Boys from the wang ba

摘要

It's a familiar scene the world over. Rows of young men hunched over glowing screens, looking like they ve been there for days. They are immersed in virtual worlds, surfing the web, or shopping for gadgets. I'm in a wang ba, or net bar, on bustling Chengfu Street in Beijing. The scene appears at odds with the popular perception of China as a ruthless suppressor of internet freedom: in the run-up to the Chinese Communist Party congress last month, western media reported the censoring of blogs, suspension of websites and even whole internet service providers being closed down. Yet when I ducked into one of the dozens of net bars in the vicinity of Tsinghua University, I couldn't find an empty seat. Welcome to the Chinese internet.