Seventy six trombones led the big parade in the Music Man. One hundred and ten cornets were following right behind. All of them were delivered by the Wells Fargo man. It’s a shame that Wells Fargo doesn’t have their act together as well as they did back in River City. Maybe if they did, my parents would still have access to their bank account. Of course “parents” starts with P and that rhymes with T and that stands for “trouble” so it’s possible that something would have still gone wrong.

I religiously keep track of my expenditures as a matter of course. I find that when I write down how much money has gone out, every time it goes out (even for sums as small as half a yuan), that less money goes out overall. So, since I happen to have a fairly large chunk of money in my corporate account for the translation agency, there was no reason for us to ever touch my mom and dad’s money during their visit to China. They’d be able to put the dollars in my US account when they got back to the States.

In the Beijing Airport, the 50 or 60 renminbi in leftover money my friend Mike had from his last trip to China wasn’t nearly enough to cover two coffees let alone their overweight luggage fee and dad went to an ATM. Although this would have raised a flag which should have indicated that the cardholder was in China, this is not what caused the problem.

I’ve had my US card stopped at least twice since I’ve been in China. Once, it was my fault. I lost the card. The other time, it was the bank’s fault but it was a temporary stop, and although it inconvenienced me, I had used the card in four countries in a 36 hour time period and it’s somewhat reasonable for that to be flagged as “suspicious”.

The problem was that my parents, like most people over the age of 20, even when on holiday, still have bills to pay. Even in this modern world, not all bills are the same amount every month, and not all bills can be set up for automatic payment. Furthermore, my dad is the kind of person who likes to look at a bill before the money is taken out of his bank account. I am the same, so this is probably an inherent personality trait rather than something learned from the time one of his banks tried to take 2.5 million dollars out of an account that had $250.00 in it.

After they’d been in China for a few days, my dad logged on to his Wells Fargo online bank access, using a name and password different from what is written on the card, and paid one of his bills. Predictably, since my parents had both called Wells Fargo and gone to their local Wells Fargo branch prior to their flight so as to inform the bank that they would be out of the country and that their US phone number would not be answered for the next three months, the Online Payment Department notified the Fraud Department that there was suspicious activity originating from a Chinese IP address.

The Wells Fargo Fraud Department should have looked at the file which said “cardholder in China”. They should have looked at the file which had the cardholder’s Chinese phone number. They didn’t.

Instead, they called my parents home phone number and no one answered. Even though the Wells Fargo Fraud Department conscientiously called three times, no one answered the phone.

So when my dad next went online to use his bank card, he was locked out.

It’s a joint account with my mom so they tried using her online access to at least talk to the bank. But Wells Fargo refused to talk to her (about an account that she is listed owner as) because it wasn’t her card that had been canceled. Obviously, since they’ve shown an unwillingness to look at the basic “WE ARE OUT OF THE COUNTRY” information along with my parents’ international contact number, my parents are none too willing to attempt enabling e-pay through her account as it will almost certainly be canceled for suspicious activity when the Fraud Department also can’t reach her at her home number.

Today my dad used his MagicJack (a USB powered phone jack for making calls from a US phone number) to call the bank and tried to explain to them that every late fee on every bill that goes unpaid will eventually need to be picked up by the bank’s Loss Department and that it is very likely that they will also have to pay him damages, but they were more interested in telling him that he should be picking up messages on his US phone when he is out of the country, doesn’t expect to be back in country for two more months, and told them a week before he left where he would be and what number they were supposed to reach him at.

The Wells Fargo Online Banking Department also told my dad off for having assumed that both calling the bank and going into the bank in person to let them know he would be out of the country would have any effect at all. He ought to know that they don’t have any place in the Online Banking Department to take note of such information as “will be out of the country,” or “please use my international contact number”. He also ought to know that whether or not the Wells Fargo Credit Card Department had shared information with the Wells Fargo Online Banking Department, it is not the Online Banking Department’s responsibility to save that information.

Though how calling the Fraud Department will manage to resolve the fact that Wells Fargo has already sent a new bank card to my parents’ US address is a mystery, my dad has been instructed to call the Fraud Department between 5am and 8pm Pacific Standard Time.

For most of my life the OCP debate was completely absent in my daily dialog. I don’t know that I ever gave it a moment’s thought before coming to China. Living here though, and watching as China-centric headlines increasingly fill Western news cycles, it’s a topic that repeatedly finds its way into my thoughts — particularly now that I’ve filled my quota.

