Bullog (bullock.cn) China Returns

牛，已经回到墙里。[The Bull has returned to behind the Wall]

Bullog (bullock.cn) China has been repackaged and re-launched with a new URL, a new look and a new policy.  According to a notice posted on the homepage, the new site will strictly adhere to the policy of “no political content”.  Blog posts that fail to observe this policy will be deleted and membership ID of bloggers will automatically be cancelled.  In other words, this is a (self) censored version of the famous Bullog site.

On the site where the launch is advertised, there is a discreet link at the right-hand top corner to Bullog International (bullogger.com).  It seems that more controversial current affairs bloggers such as Ran Yunfei are publishing their blog posts only at the international version of the blog portal, which is hosted outside of China.

The owner of the blog portal Luo Yonghao has so far made no public announcement about the return of Bullog China.

Please refer to the following posts for background information:

1. Bullog is harmonised
2. Bullog International Returns

Bullog International Harmonised in Less Than 40 Hours

I have been holding off writing this blog post because I have been hoping that the news was not true.  However, more evidence has started to emerge, which seems to suggest that Bullog International has in fact been “harmonised” in soul-destroying Leninist-Maoist ways, once again.  In other words, that site has been blocked by the Great Firewall, and netizens in China will need to use proxy devices in order to access Bullogger.com.  In Chinese Internet slang, this method of bypassing censorship is euphemistically labelled “climbing the wall”.  Everyday in China, many netizens “climb the wall” (Ned Kelly is reminded of the Berlin Wall) to read news from websites such as BBC, CDT and RFA.

I am still holding out hope that the blockage is due to some technical problems, which will be resolved in the near future. 

Breaking News: Bullog International Returns

Luo Yonghao announced early in the morning on 31 January 2009 the official launch of Bullogger.com, the international version of Bullog.cn.  Bullog.cn was shut down by Chinese authorities almost a month ago on 9 January.  The blog portal is now hosted in the USA.

According to Luo, some facilities such as the comment function and new blogs registration function are still hampered by the Net Nanny and will not yet be opened to the public.  There are also a few bugs that needs attention before Bullogger.com can operate normally again.  Bloggers are warned only to publish their final posts and not to write directly online until the technical problems are resolved.

The Chinese blogosphere is flooded with congratulation messages to Luo Yonghao.  Ned and I would also like to take this opportunity to quote from the famous Tang poet Bai Juyi (772 – 846) to wish Mr Luo and his team good luck:

Lush grass grows, year after year,

Imperishable with the wild fires,

Green again in the spring wind …

Ran Yunfei: the Legacy of Bullog.cn

Since the closure of Bullog.cn on 9 January 2008, many Chinese bloggers have written about the incident and have paid tribute to this blog portal. There is a reasonably complete collection of these articles at the GWF Blog.

The owner of Bullog.cn Luo Yonghao has eventually given his account of the story.  He seems to be optimistic that Bullog.cn will reopen in the near future, even though he is not ruling out the possibility that the blog portal will be hosted outside of China.  His blog post can be accessed from this link.  If you have problems opening it, then try this link instead.

Most famous Bullog.cn bloggers have already found temporary shelters and have resumed blogging.  Hecaitou has compiled a list of links that will take you to these blogs.

Ran Yunfei is one of the first well-known bloggers who has published his view on the incident.  He also gave an emotional tribute to the legacy of Bullog.cn.  His article has been widely disseminated throughout the Chinese blogosphere and has generated a large amount of comments.  The following is my translation of Ran Yunfei’s article from his blog at de-sci.org.  The original title of the article is: “The Freedom of Speech Earthquake 2009″ (2009年初的言论大地震).

Bullog is Harmonised? 牛博给河蟹了

I have been trying to log on to Bullog for the whole day without much success.  At first I thought it was just a technical glitch.  Thanks to a tip from Austin Ramzy at the Time China Blog, I now realise that the PRC Net Nanny may have finally moved in and shut down the entire site. When I started googling about it, I realised that the news was already all over the Chinese language blogosphere. I understand from some of the Chinese bloggers at Douban 豆瓣, another popular portal, that Bullog’s owner Luo Yonghao remains calm about the situation.