Today since morning I spent quite a few hours since reading about the impact of the news of Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize win and some very different reactions. Especially interesting were the Chinese netizens reactions to the news as seen in the blogs, comments, etc.
Among the Chinese netizens reactions 4 stood out:
1. The popular Chinese blogger Han Han after 1AM on the 9th of October posted a blog entry titled "2010.10.08", which however had no text and instead consisted only of quotation marks, i.e. " ".
(This timing of the post roughly coincides with the actual timing of the announcement of the news which because of the time difference between Norway and China.)
Han Han has a huge following and many people who are apparently subscribed to his feed were immediately alerted that he has posted something and went to see it.
Quickly this post attracted thousands of readers and hundreds of comments even though it was past 1:32AM at night. (Currently the readers are above 200 000 and comments are more than 5000!).
At first most posts were by followers who asked "What do you mean?" and apparently had no clue what he alluded to.
But soon many comments aired the opinion that the blog entry's title is very telling as it is the date of the announcement of Liu Xiaobo's choice as this year's Nobel peace Prize recipient.
Some posters wittingly observed :"Since all the words are "sensitive" (i.e. pending censorship) the only thing that's left are punctuation marks."
I read through several pages of comments. Some were fascinating. But the most fascinating thing was to see that despite the blocked access to the news, despite the blocked search engines, despite the "harmonized" (i.e. censored) contents, despite the "sensitive words" censorship many people have already heard of this news and felt simply happy and elated.
Many people used various ways to avoid their comments from being "harmonized" and deleted and used various abbreviations, oblique allusions, phonetically similar characters instead of "sensitive words". The Chinese netizens' language innovation prompted by fear of online censorship is indeed a very amazing phenomenon!
It's very surreal.
2. Among the comments after the above mentioned minimalist blog post at Han Han's blog one struck me as very amusing. According to a few who commented after the said post, the central news emission deliberately avoided the news about the prestigious award, and instead as it turns out one of the most important foreign news was that a panda in a zoo abroad got pregnant. Netizens ridiculed this choice of news.
The funny and ironic part (and with a potential to be interpreted symbolically) is that a Chinese rare and bordering extinction animal (behind bars) has managed to conceive a future offspring.
3. Somewhere near the 50th page of comments after Han Han blog's entry the following Question/Answer type anecdote:
新浪网友2010-10-09 12:27:27
问：有没有中国人获得诺贝尔奖？
答：有，但他们都拿着外国国籍。
问：有没有中国公民获得过诺贝尔奖？
答：有，但他们都是中华民国的公民。
问：有没有新中国的公民获得过诺贝尔奖？
答：有，但他不承认自己是中国公民。
问：有没有承认自己是中国人的新中国公民获得诺贝尔奖？
答：有，但是我们不承认他是中国公民。
问：有没有自己承认自己是中国公民，国家也承认他是中国公民的新中国公民获得诺贝尔奖？
答：有，但他在监狱里。
The rough translation from Chinese is:
Question: Has a Chinese person won the Nobel Prize?
Answer: There are a few, but they have a foreign citizenship.
Q: Has a Chinese citizen won the Nobel Prize?
A: There are, but they are the Chinese Republic citizens.
Q: Are there any New China citizens who have won the Nobel Prize?
A: There is one,but he himself doesn't admit that he is a Chinese citizen.
Q:Is there a citizen of New China who admits to be a Chinese citizen who has won the Nobel Prize?
A: Yes, there is, but we don't admit that he is a Chinese citizen.
Q: Is there a Chinese citizen who admits himself to be one, and the State also admits that he is a citizen of New China who has won the Nobel Prize?
A: There is, but he is in prison.
4. One of the strongest image statements came from artist Kuang Biao (邝飚). In this cartoon,
posted by Kuang to his QQ blog, a Nobel Prize medallion is locked behind prison bars. Underneath the image, Kuang has simply written “10-8-2010,” a historic date. (seen at
China Media Project's site) .
In addition, two links to interesting articles from the New York Times:
with my mobile phone camera, hence quality of images is poor, but hopefully my "angle" of seeing of things can still be felt even despite image quality deficiencies...)
I selected some photos which I took for the past month (i.e. November) in Kyoto, and also in the nearby Ohara and Nara during a few one day excursions. They are mostly of Buddhist temples and temple gardens, but there are also some of Shinto shrines, or of some places or images in Kyoto that impressed me.
These two photos are of (very cute moss covered) stone images of "Jizo", a child image of the Bodhisatva Jizo 地藏菩萨 who out of compassion willingly entered Hell in order to save all sentient beings there...In Japan he is especially associated with saving children, and people often make little Jizo statues such as those as a remembrance for a lost child... 
This is another photo taken on Wednesday at Sanzen In (in Ohara) and at the stone statue at the back is actually a statue of the "grown-up" version of Jizo Bodhisatva... 
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