Conspiracy Theory # 27: blame it on the jazz

Yesterday evening The Commenter-in-Chief sent me the joyous text message: "Hortense is back!"

Hortense is a young Frenchwoman who runs a small arts promotion company here called Hi-Tang. In addition to her commercial activities, she also compiles a free weekly e-newsletter on the upcoming events on Beijing's limited - but occasionally rather good - jazz (& folk) scene.

She's been on a break for most of this month, and I have been rather at a loss as to how to plan my weekends without her. Tulsa, The C-i-C, is very nearly as much of a music junkie as me, so has been feeling similarly deprived these past few weeks.

Good news indeed, then, that Mlle H had returned to us.

Except that only an hour or two later, before I had had a chance to check this week's listings from the indispensable Hortense, Yahoo Mail (and all the other appendages of the Yahoo juggernaut) abruptly disappeared off the cyber-map in China.

Coincidence? Oh, no, I don't think so!!

I mean, JAZZ - it is the most subversive, the most shamelessly anarchic of all musical forms, isn't it? And it has long been associated with drug-taking, heavy drinking, loose sexual morality, and other non-conformist, distrubing social attitudes. Sharing information about upcoming jazz events in the capital is obviously just the thin end of a wedge that leads rapidly to huge conspiracies to undermine the harmony of society.

After all, the other major bugbears of the present Chinese leadership are a wise and gentle monk, a slippery and self-serving - but freely elected! - politician, and an old people's exercise club. Honestly - any CCP timeserver will eagerly expatiate on how the greatest threat to the national security of the People's Republic today is...... the Dalai Lama. Where Dubya has his 'Axis of Evil', China has the 'Axis of Naughty'.

If the old geezer in the vermillion robes is such a scourge, I don't think they're going to be giving Keith Jarrett or Branford Marsalis a visa to come here any time soon. Oh NO - folks here much prefer the likes of Richard Clayderman, remember?

And Hortense and I will continue to be subject to this surveillance and harrassment - 'enemies of society' that we are!