A week on Tuesday I’m going to China again. Starting in Shanghai, which is on the East coast in the centre, at the mouth of the Yangtze river. I’m travelling with Rosemary, my mum (who I spent a few weeks with in Japan three years ago; see the last few articles here). We’re going to head for Chengdu, route still to be decided. Email me or post comments if you have suggestions, particularly if you know anybody living in China who could show us around.

Think for a minute, what have you read about China in newspapers and magazines recently? It’s almost certainly very distorted, a Western view of this rapidly changing, ancient country. I’ve been watching out for better sources of Chinese news. The best best place is EastSouthWestNorth (scroll down to “section 3 of 3: Blog posts” for the meat, and for the RSS feed). A guy in Hong Kong translates important mainland Chinese news stories and blog posts into English. Highlights from the last few months:

• What is the single most famous photograph in China? What is the message of the photo? What happened to the girl? The translated articles give the full story.
• Review of some of the reactions to the incident on the White House lawn when Chinese President Hu Jintao was visiting their last week. Fascinating to read about offence caused by a bad simultaneous translator.
• The True Life of a Political Worm. Translation of a forum post detailing political machinations within Chinese local government.
• Voodoo Dolls in China. An occult, cotton fad amongst the young.
• The Most Popular Forum Post Ever In China. A class system to put the British one to shame.
• The February Girl Pics. A more typical example of forum fare (heck, I could do with somebody making translated digests of MySpace or FaceParty posts, despatches from Western youth culture).
• The Most Popular Chinese Blogger. An actress with 10 million hits in the first four months.
• A Day In The Life Of A Chinese Internet Police Officer. A Chinese reporter has a go. It turns out to be very boring.
• A Third Way for Yahoo explains what a warrant to extract information from an ISP looks like.
• Fifth Uncle and Fifth Aunt about poverty in rural China, and media reporting of it.
• Three Chinese Weddings. Photographs of three quite different marriages.

Roland Soong, who provides this vital, tenuous link between the Chinese and English language Internets, has also translated an article about himself. (Also thanks to Dan O’Huiginn for reminding me that it is easy to spend too much time reading in English. He proceeded to investigate Mongolia, South Korea and the Czech Republic more thoroughly).

A woman with a pink crash helmet baby on the back of her bicycle. A cycling man with a red rucksack. A fast helmeted man overtaking a cute girl, overtaking a pair of friends. Depressed looking woman in a long coat riding away. Sporty man talking on his mobile cycling to my right. Two friendly small-backpackers with short (but below knee) trousers. A green sports utility vehicle. A man in a yellow flourescent jacket, with a pannier. Another fluorescent jacket, but helmeted, and this time with sunglasses. A peroxide blonde. A couple of indistinct people. A girl in a bright purple top, and shorts. Long haired guy, cycling, must play jazz. A family, with two little girls, walking (first walkers for a while). A tough, young, bearded, fun, australian like guy with a green rucksack. Somebody with a small plastic carrier bag hanging of their handle bars. Two friends (sisters?) one younger than the other. A black coat, rucksacked man man pushing his bicycle, accompanied by a jolly grey coated woman. Fluorescent yellow bicycle clips. A chinese girl, in technical trousers. A besuited asian carrying one end of a metal ladder, the other end a short blonde white girl. A rush of eight cyclists of all types, in one direction. A couple of walkers. A cycling girl the other way, in a super green checked coat. Three girl friends in trendy clothes.

OK, your mission for today, should you choose to accept it, is to find out who your birth Lord is. This is a special mission.

My birth Lord is Richard Rogers of Riverside (biography, Parliamentary record). He was born on the same day at the end of July as me. He’s a famous architect, responsible for the Pompidou Centre (picture right). More recently his career has flopped, as he designed the Millennium Dome! He’s in the Labour party, doesn’t vote much, and has once or twice rebelled on Terrorism. He sticks to his special skills when talking in Parliament, always on subjects like planning and urban renewal. I’ve written him a polite letter to find out his views on the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Instructions for finding your own birth Lord:

1. Go immediately to WriteToThem.com’s new Lords edition.
2. Where it says “birthday” enter your birthday.
3. You will be told which members of the House of Lords have the same birthday as you. Clearly, they must be the ones that represent you in Parliament!
4. Click on “Find out more about Lord … (new window) on TheyWorkForYou.com.” to learn more about your birth Lord. If you have more than one birth Lord, you’ll need to click on their name first.
5. See what party they are, scroll down to read their speeches. Click the link in the right sidebar to read their Wikipedia biography.
6. Blog about your birth Lord, you can pinch the format I used above.
7. Ask five of your blogging friends to in turn find and post about their birth Lords.
8. Bonus points: Write a letter introducing yourself to your Lord. At least make sure you don’t forget your birthday, so next time you need to write a Lord you know who to write to!

