AsiaPundit has been on a break for New Year’s holiday, which stretches to include the second and third in China, but others have not been so remiss in updating their blogs.:

Letters from China, in spite of saying there would be no posts until the fifth, offers a great update of the purge at Beijing News, and the shutdown of blogs by Sina.:

Photos: Tears (Originally uploaded by Wang Xiaoshan, a Beijing News editor, on his Sina blog;Taken on December 29 in Beijing)

Among the links worth following are translations of blogs posts by ESWN and a short rant by Michael Anti prior to the shutdown of his MSN blogs reproduced on the Shanghaiist.:

Chinese blogger Mr. Anti, who had run a number of posts on this issue and called for a boycott of the newspaper (he’d already subscribed for the year of 2006 but wanted to cancel it and get a refund), has had … his Chinese MSN spaces blog … nuked … We guess Anti doesn’t matter much to one of the persons of the year … before Anti was forced to "sign out", he left a couple of angry posts about this issue that Shanghaiist copied down. Here’s our favorite one: 说实话,我宁愿去吃屎我也不要订什麼《光明日报》和它的什麼变种. Translation: Truth be told, I would rather eat shit than subscribe to Guangming Daily or any of its ilk.