A garden party in eastern Beijing planned as a protest turned into a celebration yesterday after the Chinese government postponed its plan to fit all computers in the country with Green Dam, a controversial web filtering software.

"The government has learned a valuable lesson that you cannot treat your citizens like that," said Ai Weiwei, an outspoken artist who had invited internet users to spend the day in a garden restaurant and off the web to mark the day, originally the government's deadline for the program's introduction.