I commented on twitter earlier today that it doesn’t feel like the eve of September 11th. For the past eight years, as the date approached, I would keep thinking about the tragedy, I would count the days to the anniversary, I was acutely aware that it was upon us. Now, rather suddenly, it feels like another day. Time heals all wounds and maybe it’s finally done so to America’s darkest day. The media chatter seems considerably more restrained than in past years, and the cable news networks gave it relatively little play tonight, Joe Wilson’s outcry dominating the news.

It’s feeling distant, and the anniversary has become routine. But still, tonight I did what I do every year at this time: I listened to the NPR news report of that day, and I stop and think about how the world changed, how everything changed, how America stood for one brief shining moment as the most magnificent country in the world, and how we quickly squandered all the good will that a sympathetic world bestowed us.

Three years ago I wrote about my reactions to the NPR report and why I listen to it each year:

Every year on this date I listen to the same long radio broadcast, which evokes the curiosity and unfathomability of what happened. (It’s been playing in the background in my office the past hour.) At first, no one can put their arms around it, and on the hourly news at 9 a.m. they go ahead reading about ordinary things going on, not willing to admit yet that the whole world had changed, and everything else they were announcing would soon seem utterly meaningless. (”Today Libby Dole is expected to announce she will run for the US senate…”) And then, as more and more information becomes available, the implications of the day become clearer. It’s an interesting thing to listen to, hearing the reporters trying to think through the unthinkable. Listen to the strain and exhaustion in their voices as they try to figure out which reports are true or not. It’s not dramatic or sensational, which is what makes this broadcast so good. Keeping sane at a moment of insanity….

Saying that the date has finally become routine doesn’t mean it’s forgotten, which it will never be. But no date, no matter how dark, can retain its original impact, and with each year it comes closer to being “just another day.” And still, I listen to the news report, and I relive the night in Hong Kong when my friend called me with the news, and remember my own confusion and sense of a whole new phase in history taking shape. At the same time, I realize that the intensity of earlier years, the anxiety, the fears that the anniversary would precipitate more attacks – all of that has subsided, and nearly disappeared. In many ways, it now feels, almost, like just another day. Maybe that’s good. There comes a time to get over any tragedy, no matter how agonizing. Not to forget or downgrade the gravity of that event, but to stand up and move on, and accept that tragedy is part of life for every society, even America.

If you never heard the NPR report, I strongly recommend it. Bob Edwards’ voice will be with you for a long time, if not forever, even as September 11 continues each year to become a day almost like any other. Almost.

Thomas Friedman, not my favorite columnist, compares China’s system of strong-man government to America’s clearly broken system in which corporate interests can easily sabotage the government’s efforts to improve the lives of its citizens over the long term.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

Friedman’s got a point. It’s a shame that special interests in America can spend vast amounts of money to derail projects that would be to the benefit of most citizens, like national healthcare. And it’s wrong that our NIMBY mentality creates constant gridlock when it comes to important decisions. I wish, however, that he’d thrown in a line – even a parenthetical phrase (a little more complete than “despite its drawbacks”) – that would have given a broader and more accurate picture of today’s CCP. Namely, that that kind of authority comes only with a very heavy price, and that while the CCP may be “reasonably enlightened” about energy, natural resources and ensuring sustainability, these benefits are balanced, and sometimes far outweighed, by its knee-jerk self-protective tendencies, which put the party’s survival on the very top of its priority list, way above alternative energy, global warming and sustainability.

Lisa has put up a perceptive post about the recent ramping up of repression, and the link it includes sets off additional alarm bells, painting a picture of a party embroiled in infighting and power struggles, with the possible end result being an even higher level of repression for the sake of “harmony.” It even dares to entertain the notion that the CCP’s commitment to improving its people’s standard of living – central to its strategy of ensuring loyalty to a one-party system – might not last forever should conditions there continue to unravel as they are at the moment in Urumqi.

