Endorsement

It’s been a few weeks, but I returned to JustRecently’s Beautiful Blog this evening and can confirm that he is completely on fire / en fuego.

For God’s sake, the man illustrates his blog with his own drawings:

His takedown of China’s “NetNanny” is a short, punchy, and unparalleled satire on the mindset of Chinese government censors.  Writing as the “Net Nanny,” a running character on his blog:

My job is a heavy burden. I have to read malicious and misleading articles in unhealthy foreign magazines. Stuff such as this from the so-called Economist of September 5, page 62, entitled “A harmonious and stable crackdown”. every day, to keep it all away from the easily impressible dim people of our great nation…

*Sigh*

Those sick minds who think up such ugly fiction just as we are approaching the happy arrival of sixtieth anniversary of our great People’s Republic are of course enemies of the Chinese people. But let me tell you this: there are no crackdowns here. There are only invitations for tea.

Sometimes, we invite bad elements for just some cups of tea, and the whole matter will only last for an afternoon. Sometimes we invite the bad elements for a lot more cups of tea, which is also very harmonious….

(I’ve also been involved in similar, though far less focused, discussion of Chinese internet censorship as it impacts the North Korean refugee issue in the comments of this entry on the One Free Korea blog.)

He goes on to translate a beautiful passage from Wen Jiabao’s comments to a class of Beijing Middle Schoolers dwelling on Wen’s wartime childhood.  To me, it’s rather poignant, and something I missed completely in my brief analysis of the school visit and comments on Danwei’s treatment of the same.

And why couldn’t American conservatives opposed to Obama’s “interference with the curriculum” (uh, like No Child Left Behind?) have read Justrecenly’s takedown on the story on mandatory essays in the first weeks of school in China?  He writes:

This will be mandatory for the curricula both in public and private schools this month. The kids may show their love for the motherland by forming a Kumbaya-chicken-shape in the schoolyard, or by watching television at home to be prepared for the next lesson in school. All middle and primary school students are invited by the education ministry to watch a CCTV special with major-general Peng Liyuan, vice president Xi Jinping’s wife, undressing singing live in front of the camera, and with Yang Liwei in a yet-to-be-specified function, plus other patriotic gigs.

Afterwards, these gigatons of patriotism will culminate in some 160 million essays: all school children will have to write about the television program, according to the BBC.

And his comments on Global Times stories, such as this takedown of the Dalai Lama in France coverage — replete with original drawing of the jackal/His Holiness himself — are priceless.

Quirky, opinionated, smart, and — by the way — Germanic.  These aspects of Justrecently’s Beautiful Blog make one’s internet adventures both joyful and charged with a certain moral voltage.

Readers interested in Chinese censorship, media, dissidents, nationalism, and the Global Times are advised to keep an eye on this blog.   And I hope he keeps slamming out the prose — and the drawings.