Tuesday.

Toured Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City today…an interesting time to be here as its nearly the anniversary of the 1989 protests (June 4), and there’s some concern from the government about possible uprisings. Most young Chinese have never been taught about the event, though, and so don’t even know it happened, let alone the significance of it. We were told in no uncertain terms that we should not go down there on Thursday to document it, as even taking pictures of a police officer might be considered a “crime against the state.” Wowza. If some shit blows up you can bet I’ll be booking it on over though (sorry Mom).

We also had a really cool panel discussion with some foreign correspondents who work in Beijing. They gave us some great insight about what its like working within the constraints of the Chinese media, and gave us a link to a proxy server that gets past the government firewall (clearly the highlight of the day, partly because I can post to my blog, but mainly because I can now use the words “proxy server” in conversation).