Suddenly Can’t Connect

After a quick stopover at my (visually) favourite spot in all of China, Jiayuguan Fort in Gansu province, I speeded into Xinjiang province where the language was: Nothing. The whole province has been completely shut off from the outside world with no internet access, no phone access and not even access to text messaging inside the province.

Of course people have been doing without those things for thousands of years so it was a small thing for me to spend a week there … except it was so sad the way the Chinese government hasn’t changed since the Ming dynasty but keeps building more and more Great Walls Of China here and there every time they feel that somebody has transgressed.

Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics it was all foreigners who needed to be punished for the “Sacred Flame” not being allowed to run smoothly around the world, and the punishment was not being allowed a visa for China although they had tickets for the olympics. This time it’s the entire population of 20 million in a province three times the size of France and thereby all tourists visiting it (hundreds of hotels and shops have had to close down and only super expensive hotels are “convenient to stay in” for foreigners) which has to suffer for the constant paranoia of the regime. Walls, walls, must build walls! Must shut people out, and in!

Anybody who thinks China has “modernised” and “become part of the global village” should read up on their Ming history, then check the newspapers from the last two or three years.