Walls

Beijing is full of gated communities with high walls and nattily uniformed guards standing next to gates that pull across entryways. They can be inconvenient when you want to cut through an area to get somewhere else but I'm already used to them.

It may, however, take awhile for me to become accustomed to the security mechanism that prevents me from reading what I've written here after I've hit the 'publish post' button. The phenomenon which Peter Cohen recently referred to as "China's OTHER Great Wall" also blocks BBC news (and Wikipedia). The Economist, Le Figaro, Granma, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, El Pais and even CNN are accessible so I can still get news from all over the world.

I'm sure I'll get used to it.