Welcome back, China

I guess it was something I wrote this past spring that sent me to internet detention for the past few months but as of last evening the firewall was down and once again China has access to bookofjoe.

You could look up.

Good thing for me, what with the country already having more internet users than any other on the planet.

Considering that the U.S. already has about 75% of its population online while China's penetration is only 20% to date, you can see why in the future if you ain't in China, you ain't nowhere.

And while we're on the subject of China and the web, well worth your time is James Fallows' superb article in the new (September 2008) issue of The Atlantic entitled "How the West was Wired," which describes the ongoing effort of two idealistic and wealthy Taiwanese businessmen to move China's poorest and most rural provinces straight from the 15th to the 21st century.

Check out the Yellow Sheep River website (which includes three videos on the project) and WestChinaStory.com, where middle- and high-school students in distant areas, in return for annual work-study grants of $115, which cover most of their yearly school expenses, at least 10 times per year "... are required to research, write, illustrate and post on the web a report on some aspect of their lives in the countryside."

The essays "... are in Chinese, but the students correspond with visitors in simple English as part of their training," wrote Fallows.

Watch a documentary (in Chinese) about Yellow Sheep River here.