Lisa remarks:

A swing to repression is pretty predictable given the 60th National Day celebrations, but this latest crackdown still feels qualitatively different somehow. The harassment, detention and arrest of legal scholars like Xu Zhiyong seemed to signal a repudiation of even the most gradualist move toward establishing an effective legal and constitutional system to counterbalance one party rule (and I do believe that there are many members of the Party in question who support a genuine rule of law).

All of this is depressing and worrisome, and it makes me wonder if China is heading down a much bumpier road than a lot of believers in China’s Inevitable Rise are predicting.

Is it time to hit the panic button? I won’t go that far, but I will say it’s time to keep an eye open. That got driven home to me yesterday as I read, via ESWN, a story on the new censorship being imposed on China’s business magazine Caijing, where reporters were recently told “they wouldn’t be running any politically controversial stories — indefinitely.” This is a big step backwards. Caijing was always pointed to as epitomizing China’s new spirit of openness.

So back to Friedman. Praise China’s stunning successes in securing the natural resources it needs and for forcing the embrace of alternative energy. Praise its outlandish daring in standing up to the US financial mobocracy and for having the savvy to quietly put its money in places safer than US debt. But you, Tom, have a debt to your readers, too: you have to tell them that the price of an enlightened autocracy is always less representation, the law being carried out by whim, and a curtailment of freedoms that many of us would never sacrifice, no matter how wise and magnanimous our leaders may appear. And when you’re praising China’s great strides, don’t forget that at the same time, it’s still trapped in a straitjacket that’s at least partially of its own making): extreme environmental fragility, overwhelming poverty and an economy that’s far more tenuous than immediately meets the eye.

A few days before I left China, a friend handed me two books by Eileen Chang, an author who for a long time had been on my list but who I never actually got around to reading. I read one of them, The Rice-Sprout Song, on my flight home from China nearly a month ago, and a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t thought about it at least once. Although it came out in 1955 and there’s no need for yet another review, I had to put down a few thoughts.

The Rice-Sprout Song is set in China’s countryside during the early days of Mao’s tyranny, when “land reform” promised the rural poor great hope that would soon lead to the horrors of collectivization, famine and death on a scale that was until then unimaginable. It’s a desolate book about a terrible subject we all know about but have, in all likelihood, never truly experienced, hunger. Its metaphor for hunger is the watery gruel the poor eat for every meal as they slowly starve.

That this was Chang’s first English novel is extraordinary, it is so perfectly crafted, its characters so real and the language assured and perfect. The book has two heroes, a “model worker” in the village, Gold Root, and his wife Moon Scent. After many pages of bleakness, we detect the first hints of joy in Gold Root’s longing for Moon Scent, who has gone to work in Shanghai as a maid. He misses her so intensely he travels to Shanghai, his first time out of the countryside, to spend a few days with her, a sad event marked by Gold Root’s sense of isolation and awkwardness, his crushing poverty contrasted by “bejeweled ladies going to parties in their shiny silk gowns and high-heeled gold shoes.”

Chang tells how a cadre from the city is sent down to their village to live exactly as the peasants do and learn from them, and soon he, too, is starving. Only he has the resources to go to a nearby town and stuff himself with tea-boiled eggs, as he denies the hunger in his reports. He notes to himself that anyone who suggests there is truth to the whispers that the poor are starving will immediately be labeled a nationalist spy and put to death. Gold Root and Moon Scent are both doomed, victims of the insanity that grew out of Mao’s policies. Gold Root is outraged that officials deny that the peasants are starving to death. He will soon pay for his insistence on speaking the truth, dragging Moon Scent down with him.

The oddest character in the book is the village’s leading official, Comrade Wong, a jovial, likable man. Chang devotes many pages to humanizing him, telling how he met his beloved wife and how she left him, describing his loneliness and his knowledge that he will never rise from being a low-level functionary. We think Wong is a good man – and he probably is. But when the day comes that he meets with the starving peasants and tells them each must donate a pig as a gift to the army and prepare rice dumplings for the soldiers, we hate him with a passion. Gold Root cries out that they are literally starving, they have nothing. Wong beams with a wide smile and insists that surely they can accommodate this modest request for their country’s brave soldiers. It is the high point of the book and it marks Gold Root’s descent from “Model Worker” to an outraged, infuriated rebel clamoring for justice. Of course, he will soon be labeled a reactionary, and will be shot to death in the ensuing violence.

