Clubhouse Cracked China’s Firewall. A People Shined Through. – The New York Times
For years, the Chinese government has prevented its 1.4 billion people from speaking freely online. A digital wall separated them from the rest of the world.
Then, for a precious few days, that wall was breached.
Clubhouse, a new social media app that emerged faster than the censors could block it, became a place for Mandarin Chinese speakers from the mainland and anywhere else to speak their minds. They had a lot to say.
In Clubhouse s audio chatrooms, people from the mainland joined those from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the global Chinese diaspora and anybody else who was interested to share thoughts. The topics ranged from the politically charged (repression of Muslims in China s Xinjiang region, the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, censorship) to the mundane (hookups) to the unexpected (hemorrhoids).
The Chinese government blocked the app Monday afternoon. I knew it was coming, and yet I still didn t expect to feel so dismayed.
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For that brief moment, people in China proved that they are as creative and well spoken as people who enjoy the freedom to express themselves. They lined up, sometimes for hours, to wait for their turns to speak. They argued for the rights of the government loyalists to speak despite their disagreements. They held many honest, sincere conversations, sometimes with tears and sometimes with laughter.
via www.nytimes.com