Sit back, relax, and enjoy that new found glow of democratic accountability all day.

(Confused? Read the mySociety Open the Lords day announcement here. No idea what a Lord is? Read here.)

A while ago, over a period of a few months, I happened to come across a whole set of activities which are quite different from the normal day to day of society. It’s difficult to describe what they have in common, so I’ll tell you about them first, and try to explain it after.

1. Urban Exploring

   Spelunking is historically done in natural caves, but those all seem a bit prissy and green to these modern city people. Instead they break into ruined hospitals, brave university steam tunnels, explore abandoned sea forts and numerous other places.

   Most have a law abiding ethic – trespass is the only crime they commit. Instead they look after the places that they go. Learn about them and document their history. Take only photos, leave only footprints. People all over the world self-organise and do this. Slightly illegal, slightly dangerous, but fun, new, real.

2. Space Hijackers

   These “anarchitects” came to fame in 1999 with their Circle Line Party. It looked like an ordinary tube train, but between each station 150 normal looking commuters suddenly burst into life – sound systems, disco lights, refreshments and dancing – only to go quiet again at the next stop.

   They’re organised, with a secret mailing list and forum, and I like to imagine there’s an artist’s studio where they hang out somewhere in East London to hatch plots and build radio-jamming two piece suits. There’s a new Singapore branch, trying not to let the wait until 2010 for the Singapore Circle Line to be built hold them back from other projects.

   Not sure exactly what they do yet? See if you can learn to Spot the Hijackers.

3. Confluencing

   These guys have arbitarily picked some random points on the earth (those with exact integral longitude and latitude) and are collaboratively visiting all of them, taking photos facing north, south, east and west. Scroll round the huge worldwide map for the results.

   This may seem a bit fluffy after urban spelunking and space hijacking, but rest assured if you pick the right points you can fall out with border guards and have to work out a way to enter a military base (they were only allowed to photograph facing north-east).

   Confluencing reminds us that here are lots of spaces in the world in between the tourist attractions, and our normal daily routine.

4. Guerilla Gardening

   So, what you do is you enter somebody else’s property without their permission, and plant seeds. Maybe put daffodils in an unloved corner owned by the electricity company, or turn a dis-used lot into an allotment for the year. For bonus points come back again and again to water and prune your plants, or to defend them against slugs and to eat your harvest.

   This is great, because although it is illegal, it is indisputably good. It subverts property rights (by questioning your right to own land you do not tend) and makes the world prettier at the same time. So much so, that this year it’s gained enough mass media coverage to be in danger of stopping being hip. But heck, if it takes Richard and Judy to get advertising account planners to illegally water lavender in their hundreds, then I’m all for it.

So what’s the interesting link between all of those? Here are some things they have in common.

• They’re all (at least partly or potentially) illegal, and yet they’re reasonable things to do. They’re in those edge spaces where the law has grabbed too much territory, where things which are fun and good and life affirming aren’t allowed.
• They can be done by anyone, without a big central organisation. Sure, you have to be able to afford to buy the compost or the GPS device, but that’s about it.
• There’s no commercial gain involved, no consuming of goods or services.
• They reclaim space as public space. More and more of our land and world is controlled and limited. Property rights work and make sense, giving us private space. But excessive control of shared spaces impoverishes us all.

What other things can you think of that are like these four? (Answer in the comments below)

The Internet is getting on now – it’s about ten years since significant numbers of people started getting access from home. I meet students who’ve had access to search engines through all their teenage years. My own childhood looks like a drought of information in retrospect. I remember sucking in monthly magazines and books, writing to university friends of my brothers to get vital data. Now they can just Google.

In all that time the Internet has got pretty good at commerce, and not at all bad at entertainment. The missing thing, the thing that we’ve only just begun to see the benefits of, is how the Internet will alter society, local communities, democracy. The charity mySociety that I work for builds simple, tangible websites with that goal.

Two and a half years ago we had a call for proposals, from which we got ideas like Pledge Bank and HearFromYourMP. This year we’re looking for more of the same with a new call for proposals. Follow that link and have a read of what has been proposed so far (not much yet!) and add your own suggestions.

If you please, I’m getting a bit bored of politics ideas. Particularly I’m involved in far too many websites about MPs, so if you must post up political ideas, make it about central or local government. What I really want is a new idea as good as PledgeBank, something which isn’t either left or right wing, which surprises people, which leaps with agility ahead improving all sorts of things in unexpected ways. But I’ll settle for something local, social, civic.