Chinese gamer fumes at quake shutdown

[UnReaL]

SOURCE: The Inquirer

A WOMAN WAS SO MIFFED that her favourite online game (we hope it wasn't Quake) was shut down for three days because of the Chinese disaster that she created a video rant and posted it.

Gao Qianhui, 21, posted the video which showed her sitting inside what appears to be an Internet cafe. After introducing herself as a "common young girl" from Liaoning province in northeastern China, Gao moaned that she had no interest in coverage of the earthquake.

She said only a few people died and, face it, China didn't have shortage of people. What was more important was that her favourite game was down for three days out of respect for the dead.

Unfortunately for Qianhui, her post was in China and so coppers swooped and she was immediately carted off to jail.

The Xinhua News Agency said the case was highlighted by Blogging for China, although no one was sure which law Qianhua had broken.

However anyone waving the free speech card might find themselves without much in the way of support.

The Xinhua story carried on Netease alone had more than 17,000 comments mostly calling for her to be lynched.

Web Report: Yahoo News

----------------

Probably a World of Warcraft player, but still its a stupid thing to say on a video..

[frogstamper]

However a distasteful comment it does show that the Chinese people especially the young, want more than just economic progress, they want social and political change as well. A few years back I doubt we outside of China would have heard about this, but no matter how slow, political change in China will happen.

Some of those chinese really take their gaming seriously lol wasn't it last year one of them played some game till they literally starved to death and then in what i thought was the ultimate ****take they had an online funeral for the person in the game.

[UnReaL]

@ RizzyKing:

Published: September 17, 2007


A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday.

The 30-year-old man fainted at a cybercafe in the city of Guangzhou on Saturday afternoon after he'd been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe, it said. The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.

The report didn't say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing.

The report said that about 100 other Web surfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man's death."

China has 140 million Internet users, second only to the United States. It is one of the world's biggest markets for online games, with tens of millions of players, many of whom hunker down for hours in front of PCs in public Internet cafes.

Several cities have clinics to treat what psychiatrists have dubbed "Internet addiction" in users, many of them children and teenagers, who play online games or surf the Web for days at a time.

[frogstamper]

Originally Posted by UnReal

China has 140 million Internet users, second only to the United States. It is one of the world's biggest markets for online games, with tens of millions of players, many of whom hunker down for hours in front of PCs in public Internet cafes.

Just out of interest, is China similar to Cuba in that ordinary citizens are not allowed computers and/or Internet access in their homes?

[UnReaL]

I think all the ISPs in China are state owned, so therefore there would probably be no point in having your own computer, as they will censor everything they don't want you to see, or access to criticise the Government.

Thus making way for Internet Cafes, but that does not mean they keep them open, as they have already closed down 1000's of Internet Cafes because of people using the computers to attack the Government and protest on blogs, etc.

I'm sure others will know more about it.