Monica Lam is a news producer for KQED's This Week in Northern California who has produced stories on China and recently interviewed Ai Weiwei

The Great Firewall of China is almost as formidable as the one of stone and mortar, but not quite. Here and there, the very complexity of Internet oversight allows for the unintentional dispersal of information. And there is a waiting audience for such renegade info as a counter to the state's official cleansing of news in favor of social stability. High Tech, Low Life follows two of China's first “citizen reporters” as they roam the country reporting on social and economic debacles that have been routinely suppressed by official outlets. Equipped with laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras, each is a one-man, mobile news station circulating the unbridled news through blogs and other postings. The two troublemakers are “Tiger Temple,” known as China's first citizen reporter after he rashly reported on a local murder, and “Zola” who is more tabloid to T.T.'s activist bent. A folk hero of sorts, Tiger Temple, really fifty-seven-year-old Zhang Shihe, takes to the countryside on his bike, documenting rural pollution and other felonious deeds. Zhou Shuguang, aka Zola, a twenty-seven--year-old vegetable vendor, seeks celebrity as a result of his under-the-radar reporting. Regardless of motive, both indie reporters implicitly advocate free speech, a dangerous position given governmental censorship. They are hounded by security forces and at times literally escorted out of towns before trouble stirs. An optimist, Tiger Temple declared, "last year we could talk about X but not about Y. Now this year we can talk about Y, and next year we'll be able to talk about Z." That leaves only twenty-three other letters censored.