Word: zhou
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Zhou's vault to Web stardom came last April, when he was visiting Chongqing, a municipality in central China. Intrigued by a dispute that pitted a property developer against a stubborn homeowner whose refusal to leave his property had blocked the launching of construction, Zhou began writing blog entries and posting video and still images on the Web. The incident caught the imagination of Chinese Netizens, and Zhou and the Chongqing "nail house" (named thus because it stood out in an otherwise leveled landscape) became an overnight sensation. Apparently embarrassed by the publicity, the city government and the developer soon...
...Zhou, it was a moment of revelation. He decided that, as a single, jobless Chinese citizen who "firmly believes in individual freedom," he was perfectly suited to devoting himself to "helping evicted and displaced persons." He also cheerfully declared his aim of "hyping" his way to fame so he would "never go back to selling vegetables." Traveling on a shoestring budget and relying on donations from admirers and the people to whose aid he came, Zhou preached the digital gospel, educating his pupils in the arts of establishing a blog, posting, taking digital photos and videos, using instant-messaging tools...
...surprisingly, Zhou soon found himself "GFW-ed," as Chinese Netizens call having their sites blocked (in reference to the Great Firewall). By then, though, he was familiar with the techniques Chinese bloggers use to evade the authorities and managed to have his blog reappear on the Internet almost immediately by using proxy servers and mirror sites outside China. But Zhou's luck ran out when he traveled to Shenyang to interview victims of a pyramid scheme involving a supposed aphrodisiac powder made from crushed ants. Victims handed over cash and were told they would get a guaranteed 30% annual return...
...Zhou claims he has not been changed by the experience, but his crusading days are over. With money borrowed from his parents, he says he is going back into the vegetable business, as well as opening a small coffee shop and Internet café. As for citizen journalism, "I have already spent more than half a year as a living example of how this works," he wrote on his blog last December. "The task of saving yourselves is in your own hands now." Many millions of Chinese Netizens will be watching to see who - if anyone - among their number rises...
...School in the past five academic years. Other recent hires include Noah R. Feldman ’92, a constitutional theorist formerly of New York University, and Kathryn E. Spier, a scholar of law and economics who was previously at Northwestern. —Staff writer Kevin Zhou can be reached at kzhou@fas.harvard.edu...