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Now, if we can consider Google a “smart horse”, and why wouldn’t we, then according to Zhao Qi Zheng, Google will be galloping freely (again) in China before too long. Zhao, a spokesman for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, recently inverted the famous Chinese proverb (WSJ): ‘a good horse will never return to graze on grass it has already passed by’, by noting: “If there is good grass, why give up? A good horse wants to eat good grass. So the horse that returns is a smart horse.” Indeed.
No matter the validity or not of such an analogy, this may be a good moment to introduce the Google founder Sergey Brin’s recent on stage interview at the 2010 TED Talks. An interesting interview that gave an insight into the issues that Google have been wrestling with and which more importantly, also offered a small insight into the mind of one of the key figures affected by the wild machinations that are going on beneath keyboards across China and beyond.
The word that sprung to my mind while watching this guy for the first time was impressive. Charlie from Chengdu Living, though commentating on the Hao Hao Report, put it this way: “What really struck me about this clip is how diplomatic Brin comes across. I’m glad he doesn’t see it as a battle between good and evil, but a nuanced struggle to allow China access to the world’s knowledge. After seeing this and one other interview with Brin regarding China, I feel pretty assured that they’re doing the best that anyone can.”
This is certainly an intriguing story: two Internet megaliths seemingly facing off against each other over the issue of information accessibility – the nature of which is perceived quite differently by the two; one all encompassing, one that comes up a little short. However, concentrating solely on this dichotomy between what have generally been portrayed as the light and dark forces of the Internet, perhaps stifles the voices of some of the more disparate contributors to this story- here are a few. » Read the rest of this entry «
For me and my petty concerns, Google went too far when they started incorporating alternative logo styles and random selections of daily information on their .com search engine, presuming that we the masses, in our beautiful diversity, would all be interested in whatever soupcon of news or random image they felt entitled to share with us. However, this didn’t stop me continuing to use their services; my Gmail account, the Google Chrome Browser, my first blog post on Blogger and all the googling I have continued to do. For others, it was the dilution of Google’s border-less approach to information accessibility when they started dealing with China that spelt the beginning of the end. 
First, the Xi-Han high-speed road dissected a local valley. At the beginning it was just an impressive stretch of glistening black tarmac without a car in sight, last year the odd car or lorry appeared every once in a while as a distraction from hours in the fields, this year it wasn’t possible to have a sequence of time where there wasn’t a vehicle on the road- the almost silence was deafening. 
I arrived in Beijing recently an unmarried man and although I left Beijing still an unmarried man I am now an engaged unmarried man. A moment of bended knee madness in the middle of a frozen Summer Palace lake took care of that.
With my head in the Google cloud[s] this past week it was nice to be brought back down to Earth China with a friend’s visit from Xinjiang and another’s return from overseas. One of my girlfriend’s hometown friends passed through from Xinjiang, where he works as a doctor, and another friend returned from 2 years studying in the UK and by the sounds of it some much enjoyed travels around Europe. Their visits and the beginning of my holiday meant this was a good week.
A pastime which has helped me to engage a little more with matters on the Chinese news front, as I have failed to do that regularly with my own notes here. I passed through into 2010 as a Hao Hao Reporter! Now, although the title is more grandiose than the reality, which is simply volunteering to add media stories one finds interesting on the internet to the 
So, because of that, I will begin with a quote from President Obama atop the Great Wall in Beijing. 
秦始皇
西安
