T-Salon

Update: Massage Milk and Milk Pig are two of the three blogs that were blocked yesterday but are now available again. See Danwei and China Herald for details.

Every month, if not every week, there is bound to be news on blogs being taken down inside China.

Danwei reports that three of the China's best blogs were blocked this morning.

"Two of the disappeared blogs are Massage Milk and Milk Pig, hosted on Yculblog.com. Both blogs currently display the following message:

Due to unavoidable reasons with which everyone is familiar, this blog is temporarily closed. (emphasis added)

Milk Pig was the blog of a young female reporter living in Guangzhou. She usually published short and harmless gossipy posts. She recently wrote about getting into a fight with some other girls in a shopping mall, prompting her to observe that the police were useless.

Massage Milk, familiar to regular Danwei readers, writes acerbic cultural commentary, and has recently been featured in Newsweek and other Western media.

The third blog, hosted on Soho Xiaobao, Qian Lie Xian Yao Fa Yan or Pro State in Flames, was written by a Beijing journalist who came to Danwei's attention when he covered the sacking of The Beijing News a few days before the end of 2005. Pro State in Flames currently displays the following message:

Because of non technical reasons, starting immediately, this blog is temporarily closed. Thanks for your interest. (emphasis added)

Makes me wonder if Chinese blog providers have started to become a little bit more transparent with censorship because its major rival Microsoft's MSN Spaces has started doing that given mounting public pressure in the past two months or so.