you'll notice, dear readers, that this last post is actually being posted up after i've returned to the U.S. after a horribly uncomfortable 25 hr travel day (read the New Yorker's article this week on My Airline").
so, the story?
yesterday, i tried to finish this glorious shanghai traveblogue (yuck, did i just write that?) with a wrap up of my highlights, including the best 20 yuan i've spent all week, on the Chinese Propaganda Poster Museum. Nestled in the basement of a random apartment building, this place was recommended to me by James Fallows and was a rare collection of original propaganda posters used by the Communist Party beginning from its rise, the Cold War, the Cultural Revolution, and thru the fall of the curtain. Amazing drawings of Mao smiling as the sunrise over a mass of people, posters urging the people to unite with the Latin and African struggles, etc., as well as eerie posters encouraging young reds to work in the fields with fervor, make steel, and to turn in intellectuals, "rightists". Scary stuff.
so i'm kinda over my paranoia-- after i complained about not getting emails (along with the other production crew people staying at the same hotel) and after my post joking about being imprisoned by the authorities in some Chinese prison got mysteriously erased on my friend Abbie's blog (see sidebar: "Dating the Law"), my emails began pouring in, and my blogs went up without a hitch. the PRC was a-ok. Yes, occasionally yahoo was down; facebook and myspace was often down, then back up with no apparent reason. So i was feeling confident that it was my paranoia getting the best of me, and just as i press "publish" to blog about the scariness of these posters and all my other genius commentary on the Cultural Revolution - ping!
"www.blogger.com is not responding. please check the address."
Ah well. I guess all 3 people reading this blog might cause some kind of democratic, falun gong-type, religious, cult-like uprising.
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