Connecting China - "Online games drives some of us crazy" - Lan Dou, Weifang, Shandong


He himself has his online habits very much under control, says Lan Dou (20), a student at Weifang in the Shandong province, the next participant in Connecting China. “But some of my class mates really get crazy.” Lan Dou went online in 2002, after he went to university. “Before that I was to busy in doing my home work.”
During his holidays, he spends about 15 hours per day on the internet, chatting playing games and getting information. Back at university he intends to bring that back to less than an hour on average, because he has to work again very hard but also because his college has no internet connection, unlike the universities in the larger cities. Lan Dou wants to go there for his graduate study, to Qingdao, Beijing or even far away Shanghai. “So I have to work very hard.”
He is chatting on ICQ, QQ, MSN and sometimes Yahoo, and has at some services even multiple accounts. “That is quite common for internet users I know,” he says. “I have different accounts for class mates, for foreigners, for friends.” Also one account for talking to women? Lan Dou: “Hehe, maybe.”
Almost all of his class mates are online and the internet is very popular also among the 800,000 inhabitants of this trade and commercial center: his parents only pay 60 Rmb per month for their broadband connection, about half the rate in the larger cities.
He is quite sure he can cut back again his online time, once classes start. “I anyway do not like the environment of the internet cafés around campus,” he says. He even did not join at the last evening before the holiday when almost every student got online to play games and celebrate the upcoming freedom.
It is mostly a small group of male students that often stay up all night at the internet cafes and are really addicted, estimates Lan Dou. “Less than ten percent of the students.” Only a few girls join into the all-night online gaming. The university did some random checks of students ID, but Lan Dou thinks they should do more. “Especially for the ones who are addicted.”
Picture is of a Weifang kite, Lan Dou might send a picture when we find somebody in Weifang who has a scanner.