In the reverse, prior to leaving North American soil, the great Pro-Choice/Pro-Life battle regularly found its way into my readings, discussions and thoughts. Since coming to China, not so much.

The Pro-Life/Pro-Choice discourse, in my admittedly limited understanding, primarily boils down to a Religion vs. Liberty debate. The religious feel that it is murder to have an abortion, and the libertarians believe women should have the decision to do what they wish to their body. What I find interesting is that the All Girls Allowed organization mentioned above, and others like it, while being aligned with the ‘pro-life’ camp, are primarily forwarding an argument of liberty: The OCP is immoral because it forces women to murder their unborn babies. It removes choice, and not for a fetus (as I’m sure someone is just itching to poke a hole in my description with), but specifically for the women involved. They are pro-choice.

Ok, not exactly. Their “pro-choice” only extends to allowing a women to have as many babies as she wants, not to her having the option of terminating the pregnancy should she choose to do so. Ultimately there’s an agenda there that would one day see the organizations switch to a similar rhetoric that their beliefs push to a Western-facing world — namely the encouragement of a system for authoritarian control of what women can and can’t do with their bodies.

And this is where organizations like the above lose my support. Their message is soured, to me at least, by their affiliation to religion and the beliefs that come with it that restrict another person’s liberty. I have a hard time seeing action spurred by religion, no matter how well-intended, as anything but devious. I know many readers are religious, and I know that statement is going to be a volatile one.

I wear my aversion to religion rather overtly. However, I am not trying to say that all actions of the religious are devious, simply because of their beliefs. There are plenty in the Faithful masses, just as in the non-believer circles, that do good simply because good needs doing, and not because someone or something told them it was the key to a magical place.

But ultimately, I can’t take seriously any organization that puts, as a cornerstone of their operational philosophy, prayer (nestled right between “Get Involved” and “News & Resources”). Adding “god” to an NGO is like adding made up interviews to a New York Times investigative piece. It strengthens your point to anyone who emphatically believes you or what you do, but muddles its validity and challenges your motivations with anyone even remotely skeptical.

I believe it is wrong to force a woman to abort her baby due to our rather fuzzy understanding of population and population control. And when that baby is nearly full-term, I think that’s criminal. It brings me to tears thinking about it, and I am not strong enough to spend too long considering what it must actually be like for women, for families, to actually go through that. To borrow a phrase, late-term abortions are murder. An abstract idea of “possibly better for the common good in the long term” does absolutely zero to temper my feelings about this. I would think anyone with a child feels similarly.

But when the mandate of your organization has a dark shadow just out of sight that would eventually likewise force women to sacrifice their liberty for what someone else feels is right, how can I support you? How can your message hold validity when it is tainted with the same self-righteousness and suppression that on the surface it is trying to stop?

All I need is a golden ticket.

Luckily, I found one, via a Google ad on a message board. Upon seeing the heading, Master’s in TESOL, I immediately clicked through to find a big banner full of jolly students on a pristine campus that has clearly gone beyond the call of duty when it comes to going green.

Nothing says “intellectual oasis” like smiling twenty-somethings and effective sanitation.

Within an hour of registering for more information, I received a phone call. Good thing I put down my number on the form — otherwise, I’d be worried.

The admissions counselor asked me some basic questions (pulse? homeostasis?) to see if I qualify to go to grad school. Once satisfied that oxygen reaches my brain, he asked me about my goals, touting his school as one that can meet my needs.

I have to say it was pretty informative, but with those creepy undertones you get from used-car salesmen. It’s here that I began to have my doubts, and as our conversation deepened, some red flags arose:

1) They advertise.

It’s bad enough that you’re advertising on the internet, but I guess I can overlook that (at least it’s not radio or late night TV). After all, the school’s name will carry well, and although I am learning the same thing I’d pick up at a state school or — imagine this — on my own, the school’s name will take me places those other two can’t. I accept this.

Oh, what’s that? It costs $1340 per credit hour? Hmmm, well, surely you offer a generous fellowship or some kind of teaching assistantship, right?

2) They don’t offer teaching assistantships.

From the conversation with the admissions counselor:

Me: Do you offer any assistantships?

Counselor: No, but we offer plenty of low-interest student loans.