The words of my Chinese teacher in Beijing kept coming back to me as I read this book: her telling me how her family grew up hungry, and how no matter what the Chinese government did today, she and all other Chinese would feel unending gratitude that the days of hunger were over. Nothing matters when you are hungry; only food. Today, the Chinese people are no longer starving, and that shift, from starvation to having enough food on the table, was a seismic one. For anyone seeking to understand how the Chinese people can accept a government that censors, steals, enriches itself from the poverty of its people and thinks nothing of their human rights, I suggest they read this book. It doesn’t touch on any of these topics per se, but it shows you all too vividly what life was like not so long ago (and Chang’s account deals with China prior to the great famine; the horror was only just beginning). And then you look at China today, my teacher’s China. No matter what we think of the government, hundreds of millions who were starving saw their situations turn around. For some 200 million or so, their poverty stayed the same or became even worse, but for the vast majority, it was a new world: they had food. As you read The Rice-Sprout Song, it becomes clearer just why the government today is given so much latitude, whether it was the CCP that put food on the people’s tables or their own hard work once Mao’s insanities were thrown on the rubbish heap where they belonged. When you have gone from generations of hunger to having food, you’ve undergone a sea change, a miracle. There has been no other turnaround like it in the history of civilization. So I understand what my Chinese teacher was telling me, whether I agree or not.

Corrupt officials still terrorize the countryside, and perhaps they always will; the exploitation of the marginalized by the powerful is history’s oldest story. What this book does is make palpable the helplessness of China’s rural poor, placing the reader in their freezing huts as the government’s absurd decrees destroy their lives, chipping away at their dignity, ultimately killing them wholesale. In one of its most heartbreaking scenes, soldiers ransack their homes, stealing the very last bits of food they have hidden away. The peasants’ calamity is complete; they have no recourse, no hope, nothing but their hunger.

I read a number of books of China over the past few weeks and will try to put up some posts, hopefully briefer than this one, with my recommendations. In the meantime, if you’ve never read this book, which Chang wrote in English (another source of amazement), I urge you to get a copy. It can easily be read in a day or two, and it will leave you furious, anguished, dumbstruck and horrified. You’ll hear the voices of its characters in your head for a long time to come, and no matter how well you already understand the famine and Maoism and land reform, you will feel like you are right there, living the insanity. That is not a comfortable feeling, but one that will make your compassion for the Chinese people richer and deeper than ever before.

I got tired of posting stories on whether China would come out of the crisis faster and in relative better shape than America, but the mass media still find it an irresistible topic. I follow a lot of them and they can be summarized as follows:

China’s stimulus package is working better and faster, because its government can force projects to begin and the infrastructure development program was already well underway. China is definitely looking like it’s rebounding, with high confidence and continued spending and growth (in general). There is now no question that we are seeing a new economic order, with China’s influence growing while that of the US declines – but, that does not mean China can replace the US as the world’s superpower. It can’t and it won’t, simple because it is still too poor, has too may problems (environmental, social, economic, labor, population) and, besides, much of the current euphoria is based almost entirely on government largesse. But still, it’s become a G2 kind of world, even if China is lower down the rungs than the US, and the notion that intoxicated so many Americans during the late 1990s of a world led only by the US (who was thinking of China then?) is totally out the window. China may never be a true superpower due to its staggering challenges, but its influence and its greatness (no, not moral greatness, but its ability to move markets, attract financing and shape global policies) are undeniable.

And now, you don’t need to read any more articles on China and the US and the global economic crisis again, because they are all basically a rehash of the above, some more gloomy, some more buoyant, but all just about the same. It was this brand-new article in Time that caused me to realize just how similar and predictable all of these articles are, no matter which side they take. Here’s a taste:

China faces enormous challenges — a massive shift of population from rural areas to cities, cleaning up decades of environmental degradation, continuing to provide the increase in prosperity that has underpinned political stability. Given their scale, it should surprise nobody that it is still most concerned with saving itself economically — not anyone else. Beijing is most unnerved by the prospect of labor unrest of the sort that resulted in the death on July 24 of a steel-company executive in northeast China at the hands of a mob.

