Admit it. The idea of an online journal updated each day with the burning questions and angst-ridden thoughts of the average woolly-haired teenager is, quite frankly, rather silly.

The thing is, back in the day, such was the world of the web-blog, small communities of semi-socially awkward individuals desperately in search of a way to communicate via a channel that wasn't irreparably sabotaged by acne, fuzzy upper lips and total lack hand-eye coordination. The soothing cloak of anonymity meant BigBoy9 could at least make himself believe he was 21 and well-versed in the art of Chicks, and other buddies could tell everyone else about their lives, or at least they way they'd like them to be.

So then what happened? Geeks got rich. Hackers became cool. Chatting was suddenly something you did with your fingers. Web-blogs became blogs and suddenly weren't the simple domain of the teeny-bopper: journalists — you know, real life writers — were in on the act, amassing a phenomenal amount of information and regurgitating it in bite-size links, condensed in a really rather attractive little article that had form, long words and at times even correct spelling. The speed at which thousands of these purely online channels became part of our intellectual and cultural fabric shocked even those spiky-haired groovy media types whose job it was to monitor "the scene" behind their square horn-rimmed spectacles.

And somewhere, some time in the midst of this dizzying dialectic, the China blog was born. "A haven of free expression in the land of thought control," we liked to muse shrewdly, What's Mr. Red going to do about this one then?

We couldn't help but raise a skeptical eyebrow and delight in the delicious tingle down ones spine when stumbling across the mere mention of "Taiwan" or "Tibet" in the online letters from the Mainland - how brave, thought the girls, as they thought of clever things to say in reply, he won't last long, quipped the boys, who earlier that evening had been extolling the virtues of the perfect Gongbao Jiding online.

It's a curious balancing act — this constant concern for anyone who has ever attempted to maintain a blog in China and managed to keep an audience of more than a dozen for a fortnight. All — and I mean all — other fellow bloggers have linked to soporific articles in the Western press ad nauseam warning of the "cyber police" who'll come and turf you out of bed at 3am for wayward words. Even the gospel as told by the South China Morning Post delights in informing you that all your text messages are being screened by a small army of geeky snitches in some sweaty basement in Changsha. There seems to be an absolute obsession with writing about what you can't write, or not writing about what you want to write about. To me at least it seemed completely ludicrous that, by dint of the fact that I found myself in China, I wasn't able to string together a few sentences for a minute readership on questions that are obviously going to come up in the first few months of being here.

But then after a while, it wasn't just the few lost surfers who ended up tuning into the channel I called my own. Before too long I was beginning to amass a modest readership, which surprised me most of all, since I wasn't aware I was discussing anything of particular importance, or indeed, of interest. Politics back home, in China, around the world, anything vaguely groundbreaking — this was all the domain of any number of intelligent, well-written sites. Of course, at times I tried to sound a little less stupid than normal, but finishing an article without unleashing a heavy dose of snark soon became incredibly challenging — nothing too much, mind, just the proverbial smirk 'n' nudge to let you know I wasn't really taking any of this all that seriously.

What did turn up in the posts rarely had any unifying theme. Unlike many excellent China blogs out there that report, comment and analyze the latest goings-on in the world — and thank God they do, since we need to keep in the loop somehow — my blog had less lofty ideals. For want of a far more worthy subject, I would write about me — but it really could have been any young, white guy with a bit of the language at his fingertips in China. I would despair at my dear readership to discover that there was an insatiable demand as an English-speaking netizen (one word the Chinese pundit feels compelled to use at least a dozen times a day) to read about my sense of hopelessness towards gratingly cute Chinese mobile ring-tones, how silent tolerance of spitting had enriched my life and how the chuanr guy's take on Italians, hookers and Manchester United would return to me at the most inopportune moments. This was not high-brow stuff, but it turned out there was very, very little in the way of material that wasn't insufferably dull, tediously anti-China, or written by a prematurely middle-aged bearded American with a stick up his backside and a tendency to launch into uninvited crusades "educating" the community on how knowledgeable he was on all things China.

Many of my readers were people who had lived in China and were back overseas, who were keen to get the local noodle-joint's perspective of the city they still loved. Many students would drop by to commiserate with my linguistic nightmares, as well as your usual mix of expats doing their China thing. Around a year or so in, I found myself on some Chinese blogrolls — which led to an extraordinary number of bizarre emails — this was when the numbers really started to increase.

However many articles I would dedicate to the art of Sichuan peppers or summer sweating etiquette, there was always a concern that someone, somewhere would take offense to what I was saying and declare it to be unfit for the masses. Unlikely, I thought, when the closest I'm getting to discussing Taiwan is recounting 4am conversations in Yonghe Dawang over pork dumplings.

Then, one day, nothing.

'The page you requested cannot be displayed' came helpful messages from my browser.

The kuandai playing up again? After a spot of proxy fiddling and exasperated calls abroad, it appears this time my building's hamster-powered network was not to blame. The realization suddenly sinks in — I have been sprung, pants-down, attempting to corrupt the educated bored foreigner on the internet: I am a dealer in Western cyber-filth and online supplier of ill-repute content. It had to happen. I'd been locked out, closed down, hung out to dry. I had graduated to the blacklist.

Reader emails and a substantial drop in daily hits confirmed the ridiculous news. My site had literally disappeared overnight.

The site certainly never had a track record of being particularly inappropriate for a niche Mainland audience — some slack humor, perhaps, in-depth discussion of Chinese topics of alarming mundanity, certainly — politics was non-existent, and poking fun at our gracious hosts was mostly muted (but never undeserved). However, my bullishness had been punished — although I felt obliged to pull the articles on organ harvesting and my own potentially troubling thoughts on interracial relations, my guard had clearly slipped when I had been seen to attack that one sacred, unquestionable institution — the Beijing Olympics.

"Attack" in the most flimsy definition of the word, of course. My error, clearly, had been to link to an article from an online US paper which, in true sensationalizing spirit, had outlined the capital's plans to re-educate their citizens, principally by insisting on a spitting ban. I mused rather unwisely, clear up spitting and then Beijing will be the civilized city it would like to be when the world comes to stay next summer. More of those lovely red banners, please, and if you tell me enough times that I am to be a civilized capital-dweller, well, that is what I shall be, dammit. I may even queue in line on days in addition to the 11th of each month.

The post drew a few responses from those pointing out certain, shall we say, "shortcomings" of the city and its cherished residents — nothing too raw or close to the bone, of course — we all smirked intelligently and then continued with our lives.

However, those boys in the basement somewhere inside the 2nd ring road in the capital clearly had other ideas. Switch him off, they seethed, suggestions that Beijingren will be anything but the embodiment of several thousands of years of culture and civilization cannot and will not be tolerated.

And so it seemed.

Posting was light via a proxy for a few weeks until the offending article was deleted. Then suddenly, with no warning, someone flipped the switch again. Within a month, the site was back, and once again all those on the Mainland could enjoy the deliberations of one male expatriate in the most civilized of medium-tier capital cities. I was back on.

So, something to bear in mind next time you're sharing your $0.02 with a small foreign readership based here in the PRC. There may be plenty you want to share, but when you least expect it there are those lurking behind some browser or other bent on making sure your smart alack comments remain appropriately puerile for the readers at large.

-Ewan Lamont


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