Say no more. You had me at low-interest. *click*

3) They encourage you to take out student loans.

This is covered in the above, but I think it bears repeating. I think it bears repeating because the purpose of graduate school is to train scholars for the university. If you publish your MA thesis in a reputable journal, that looks good for the university. If you go on to a PhD, and if it’s at a high-ranking school (think, Ivy League), then the department can say that students go on from their school to prestigious universities. See? You’re not just a tuition bill in their eyes.

By playing your cards right, you can be a marketing tool too.

When you get down to it, you are delaying your entry into the wonderful world of work to contribute to the university. Even if you just grab your MA then book, you’re still contributing.

They should pay you.

Hell, they owe you — especially if you go on to develop a Unified Field Theory, as holders of an MA in TESOL are renowned for their contributions to scientific theory.

Furthermore, why the hell would anyone take out student loans to go to grad school? What a wonderful idea. Let’s take on near-impossible to bankrupt debt to obtain a piece of paper. Where do I sign up?

DO NOT TAKE OUT STUDENT LOANS TO PAY FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL. In fact, if you can avoid it, don’t take out student loans period.

But if you do decide to pay back your “education” plus interest, please do something that may enable you to get a job.

Or just run to China. As far as I know, collections don’t send people after you. Not for me, anyways.

There are probably other signs (such as: it’s an online program), but if you ignore these signs, chances are you won’t pay attention to the others. And besides, I’m strapped for time.

My online lecture on pedagogy starts in five minutes.

Subtitled with “A Cautionary Tale for Expats in China“, I was curious to read both what Carver endured and, perhaps most voyeuristically, what he did to get there.

His description of the long boring days (all eight of them), spartan comforts, and brief brush with man-on-man-on-man action were not without their charms. However, throughout the telling, I was finding it hard not to feel like Lionel got exactly what he asked for.

Carver’s reason for landing in the clink is pretty much absurd, from start to finish. Washing up in Shanghai, in search of the “jade dream”, he immediately shrugs off the ESL racket to try his hand at a less-worn path. He takes a job with a real-estate company that promises him regular pay and a Z-visa — neither of which materialize.

Eventually my 3-month tourist visa expired. I thought I would be okay as long as I laid low—but I was wrong. There are eyes everywhere in China, especially on foreigners.

It was in Huaqiaozhen, a suburb of Shanghai, that everything began to unravel. I had just signed a lease for a cheap, shared apartment, but, strangely, the landlord never came to collect the rent or sign the contract.

One Saturday morning I awoke to a knock at my door. I answered, thinking it would be the landlord, only to come face to face with a PSB (Public Security Bureau) officer checking identifications for registration.

Carver repeatedly fails to renew his visa or register with the PSB/police station. He also continues to rather blatantly dodge the authorities, who are quite obviously aware something’s, well, dodgy about this fella. He was finally busted after hiding out on his balcony in sight of the cops below — no translation needed, that screams “guilty of something” in all languages.

They took him to the station, explained he was staying in the country illegally with an expired visa (a fact that surely came as no surprise) and had the option to either pay a fine or go to jail for eight days. I’m pretty sure if we knew Lionel, like personally, we all would have known from the outset that going to jail was the option he would choose. I mean, his decisions up to that point hadn’t exactly been stellar — at least he’s consistent.

Go check out the whole story (really there’s bed shaking prison love that would make Tobias Beecher clench). “A Cautionary Tale for Expats in China” though? I don’t know iLook China well enough to know the blog’s readership all that well. We get a mixed bag of readers here at Lost Laowai though, and I’m decently confident this will be anything but a cautionary tale to most, if not all, of them.

In case some half-wit happens by though: if your visa is expiring — get it renewed. Do not stay in a country without a visa. It’s not hard. It’s not expensive. It’s certainly better than spending a week in jail. And if you do accidentally do overstay your visa (and it better involve a one-legged Mongolian prostitute, the Russian mafia and a case of baijiu) for christ’s sake, pay the fine. Or, better yet — just take the fucking teaching job in the first place.

I figure I use the things that tax money buys. I use the roads and the street lights at night. I use the parks and the heavily subsidized public transportation.

So I figure it’s only right that I ought to pay taxes.

My tax rate really isn’t all that high.

In fact, my accountant’s monthly fee to file my taxes is more than my taxes are most months. And that’s before the accountant plays around with numbers on forms so that I can be billed less.