But the resilience of the Chinese economy is no mirage. If Beijing can come through the global crisis without an economic meltdown of its own, its leaders’ reputation and confidence will be boosted. An economic model that survives the worst downturn since the Great Depression will have undeniable appeal in the developing world, at a time when the Washington Consensus is thoroughly shot. Beijing, before the crisis, was already rising, its global reach and influence expanding. As the rest of the world falters, that is truer than ever. China is not yet the leader of the global economy. But it’s getting there.

And there it is. China’s not there yet, may never be No. 1, getting there, shaking the world, progress can’t be denied but neither can impossible challenges, world falters while China rises, not sure it can be maintained, so many people to feed, lots of hope and construction, can’t save the world but can’t be discounted as major player, economic miracle, lots of disturbing unrest, social fissures, Party’s engineers know what they’re doing, US has better fundamentals but.. quack quack quack. It’s actually a good article, but I kept thinking, with literally every paragraph, haven’t I seen this all before?

If I looked at the news out of China today and saw good things I’d perhaps put up positive posts, provided i felt I had anything useful to add. But looking at the news today, and over the past several days, I see really bad news, to the point of alarming. Arresting good people on trumped-up charges and holding them in secret places and giving them obscene sentences has been an ongoing topic here for many years. But usually these are isolated instances. Shi Tao. Zhao Yan. Hu Jia. Aside from the typical pre-party congress and pre-Tiananmen anniversary sweeps, we don’t often see a calculated nationwide roundup of innocent Chinese citizens the government sees as potential threats.

We’re seeing it now, and it looks like another huge leap backwards. While the Chinese media spew forth one story after another on the need for greater rule of law, fair representation, no arrests without transparent processes, etc., the government that supports these media is going in the exact opposite direction, reminding us that absolutely no one on Chinese soil is safe. As Evan Osnos in an excellent post makes clear, even the best and brightest are at risk.

Imagine, for a moment, how it might sound to turn on the news one day and hear that the head of the A.C.L.U. had vanished from his home in the predawn hours. Or, think how America might be different today if a pesky young Thurgood Marshall had been silenced using an obscure tax rule and kept out of the courts.

At around 5 A.M. on Wednesday, Chinese authorities visited the home of Xu Zhiyong, a prominent legal scholar and elected legislator in Beijing, and led him away. He has not been heard from again. Unless something changes, he is likely to stay away for a long time, with or without formal charges. Anyone with an interest in China, its economy, its place in the world, or the kind of future it will fashion, please take note: This is a big deal.

Xu might not have reached Marshall status yet, but he is as close as China gets to a public-interest icon. He teaches law at the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. He has also run the Open Constitution Initiative, a legal aid and research organization that worked on many of China’s path-breaking cases. He and his colleagues had investigated the Sanlu milk scandal, in which dangerous baby formula harmed children’s health, and assisted people who had been locked up by local officials in secret undeclared jails. All of those activities are emphatically consistent with the goals of the Chinese government, even if they angered the local bureaucrats who were caught in the act.

Xu has never set out to undermine one-party rule; he is enforcing rights guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution. He has enough faith in the system that he joined it: in 2003, he ran for and won a seat as a legislator in his local district assembly, one of the few independent candidates to be elected in an open, contested election. He even received the recognition, rare among activists, of being profiled last year in a Chinese newspaper. “I have taken part in politics in pursuit of a better and more civilized nation,” he said at the time.

As Osnos goes on to say, few in China have done more for the good of the general public than Xu. He urges the government to release him “before the full bureaucracy gets too much invested in holding him, but time is limited. China deserves better than this kind of behavior.”

