China Blocks All Mention of Nobel Winner

If you're reading this, you're not in China. With Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo's Nobel prize Friday, the world's largest cyber-filtering system, dubbed the "Great Firewall of China," kicked into gear, blocking all mention of the laureate online. Even text messages are screened. Shanghai resident @littley tweeted, "My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize." Twitter, incidentally, is banned, though tech-savvy users can get to it through proxy servers. People on the microblogging site were ecstatic, tweeting that they'd cried for joy when they heard the news and expressing gratitude for the Nobel committee for ignoring the state's warning against giving the prize to Xiaobo. "Thanks for giving China a glimmer of hope," tweeted @Frankus21. For most people in China, the only news of the prize came in the form of a short statement read by a state TV anchor calling the decision "a blasphemy."