#3 - What I did with no internet for 6 months

Watched tons of movies, and listened to music.

-Watched some Kurosawa films.
-Some Clint westerns, and Dirty Harry
-Lots of old Kung Fu movies (harder to find than you might expect).
-Lots of Hitchcock
-Lots of music DVDs - Live concert DVDs of Deep Purple, Elvis, Pink Floyd, GWAR, W.A.S.P., the GooGoo Dolls
-I'm in the middle of Season 2 of 24 right now.

If you don't know how China works, you might be surprised at what is available. In the West, everyone hears about censorship, etc. But, it's not really like that. All the new stuff from the US, Russia, Japan, Korea, France is easily available. And, TONS of older films are sitting on the shelf as well.

Good music is hard to find though.

Not because of censorship, but because China likes crap music. Stores stock crap CDs, because thats what the people want.

People in China like bubble-gum pop. No actual bands with musical instruments in front of them. Just people lip-syncing songs they didn't write, while a drum machine blurts out pablum in the background.

Best music store I have seen was a shop in Inner Mongolia when I was there last September. GREAT selection! Too bad I haven't found the same in Beijing.

I have found a really great Chinese band though. English name is "Cold Blooded Animal". Main dude is XTX. Really good stuff, if you like loud guitars, drums, etc. Only problem is they have only released one album, and one solo album by XTX. I have them both. Good stuff.

Here is the website for XTX if anyone is interested: http://www.xietianxiao.com/index_en.swf