Does it really all go back to the October beauty pageant? We just saw the 20th anniversary of the CCP’s greatest source of insecurity and paranoia, and the actions taken in the months prior seem relatively lame compared to the 60th anniversary. My own site pumped out posts about June 4 for weeks before the anniversary, and for five days following. (The ax didn’t fall until June 9 for reasons I still don’t understand and probably never will.) And the detentions at the time seemed at least explainable – the usual suspects who get detained every year. This seems different. They are going after people who are heroes to many in China. Even a defender of the rights of marginalized citizens.

This nacht und nebel approach makes China look absolutely atrocious. People like me who have tried to seek out the positive achievements the party has made in order to provide a fair picture of China today have no choice but to express deep criticism (and that’s a wonderful link).

The lives of your average citizens in China have become so much freer and more open in recent years, and criticism of the government has become so much more accepted and even expected (within the usual constraints, of course) that what we’re seeing now can only be described as a tragedy. Will they take advantage of the very small window of opportunity they still have and show that they are capable of living up to their own doctrines of rule of law? I hope so. But I seriously doubt it. With a few minor exceptions, China has consistently disappointed us when it comes to its treatment of high-profile cases of alleged “dissidents.” It’s their choice. They are on the verge of an unprecedented drop in goodwill.

Update: See this outstanding piece by Isabel Hilton on how China’s formula – “if repression doesn’t work, add more repression” – illustrates the country’s political malaise, and could ultimately lead to implosion. I am not willing to go that far (yet). But we’ll be hearing a lot more about this if China keeps adding fuel to the fire. Hilton includes a beautiful quote from Xu after the closure of his NGO:

“It’s not us causing trouble, and the tens of thousands of mass incidents every year aren’t caused by us …. On the contrary, we strive to bring into line the contradictions caused by corrupt officials, we advocate absolute nonviolence and we hope we can ameliorate some of the endless hate and conflicts in our society… do not let this country once more be dragged by those in power to a place where we are dead but not buried.

Why have we been targeted with this retribution? Because we have an awe-inspiring righteousness, because we advocate for better politics, because our dreams are too beautiful, because we as a people have never given up hope, because no matter what befalls, our hearts are always full of the sunlight of hope.

…I am a poor man, so poor that all I have left are my beliefs. Great leaders, can I give you a little bit of my belief? You should be needing these beliefs and you should, like me, have the ability to show compassion, compassion to see the restless souls disturbed by evil spirits.”

Will the “great leaders” listen? I’m skeptical.

Strangest thing. I noticed that although I am back in the land of the free, my Mac will not allow me to go to any blogspot or wordpress sites. It also won’t let me get to the NY Times. It automatically changes the url from nytimes.com to global.nytimes.com, and then it says it can’t find the server. China Digital Times opens just fine. This only happens on Safari. It’s okay using Firefox. How is that possible?

It’s stories like this that reawaken that old “China is evil” tape I used to play a lot on this blog back when I thought I knew everything. Now, when I am fully aware of just how little I know and how fundamentally stupid I am, I still get pissed off almost to the point of outrage. Make that “impotent outrage.” Because I’ve been posting on this topic for half a decade now and still they don’t listen. I love China, I miss China, I want to go back to China, but I see crap like this and I am reminded of just how fucked up their government can still be.

In the realm of potential threats to China’s stability, an organization that advocates on behalf of people infected with hepatitis B would seem to be low-risk. But on Wednesday, the group’s director, Lu Jun, found himself squaring off against four security officials who were trying to cart away stacks of literature they claimed had been printed without official permission.

In the end, Mr. Lu scored a partial victory. After eight hours looking through drawers and photographing volunteers, the inspectors walked off with 90 pamphlets, but Mr. Lu prevented them from delving into the group’s computer files. “I fear this is not the end of it,” he said Thursday.

The raid on Mr. Lu’s organization, the Yi Ren Ping Center, comes at a precarious time for China’s nongovernmental organizations, many of which operate in a kind of legal gray zone. Two weeks ago, officials used a bureaucratic infraction as the reason to shut down the country’s pre-eminent legal rights center, Gongmeng, or Open Constitution Initiative. The closing came after a separate disbarment of 53 lawyers known for taking on civil rights and corruption cases. Just before dawn on Wednesday, the founder of Gongmeng, Xu Zhiyong, was taken into police custody, and he has not been heard from since….

