Hey,, what's up with you guys? Is Gokunming run by Christians who can't take a bit of much needed criticism? Or did you get complaints from religious people and decided to dish out some censoring? I'd love to hear the excuse but I'd much rather hear you guys admit to having made a serious mistake and re-open the thread. It is frankly embarrasing.

Hehe...I noticed it too.

I have no idea why, but it might be due to safety, since there aren't supposed to be any Christian missionary's in China.

Perhaps everyone who posted here will be investigated. Are you ready??

Cheers - - JJ

Kinda stupid thing to say JJ for a myriad of reasons. But if you want to make people feel uncomfortable I can assure you that while the CCP doens't like certain things written in public the denouncing of religion isn't one of them. China's official stand on religion is still based on solid communist values hence I have no problem expressing anti-religious views on a public Chinese forum such as this one. Anyway the (few) delicate threads on this site is nothing compared to what is going on at the major Chinese language chat forums or thebeijinger.com.

Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but we locked it for the same reason we've lock other threads - ad hominem attacks. To quote Danmairen in the thread in question:

"Tanfei: Stop using words like "kaleidoscopic". It makes you sound gay and makes my eyes rain. Your scooter sucks. :)"

Having comments such as this in our forum section is frankly embarrassing.

We're happy to provide a platform for people to have intelligent discussions about any topic, but once people start calling each other names we lock it.

Feel free to talk about whatever you want here, all we ask is that you behave like adults. If you're looking to flame each other there are plenty of other websites where you can do that.

I thought we WERE having an intelligent discussion. Using the comment cited as a reason to lock the thread is bit of an stretch and perhaps a bit of hypersensitivity on the part of the moderator.

What part of the statement was embarrassing? The word Gay or sucks? Isn't this how censorship starts? You are getting uncomfortable with certain statements or ideas and you lock it down. I'm not saying this is a case of censorship, if it were you could've deleted the entire thread. I'm just saying this is the beginning of a slippery slope.

I Googled ad hominem and here's what wiki said (yes I admit I didn't know what it meant before):Ad hominem argument is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.

I didn't view what Dan said as an personal attack on the Tanfei or using that attack to discredit what he had said earlier, he only expressing an personal opinion on the use of certain words. Also, taken as a whole and in context I didn't feel it was particularly hurtful. It wasn't his main argument of his rebuttal, in fact it had nothing to do with his argument at all, it was just an off-handed remark. Was it a bit off-colored? Perhaps, but definitely not nasty or hurtful. Maybe they know each other in real life and it was an inside joke.

I felt the thread was getting a little heated and passionate but by no means spiraling out of control into an all out flame war.

Having said all that, I still would like to thank Chris and all the hard working people behind making this website available to the expat community to express their thoughts and share their experiences. The website obviously didn't come free and I for one, most certainly did not contribute a single dime or jiao, so kudos to all of you for making this possible.

Anyway, I'll get off the soapbox and let someone else have a say.

Cheers!

"For those who say they have no "soul" - - I'm wondering. Did they never have one? Did they give it away? Did they sell it? Or do I see lots of "self-doubt" creeping in?"

Soul is just humbug, we are just the product of random chemical reactions and eons of random events... since I am nothing but this lump of matter, when I die I will seize to exist... it's really that simple to me anyway. Maybe except for a few of my random molecules that will find their way to that glass of water that your grandson pour down his throat 50 years later... at least he will not know that this microscopic section of my pubes entered his delicate system.

Tanfei is a friend of mine in real life,, the comment was clearly ironical and the fact that I mention his scooter with a smiley as well as making a reference to "Tropic Thunder" should have given it away.

In the future I will make sure to keep all posts in a manner that doesn't risk offending anyone who might read it, hear about it or otherwize come in contact with it in any way. I hereby apologize unconditionally to Tanfei who's been crying a lot since he saw my comment where I referred to him as sounding homosexual and for my derogatory remark about his scooter.

I also want to apologize to gay people who might have stumbled over my post and taken offense. I in fact have nothing against gay people what so ever and I support gay marriage and adoption. Speaking of gay marriage: I also want to apologize to any religious nuts for calling them religious nuts and also apologize to them for supporting gay marriages of which I know they will take offense. Man,, it is really hard to express anything if you don't want to risk offending anyone.

PS. I feel I need to say sorry to the gay community for saying sorry to religious people because I in my apology to the gay community mentioned that I support gay marriage and adoption. I now realize that saying sorry makes me sound as if I do not stand by my statement. I am hereby very very sorry.

Danmairen - - but you didn't apologize to the

"Gay Christians"