to American rap music and talked to their friends on Japanese and Korean mobile phones. I’m not sure if I should call this ‘racism’. I’m not sure if this is a problem limited to Shanghai or this night club. Or if it’s a general trend in China’s upper class. But the club is extremely successful and continues opening more branches all over the country. Seeing that it’s these young educated people who are obviously supporting this policy gives me an uneasy feeling.

Es wird oft vergessen, dass Leipzig, als Teil der ehemaligen DDR, nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg ursprünglich zunächst von den Amerikanern besetzt wurde. Eine Ausstellung, die sich diesem Thema widmet, findet zur Zeit in Markkleeberg im Rudolf-Hildebrand-Internat statt. Neben Fotos zeugen zahlreiche Berichte und Ausschnitte aus Tagebüchern von den Begebenheiten.

Info: Die Ausstellung gründet sich (meinem persönlichen Eindruck nach) zu einem Großteil auf Ausschnitte eines Buches von Jörgen Möller: “Die amerikanische Besetzung des Leipziger Südraumes”, ISBN 3936341079 (> Amazon.de, > Schkeuditzer Buchladen).

During my stay in Seoul, I was searching the bookstores for contemporary (South) Korean literature, when one of the sales girls handed me this book. Now, North Korea is not certainly not an easy subject to talk about — especially in East Asia where attitudes towards the country are to a large part influenced by prejudice and political propaganda. While I’m not a fan of the People’s Republic myself, I’ve been trying to get a clearer, unbiased image of the country through a lot of reading, so I can make up my own mind (especially travel reports come in handy here — see below).

I had been hearing about The Aquariums of Pyongyang before, when its author, Kang Chol-hwan, received an audience with George W. Bush in June 2005. With my trip to the DMZ planned for the next day, I thought I should get prepared and spent the night reading about Kang’s childhood in Pyongyang, his family’s background and his imprisonment in the Yodok labour camp.

His accounts of North Korea are unbelievable, fascinating and frightening all at the same time. Yet I don’t quite agree with his political attitude and there are a few parts of the story I’m not sure are completely true — e.g. when he told the story of his grandfather who was supposedly convinced to move to North Korea by a Yakuza boss. Still, Kang’s book is a captivating read and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.