Point of fact, however, avoiding paying my taxes is significantly easier than paying my taxes.

The first time I needed proof that taxes had been paid, I was still under the limit for minimum monthly income for a foreigner. It took me and my translator d’jour visits to three different offices before I could find anyone who knew anything about providing the proof let alone that I was proving payment in full on a net nothing.

The first time I had an employer who paid me pre-tax instead of after, attempts to find out how to pay my taxes were all but ignored by the government bureaux I talked to. They didn’t exactly say “go away” or “it’s not necessary” because saying that would be wrong. They just looked at me oddly and said things like “why do you want to know?” and “it’s not that important.”

The first time my business had a really large sum of eminently taxable income the tax bureau employee at the counter actually told me she had no idea how to do the paperwork on earnings that weren’t in renminbi and if the client didn’t want a receipt, I really shouldn’t bother.

In the end, I didn’t bother.

Only some of the forms were in triplicate.

I tried to sign up for the easy online tax payment system for issuing tax receipts when clients paid me but it was so complicated and poorly designed that the person in charge of the training class had problems figuring out how to undo the mistake he deliberately made in front of the class with the specific intent of showing us how to undo it.

Disregarding the fact that this was the instructor who teaches the class twice a day every day, if a native speaker of the language is having that kind of trouble with the “easy” system, I don’t need easy I can tolerate going downtown, standing in line, and going to the counter to get my official receipts. And if I did it that way, I also wouldn’t need to buy a dot matrix printer.

I did my tax receipts at the counter twice without any real problem. My foreignness made the employees a little more generous with regards to helping me fill out forms than they might have done for a Chinese person but as long as the forms got filled in correctly, I was happy.

Last Wednesday, I went to do tax receipts for the third time.

And I couldn’t.

I could go into all the details of explaining how the first counter I was at wanted to see a receipt book I’d never been given, how the leader on the fifth floor tried to explain that the easy online payment system was now mandatory for businesses, and how I eventually got special dispensation to be a counter customer despite having a tax license for businesses.

I don’t need to go into all those details.

I just need to explain that as I left the counter, with my taxes still unpaid because I didn’t have the newly-required-since-September-21st photocopy of the contract between me and my client, I snapped at the woman “I’m trying to do what’s right here. I’m trying to pay my taxes. I live in this country and I use public facilities that are paid for with taxes. Clearly, you don’t want me to pay them and would prefer that I go out of my way not to. I will get the contract and come back but, in the future, I will be telling every client of mine that doesn’t absolutely require a tax receipt that I don’t normally issue tax receipts and I don’t pay my taxes because the tax bureau prefers to make not paying taxes easier than paying them.”

She didn’t have an answer for me.

Not wishing to bring any undue wrath down on me or mine, I’ll not re-post Sven’s letter, which GV has translated. Essentially it asks China’s president to join him in a flash mob event in Shanghai (or the president’s city of choice) on July 1st promoting “freedom”.

According to his summoning notice, Sven is suspected of “being harmful to social management” and has violated article 55 of the “PRC social security management law”, which I’m guessing is the one about no protesting or organizing large gatherings without permission.

My gut reaction is: Sven, dude… what were you thinking?

But then maybe I’m just getting old and complacent. Probably I am.

When I first started blogging in China I had long chats with other bloggers in the sinosphere about how far the line could be pushed without consequence. Mostly that meant avoding getting blocked, but other (more dire) repercussions were never far from mind.

In the years since, my opinions have fractured many times over, and the cut and dry issues I once saw now seem a bit naive. Rarely do I now feel qualified enough to write about as complicated an issue as freedom of speech/expression in China.

The biggest thing that’s changed over the years is a general dampening of the sense that we all have a duty to be crusaders carrying the banner of liberty into dark and dreary lands. I now believe that if you can choose to live in a place (ie. you’re a visitor, not a citizen), you should have a greater requirement to abide by and respect that place’s rules, particularly if you disagree with them. If you can’t leave a place (ie. you are a citizen), then you have a greater requirement to make those rules reflect your views.

I recognize that this is somewhat at odds with the reality of the situation which generally gives us as foreigners quite a bit more leeway and freedom than your average Chinese.

