Letter from a Young Chinese Friend (2)

This is the second in a series of correspondence between me and my new Chinese friend flypig, a university student at Nankai University, Tianjing.

Curious about the screen name "flypig," I asked my friend what it means. He said it comes from the English expression of "when pigs can fly," meaning something that is impossible. Turning the meaning around, he wants to express his belief that "nothing is impossible."

After reading his previous letter, I wrote to him:

"Thank you so much for your long letter. I appreciate reading about the 'thinking patterns' and trends of the young generation in China very much. Indeed, the economic development has been much written about in Western media, but not so much about the thoughts, ideas and feelings of the young people. I wonder also about the gap between your generation and your parents' generation. Is there is big communication gap, since the two generations experience such different social environments?

I also wonder about censorship. I am aware of the big firewall the Chinese government has set up. What I am wondering about is whether exchanges of email like ours are monitored by the State as well? I am a bit leary about discussing certain things openly, if you know what I mean."

Here is flypig's reply:

"Currently, those in power in China has a motto: to catch up with the latest trend. I think this is quite meaningful. My parents read my blog every day. Their 'Internet age' is roughly the same as mine. They have their own ICQ and MSN accounts. So we don't really have problems understanding each other. I believe they accept my way of thinking. For one, this is because they have a high level of tolerance. For another, I am not a very rebellious boy--rather traditional I might say!

However, my parents sometimes do have ideological clashes with me, especially when it comes to the freedom of expression. They would tell me the inevitably tragic fate of those who tried to express their opinions during the Cultural Revolution and June 4th Student Movement of 1989. But my generation is more inclined toward a democratic environment where expressing one's ideas and opinions is tolerated."

As far as censorship is concerned, flypig told me that the Chinese government usually employs a url-based screening, which means that certain Web sites that are known to have "questionable content," such as Hong Kong newspaper Web sites, are blocked. "If the government decided to filter the hundreds of thousands of emails traveling in and out of China, then the amount of manpower and money required would be astronomical," he says. That means our correspondence is "firewall-free"--thank goodness!