“It’s basically a foolish attempt to make the year as peaceful and uneventful as possible,” said Jiang Tianyong, a lawyer who was among those blocked from renewing their licenses.

I can sort of get going after Tiananmen mothers and rogue churches and “cyberdissidents” and all sorts of other “threats” to China’s one-party system – I can get it even if I think it’s batty and counter-productive and detestable. But hepatitis b carriers? This is in a class by itself, because they simply pose no threat, yet they are victims of heartbreaking and unforgivable discrimination. Sorry for the extensive clips, but we have to understand just how inane and insane and depraved this policy of discrimination is, because it is directed at ordinary people who pose no risk to you or me or to anyone. We have to ask, how great can “the world’s next superpower” be when it allows itself to be ruled by old wives’ tales, superstition and flat-out ignorance (or more likely willful denial of the facts)? It’s nothing less than that. And it’s also kind of evil, because it leaves behind victims with devastated lives.

There is widespread trepidation over hepatitis B in China, a fear that has been inflamed by an explosion in advertising for medical testing services and sham cures. Even though it is preventable with a vaccine — and most of those infected will not become ill — state-owned companies, medical schools and food-processing plants have come to believe that it is sensible policy to bar the infected.

Under Chinese law, carriers of hepatitis B cannot work as teachers, elevator operators, barbers or supermarket cashiers. In a recent survey of 113 colleges and universities, conducted by the Yi Ren Ping Center, 94 acknowledged that infected applicants, required to take blood tests, would be summarily rejected.

Many of the 120 million carriers in China got the virus in the 1970s and 1980s, when a single contaminated syringe was sometimes used to inoculate hundreds of people at a time against diseases. The second-biggest group of carriers, about 40 percent of the total, according to the government, got virus from their mothers during childbirth.

An online bulletin board maintained by Mr. Lu’s group is a heart-rending clearinghouse for stories of people fired from jobs, or students denied college educations, after mandatory blood tests revealed their statuses. There are also scores of tales about the ashamed and the distraught who killed themselves.

One former blogger who a lot of you know (at least from his blog) once wrote to me and told me of his own plight as a hepatitis b carrier. This government-perpetuated ignorance takes a toll. It ruins lives. It is irrational and inexcusable and it should be eliminated. Fat chance of that. As I said, half a decade of complaining, and I might as well be chasing windmills. But as futile and meaningless as these posts seem to be, I have to write them anyway. If it helps to inform even one person, it’s worth it. And even if it doesn’t it’s worth it. Because it’s something we shouldn’t be silent about. It’s plain wrong.

Thanks so much, CCP, for protecting us from the danger of a barber or doorman who is hepatitis b-positive. And for having the bravery and dedication to go after such a dangerous threat as an advocacy group for hepatitis B carriers’ rights. Jia you.

Update: James Fallows criticizes the CCP in strong language (for him) for a similar silence-all-dissenting-voices atrocity. Just as you get lulled into thinking they’re really improving, you get reminded that it is still in many ways a police state. Random arrests constitute one of the most terrifying abuses of power and must always be condemned, always. And yes (mandatory disclaimer), I condemned my own country for what seemed to be random arrests during the “war on terror.” But arresting someone based on a tip from an informant/bounty hunter, deplorable as that may be, can’t be compared to targeting dissenters and locking them up in the night to make sure no one rains on your anniversary parade.

Ironically, of course, nothing could make China look worse than what it’s doing now. On the other hand, they probably see the October beauty show as something useful to domestic audiences only, and simply don’t care how indignant we get over their crimes and abuse.

I know I am (very) late with this, now that the eclipse is more than a day old. But it was breathtaking to stand under the overcast sky yesterday, still quite bright at 9.30am, and watch the sky get progressively darker in a matter of seconds, turning nearly black after about five minutes. It was especially exciting because heavy thundershowers earlier in the morning had made the hundreds of spectators at the hotels gloomy. While they may not have gotten their full money’s worth, it was a dramatic and rare event nonetheless. The photos were captured by my friend Ben from the outdoor area of the third-floor lobby of the Sheraton hotel in Suzhou.

