I checked my web statistics which confirmed that my Chinese readership had disappeared into the ether.

I'm still unsure of what particular offence I had caused to the PRC Government. My hunch is that I used the word "democracy" in a post a few days prior to the banning which triggered an automatic "potential dissident" filter. Any other conjecture would lead down the path to a full blown conspiracy theory of the tin foil hat variety. Since then, the site has been turned on and off to a Chinese audience at what seems to be random intervals. I had almost forgotten that it had ever happened until last week.

Karen Coates, who blogs about food at Rambling Spoon and writes for Gourmet magazine seems to have been banned from physically entering China to cover food at the Olympics due to her food blog. On the visa application process, she writes for Gourmet:

I waited through May and June. I waited with my husband, a photographer who had applied at the same time. Finally, he started calling the consulate. There was a small window of time each morning during which the consulate would address visa matters. Yet every phone call led to a recording that asked him to press "2" for help in English, which ended with: "Thank you for calling. Goodbye."

This continued for weeks—phone calls and faxes to L.A. and Beijing, always into the void. In July, my Beijing buddy (an American journalist who has spent more than seven years in China) offered to help. (She must be doing a good job because she recently discovered a mysterious electronic device hidden in her office doorbell.) Upon checking into the matter, her Chinese assistant learned that my husband had an invitation letter waiting for him; he just had to pick it up in L.A. (Too bad we live in New Mexico.) But Beijing had no record of me or my application, which my friend's assistant said was a clear rejection. That's how the Chinese government says "no." You don't exist.

Her husband subsequently received his visa. I had met Karen earlier in Cambodia: Southeast Asian food blogging is a small fraternity. I emailed her to see if a particular piece from her food blogging past could have triggered her ban to entering China.

"As far as I know, the website I share with (my husband) has been blocked in China ever since we traveled there in 2000. I did write an article about Tibet for a small American newspaper after that trip, and I have made comments on my blog about Tibet since then. Maybe that's what did it—who knows." Karen writes, "Yet (my husband's) photos for an article a few years ago on a controversial dam played prominently in the Times—and apparently he was "invited" to the Olympics (although no one bothered to tell him until just a few weeks ago). It's impossible to guess these things."

Any food writer that is worth reading looks beyond the plate that is immediately in front of them. If they're writing well, they get enraptured by the broader controversies within culture and politics because what we eat is tied to larger issues of power. It would be disappointing if I have been banned from entering China because of the occasional link that I make between say, Uighur food and politics or talk about Tibet . It won't ever stop me writing.