My view becomes further complicated when you are a resident of a place but not a citizen, and I’m not too proud to admit that I really have no idea how to reconcile that conflicting grey area. A resident certainly has more stake in a place than someone who is here for a limited time and just interested in gleaning something (education, experience, adventure, money, sex, etc.), but still the place doesn’t generally make up as core a part of their personal identity as it does when you are a citizen of that place.

I bristle every time I see that so-familiar “You’re a guest here, if you don’t like it, go home!” reaction to anything that remotely hurts the feelings of China. But I also feel there’s more wisdom in that phrase than the knee-jerkiness of it lets on.

The degree to which you have the ability to “go home” is proportional to the amount of dog you have in the fight, and inversely so to the potential long-term change you can affect and consequences you face.

And I guess that’s why as much as my personal views are well aligned with what Sven was attempting to promote, I don’t think the police are in the wrong here. Undoubtedly many will feel that Sven’s interrogation and passport being confiscated are examples of the draconian situation in China. For me it just seems like a young guy who knowingly climbed into the pen and agitated the panda.

What do you think?

Follow @svenenglund for updates on his situation.

Some Gems:
“Chinese people need to learn brains.”
“It’s 2011. Chairman Mao is dead.”

And the kicker:
“See, I’m Canadian, I don’t have to shut up. Chinese people have to shut up. Canada people [sic] don’t have to shut up.”

Couldn’t be prouder to be a Canadian [shakes head]. Granted, I’ve no idea what happened before the video started capturing the argument, but JTFC that b’ys gone off, eh!?

I feel for the guy though. Obviously not for what he’s saying, that’s complete douchebag material. But I think most expats in China have felt that level of frustration at some point. The only two differences being that most of us a. didn’t lose it, and b. didn’t lose it with someone’s video phone rolling.

(h/t to Chengdoo on the Hao Hao Report)

It’s a tough question, and one not easily answered — unless you’re a rollerblading laowai in southern China’s Guangzhou. Being called “Rollerman”, the foreigner has been caught on traffic cameras around the city animatedly pointing out traffic violations to cars sporting government plates who no doubt thought they were above such petty laws.

According to The Independent:

He is an unlikely superhero – more Clark Kent than Superman, in a red T-shirt, often wearing his backpack or clutching his shopping in a brown paper bag as he points at the signs being flagrantly ignored by the cadres.

…

In an atmosphere of growing hostility towards perceived abuse of privilege by government officials, Rollerman has his fans, although some are concerned that it takes a laowai – a common Chinese expression to describe a foreigner – to intervene to stop the cadres breaking the rules.

“In the evening I always see cars doing this on that road, and I give them an angry star (gesture),” said one web commentator. “We should call this foreigner a hero. If we all acted like this on the road, we’d be charged with disrupting state security! But that it takes a laowai to help us sort out the business of the road is shameful.”

Officials can frequently be seen whizzing down the breakdown lane, horns honking, in black Audi limousines and, increasingly, in large Porsche SUVs. Many ordinary Chinese question whether they are indeed on official business.

“There’s no way that we could behave like Rollerman,” wrote the web commentator. “(The police and government) take bullying us citizens as their right … Only foreigners can do this, not us.”

As residents here, do we have a right to stand up to abuses of power like this? Can we use our Foreigner Card to champion those who cannot afford to risk being stomped on by folks with more influence and power than them? Or should we just keep our heads down stay the frak out of things? What do you think?

This past week Canadian Fisheries Minister Gail Shea was in Beijing to announce a long-fought for deal to open up the Chinese market for importing of Canadian seal products. The deal was made all the more important after the seal products industry lost a huge portion of its market after the European Union banned seal products in ’09.

The news sparked a tirade of outcrying from animal rights groups everywhere, but none so sound-bitey as professor Lu Di, director of the China Small Animal Protection Association, who said:

“Seal products have been rejected by the majority of Canadians and people in Europe and North America. It is insulting for Canada to market these products in China. The perception of Canada’s sealing industry that the Chinese eat everything and the Chinese people do not care about animal suffering is indicative of the racist and cultural imperialistic attitude towards non-western societies still held by some Canadians.”

First, let me say that Lu’s gig is a tough one. As it was so wisely put to me by a neighbour when I first arrived in China: In a country with limited human rights, animal rights are a rare thing. I’m certain that Lu and the CSAPA do awesome work in very difficult circumstances.

Sadly, a solid moral compass and the endurance to fight an uphill battle has done little to give Lu a clue to what the hell he’s talking about — that PhD doesn’t seem to be helping either.