First, you can see the view before the eclipse started.

Then it gets darker.

And then you know there’s a total eclipse taking place, and not just some dark clouds.

And then after five minutes the sky begins to return to normal.

Yes, it would have been a lot more magical if the skies had been clear, but this was nothing to sneeze at.

This trip, my last before moving back to the US, got interrupted by an unexpected email a few days ago when I was in Suzhou. Just like the last time when I wasn’t sure what to do next, back in April, another opportunity simply appeared, and it was again due to this blog, if somewhat indirectly. I’ll be doing writing and media relations for an NGO devoted to a cause I care a lot about, and it will bring me back to Asia (though perhaps not China) less than two weeks after I return home, at least for a couple of weeks. Fate plays strange tricks, and you never know what’s next. What was that Forrest Gump metaphor again?

A couple of days ago I came down to this beautiful city for the first time to have a look around, meet my site designer (a great designer and a great host) and maybe get a glimpse of the eclipse tomorrow morning, though weather reports and the current rainstorm don’t bode well for that. The eclipse was last on my list, but I can imagine the swarms of people that checked into my hotel this afternoon (which was empty yesterday) will be very disappointed if the forecasts hold true. What can you do?

I leave China next week. I came here seeking to unwind, and somewhat ironically and wholly unexpectedly as soon as i arrived I got an offer for a freelance assignment that’s kept me in the room all day today. Which wasn’t such an unwelcome thing, since the day before I nearly melted down in Suzhou’s famous summer heat climbing the hills on Dongshan Dao. The new work practically guarantees I’ll be busy until my flight takes off for America in a few days, and for the next two weeks after that. So more silence to follow.

Below is a picture my friend Ben took yesterday from the top of Suzhou’s San Shan Dao. It really is a dreamlike place that, like Kunming and Qingdao, has a distinctive look and feel that makes you wonder for a moment whether you’re still in China. (And sorry about the photo screwing up the alignment – working on it, but my connection now is too slow to re-upload and align. It may have to stay that way for a day or two.)

I just want to say that the people who showed up for my party last night are the greatest anywhere. Old friends, journalists, colleagues, blog readers, bloggers, Chinese and foreigners – a perfect batch of outstanding friends. The tragedy in Urumqi ate into the list, as several reporters were on their way there, but about 60 guests managed to find their way to the reclusive cafe for the get-together, which lasted from 7pm past 1am.

As I prepare to leave, I keep being reminded of how lucky I’ve been in terms of the people who’ve let me into their lives. Last week I spent an afternoon sipping coffee with Matt Schiavenza, a long-time member of the blog roll and all around great guy, at a cafe in Kunming to discuss the joys and challenges of living in the Yunnan city I love so much. The week before I spent an hour with one of the newer and most impressive English-language bloggers, Mark, at a Beijing Starbucks. Last night I met John Kennedy of Global Voices Online, someone I’d had some disagreements with over the years, and I think it’s safe to say a new friendship was created. Of the people who came last night, I know probably about 40 percent from this blog, in one way or another.

I know there are some terrible things happening here, and I haven’t been offering my opinion because right now I don’t have the time to follow them and make any meaningful contribution to that conversation. But no matter what is going on around you, even in the worst of times, it’s the people you know, the relationships you develop and grow, that keep us going. I had no friends when I came here in 2002, and now I feel I’m friends with just about everyone. What a difference that makes in your outlook on life. The difference between bitter and sweet.

So thanks again to all who attended, and thanks to all of you who keep trudging to this site despite the government’s best efforts to keep you away.

Lisa and I will go to Qingdao for a couple of days starting today and I expect the blog to continue being slow for a while, maybe until I’m back and settled in America in a couple of weeks. But it isn’t disappearing, even if the site traffic is (thanks, Nanny). Please stay, and thanks for letting me into your lives, if only for a few seconds a day. This blog will remain my lifeline to China.