Entitled “Reflections Of A Bridge Blogger”, Roland Soong’s CNBloggercon speech wonderfully sums up the transition that’s happened, largely due to the Internet, in China over the past five years that he’s been writing EastSouthWestNorth. Unfortunately, due to a family emergency, attendees at the 2008 China Blogger Convention in Guangzhou last weekend were unable to hear what he had to say. But fortunately for everyone, the entire text of “Reflections of a Bridge Blogger” has been posted on ESWN.
Are you a laowai who’s left China for cozier shores, but miss the fun and frustration that Chinese Web surfing brings?
Do you spend nights longing for the roulette-like spin of trying to access Web sites in one of the world’s most censored nations?
Have you found yourself typing in nonsensical URLs in hopes of resurrecting the now elusive “page not found” error?
Tired of being able to visit sites about insidious topics like 
, 
, 
, 
and the likes?
Man, have we got the Firefox plugin for you! The China Channel Firefox Add-on instantly teleports your browser behind the Great Firewall of China and allows you to experience the Internet the way …
In my four years in China I’ve yet to see a legitimate version of any software here. Generally when purchasing apps and games in the Middle Kingdom you have two choices - pirated software that looks pirated, and pirated software that looks real.
Like pretty much every other media, most notably DVDs, the software industry suffers greatly from the blatant distribution of pirated products in China - and most Chinese don’t give a damn.
Scratch that, most Chinese likely don’t have any real concept of what the difference is between paying for legitimate …
I just stumbled across a new Web site dishing out answers to all your China legal questions - for free!
The rather IM-ishly named 15minutes4u.com believes that most legal questions us foreigners have about China could be answered in under 15 minutes of a legal professional’s time and they are striving to deliver just such advice - and did I mention it’s free?
The questions are answered by “a group of experienced legal professionals practiced or law students studied in China, US or other jurisdictions.” [sic - because I can't really make sense of it]. Questions seem to range from the expected trade/business law queries to advice for ESL teachers done wrong.
Ba ba ba - as the crowds of Olympic spectators herd themselves into their seats for the opening ceremonies, the eights are everywhere.
As, by now, everyone’s likely aware - “eight” is an auspicious number in Chinese culture and it’s no coincidence that The Games are starting at 8:08:08 pm on 08/08/2008. The reason for this is that 8, 八 in Chinese, is pronounced bā - which is somewhat similar to the pronunciation of 发/fā, meaning “prosper” or “wealth”.
Drivers pay for license plates with 8s in them, businesses scramble to get lots of 8s in their phone numbers, couples wait to marry on days and times with 8s in them… it’s little surprise that the biggest …
It’s only been a month since BBC’s English-language news website was unblocked by Net Nanny for the first time in the three years that I’ve been in China with regular web access.
And now today, more astonishingly, the BBC’s Chinese language news site has also been unblocked, quite possibly for the first time in the history of the Interwebs.
Here are the two front pages, as I wrote this now on the evening of July 31st. Somewhat amusingly, the front page of the English section blares that the BBC’s Chinese site is now unblocked within China, although that same ’shock’ news is not featured in the BBC Chinese part:
…
Those who are in the know in China all say that a Virtual Private Network is the way to go if you want to get around the so-called Great Firewall in China. Most VPNs cost money, but I recently found this free one that works well, and I thought I’d share it with you guys. As you can see from the video, it’s a very quick and easy install and requires no expertise at all (my speciality!) to configure.
Spread the word among your friends in China. Screw proxies. This is friggin’ wonderful.
Watch the Video of the VPN install:
After wandering the halls of the China blogsphere for a few years now, it generally takes a pretty unique China-themed site to raise my eyebrow. ChinaSMACK is just such a site.
Essentially the site digs up, translates and reposts all the shit and sludge, peppered liberally with the plain weird, that are hot (or “viral”) topics in the Chinese-language Internet (blogs, bbs, etc.).
The site is well summed up by its tagline:
“Viral Chinese internet stories, pictures, & videos, translated. See what’s so popular, sexy, scandalous, or shocking behind the Great Wall”
I remember back in the early days of the net me and my high school buddies couldn’t get enough of the site rotten.com …
I’m not sure what amuses me more, that Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao has a Facebook profile, or that he has more supporters on his profile than US President George W. Bush.
That’ll teach George not to respond to natural disasters in a timely manner.
Still, the PM is just below Arnold Schwarzenegger - but really, even if you stick all the disasters that Grandpa Wen has weathered, it hardly amounts to saving the world from a future war with cyborgs. I mean, lets keep some perspective.
From the NYT article:
The page appears to have been set up recently. It is not clear whether Mr. Wen, 65, did …
If you’ve been using the Firefox addon Access Flickr, which allows you view Flickr photos while being behind the Great Firewall, you may have noticed some photos display just fine and some wont at all.
Since posting last june about the fantastic solution for us shutterbugs in China, Flickr has added a new “farm” for photo storage - essentially a different sub-domain of the Flickr site. Unless you are using the latest version of the addon, currently 1.9, you will have sporadic broken images in your browser.
To fix this, simply upgrade to Access Flickr 1.9 or higher.
Not using Firefox yet? Why the heck not? Download it free.
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