Great Firewall of China

A former co-worker of mine is currently living in China in hopes of learning the language and applying the language skills in business endeavors down the road.  It just so happens that Eric is a loyal reader of this blog - that is, until the governing bodies in China decided it was time to halt this endeavor.  As he explained in an email to me yesterday:

Ok so maybe not huge news but I wanted to let you know that your blog has been officially blocked by Project Golden Shield (aka The Great Firewall of China).  I left Chinese class a little while ago and saw via my reader that you had posted a new entry on the blog, after clicking on the link in my reader I quickly found that your blogs connection has “timed out,” the classic sign that the blog has been blocked.  This is often for some kind of content that the government of China deems unseemly, so congrats, you should be proud however sadly your probably lone reader in China is now down for the count.

He even sent over a screen shot of the timed out page as a memento of the occasion (it’s kind of small here but you get the drift).

I was racking my brain trying to figure out why the site would be blocked now. Was it too much opining on the Marathon?  Maybe Golden Shield hates baby talk?  What I finally surmised is that there may have been a little confusion on my recent entry about our visit to the trendy NYC Asian fusion restaurant TAO.  Golden Shield may have confused my recap of the delectable fortune cookie dessert with the concept from Chinese philosophy loosely translated as “the way” which is used philosophically to signify the fundamental or true nature of the world.

Regardless, I’m sad to have lost my my loyal Far East reader.  Bring back http://zackmansfield.com to China!