Blocking blogs.

Suddenly life is totally different than it used to be.
The Fuso Szulc has been changed as living quarters for a room in the Hua Qiao Hotel in the very centre of Beijing, China.

Every day is incredibly busy organizing, together with the team, the project “The most beautiful people in the world”.
There is a lot of media attention for the project.
A TV-team hangs around almost constantly filming the different activities.
Daily there are interviews for newspapers and magazines including the foreign press.

It is like a big and fantastic party.
This is because the people involved are all very nice.
They are committed to the project and believe strongly in it.

China is a modern society these days.
Booming and prosperous.

But there is one thing that a visitor immediately experiences that is reminding of a major difference with the rest of the world.
It is a country controlled by a one party system.

In the hotel room is a modern television, however it is not linked to the rest of the world by satellite as in most hotels outside China.
The only channels available are from the national, government controlled television.
A satellite disk on the roof of the hotel would allow guests to see American TV-channels, the BBC Worldservice, Euronews and programs from many other countries.
This is not allowed.
A foreign non-Chinese speaking visitor is stuck in his hotel room able to see only one national Chinese TV channel in English.

The next confrontation with the one party state is the Internet connection in the hotel room.
The Hua Qiao Hotel is a modern facility and each room has high-speed Internet connection with an Ethernet cable kindly made available by the hotel.
But once the visitor gets on the Internet a weird thing is experienced.
Many websites are made impossible to visit.
Controls in the server stop the web surfer to go where he wants.

This ban on certain websites includes this blog.
In China nobody has access to it.
Fortunately a way has been found to publish texts on this blog, but it is impossible, because not allowed, to see the result.

Another option not available in China, due to Government interference, is MSN.
This messinging service, intensively used, is banned.
But fortunately SKYPE is free.
Now the text messaging is made using the SKYPE service.

These limitations on the freedom are things that are remarked immediately.
The examples in this blog are not the only ones though.
Smart fervent and loyal blog readers will realize that in performing the project “The most beautiful people in the world” in China the limitations imposed by a one party state are also experienced.
But the readers will also understand that at this stage nothing can be revealed about it.

Meanwhile it is snowing in Beijing.