The hakapik-sized hole in Lu’s understanding seems to be that he thinks the sealers and the ministry that governs them feel that what they are doing is terrible and cruel, and that they are simply just looking for some dimwitted, godless country to dupe into buying the wares of their evil evil ways.

Can I just repeat this: “…indicative of the racist and cultural imperialistic attitude towards non-western societies still held by some Canadians.” Now I have no doubt that many Canadians are absolutely racist — and by no means is that limited to white, or old-gen Canadians. For a country as multi-cultural as Canada, there’s at least as much racism among, as there is towards, its vast immigrant population.

But that’s hardly the point, Lu is saying that because the Canadian seal product industry is focusing on a market that may actually want their product, and where it’s not illegal, that (some) Canadians are racist? I can’t see the connection any better than GerryP, who left a brilliant comment at the Guardian article where I first read about this story:

Its interesting how issues become confused. Given that the Canadian hunters kill 70,000 seals a year I am struggling to find the link between the productive disposal of those dead animals and “racist bias” and “cultural imperialism”. As regards “dumping” China has been artificially holding its currency low for years to enable it to export, isn’t that a better example of dumping?

I equally find it difficult to equate the new washing machine that I have just purchased, that was made in China, with cultural imperialism. But then again probably I am just thick.

What Gerry so rightly points out, and what Lu (and most opponents of the seal hunt) seems to have missed is that this is about selling a product.

According to the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the 2005 seal catch ranked fifth in value of all the species it monitors, after snow crab, shrimp, lobster, and cod. That’s money and jobs for people in a pretty shitastically unemployable part of Canada. What’s more, it’s largely (according to government scientists at least) needed to cull a herd of animals that would otherwise decimate fish stocks that the region also depends on for its livelihood.

It’s not racism, it’s business.

It’s a messy business, but slaughtering animals always is. Glistening-eyed baby seal pictures aside, we as a species kill animals for all sorts of reasons, and this is no different.

A 2002 report in the Canadian Veterinary Journal found that “the large majority of seals taken during this hunt … are killed in an acceptably humane manner.”

This study found that 98 per cent of hunted seals it examined had been killed properly. The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) cites this study among others as proof that the hunt opponents are wrong in their accusations of widespread cruelty. [source]

Now obviously if you’re against killing animals for food, skins, etc. (and I was for the better part of a decade), then “killed properly” surely means very little to you. However, to vilify one industry while largely ignoring the many many others is just hypocritical — yet it’s rare you hear the call for the end of cow and pig slaughter with as much gusto as the pleas to stop the seal hunt. Despite what I feel is a fairly large and obvious failing of logic, and surely due in no small part to celebrity-fueled and mob enforced pressure, the European Union banned imports of seal products from Canada in 2009.

So Lu, you should see this deal for what it really is — not a racist last hope for a demonic industry of maple syrup sucking skull crushers, but a tip of the hat from my country to yours for understanding that if you eat one species, you may as well eat them all.

I keep trying to return to that “cultural imperialism” bit, and find some way to tackle it, but for the life of me I cannot begin to figure out how cultural imperialism fits into this argument at all. Surely Lu doesn’t believe that this is all some elaborate ploy by the Canadian government (and us devious Canucks in general) to get hockey on CCTV and Tim Horton’s on every corner. We did previously try that when we sent Mark Rowswell over here years ago — it was a colossal failure, eh.

Due to a computer glitch, Tom lost his VPN the other night and without it decided to traipse around the Internet as viewed from inside China (and with no tunnel out). Poking around here and there and brushing up against its fiery walls, he concludes that the various blocks in place aren’t just to outright deny access, but rather to make it more convenient to get information from a more controlled and State-friendly source.

Am pausing now to wonder what this tells us.

There are some things that the state here does not tolerate. Trouble in and the Uighur regions. Discussion of the crackdown. Interference by Western groups. Unregulated communication by the masses via platforms like Twitter and YouTube.

Beyond that, the approach is much more nuanced. You can use Google, but it’s not as convenient as Yahoo. You can learn about some history in general, but not in particular. You can write and read blogs, though access is a bit haphazard. In other words, there is a large field of things that the government will allow, with the price of dealing with a sliding scale of hassle.

Read the whole post here: Losing my VPN. A virtual disappearance in China