A story in yesterday's NYTimes about the Chinese government once again clamping down on their microblogging sites got me curious. I encountered pretty obvious censorship when I visited two years ago. Facebook and Twitter were unreachable. Same for Blogger and the extended utility of Google. Things loosened up when I left the Mainland for Hong Kong. It was nonetheless striking to encounter.

Fast forward to today, and I was able to register for an account on the equivalent of Twitter in China - Sina's "Weibo" (which means, simply, "microblogging"). I have no idea whether I'll get bounced. I didn't think an English version was yet available, but by using the browser Chrome with Chinese translation enabled...well, I'm up and running. Feel free to check me out there. Or come back here to see if I learn anything good.

I should mention that I have a book-related purpose in this long-distance trolling. In a nutshell, I'm looking for "Big V" people (meaning, verified, or vaguely influential). Those are the folks the government began clamping down upon, after what had struck me as a period of relatively progressive advances. As with most things China-related, we only have the smallest sense of the reality here. For now.