2-Years-Post-China

It's been 2 years since I've posted on this blog. I started it in 2007 when I decided to move to China, as a way of sharing my adventures. When I got there though, I found blogs are blocked in China, so I went through a proxy and did it that way. I had to be extremely careful with what I wrote and said though, as the Chinese have 1.6 million people employed to monitor the internet. It's said that they have 4 million at their disposal to bombard and crash a site that says anything the government disagrees with. Things as simple as googling 'Opium' can red-flag you. I found out the hard way with a post I did that mentioned the Opium Wars. Within an hour my blog was blocked to even me, and I couldn't log into my email. Friends assured me that this was no coincidence, and it took five days before I was back on. I found the 72 emails in my inbox from the past days had been marked 'read', even though I had never seen them before. Big Brother was watching, and had definitely made his presence known.

I have a lot of stories like this that I couldn't share while in Shanghai. I ended up having to leave overnight over bogus charges that would've sent me to prison for years... All this stuff is detailed in my book forth-coming book 'Diary of a Shanghai Showgirl'. http://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/authors/amelia-kallman It feels really good to finally be able to speak about things. Once Chinatown was open I had to be especially careful not to offend, since as a foreign (successful) company, the authorities had a constant eye on all our actions. And that's one of the reasons I stopped blogging when I did... but more on that later.

I have to say- there is still a part of me that feels fear writing this here now. Even though it has been 2-years, and I'm not in China anymore, that installed fear of saying the wrong thing has stuck with me. But I'm getting over it. It's kind of liberating to openly speak the truth. I feel strongly that it's an important thing to do, because everything that comes out of China is censored. Even my friends who work in journalism have to be careful what they say for fear that they may literally 'disappear' or that their family will be deported. These things almost never get reported, but as China is playing a bigger role in this global economy and society, I think it's about time these things are heard.