Despite all the talk, all the late night sweats in Beijing, and all the curses from VPN-lagging China-based twitterers; it turns out Twitter and the PRC see more eye-to-eye than either side would have you believe.
The following is a screen capture by Nick (@riceagain), a Kiwi splitting his time between Taiwan and the Mainland, who noticed a peculiar phrasing when attempting to set the Twitter tweet location to "Ta…
A little down recently about my regular VPN's lackluster speed, I started testing out a new service called ibVPN (Invisible Browsing VPN) and am decently happy with the results/ease of use.
The service is strictly PPTP and not SSL, which I suppose is both a pro and a con. From my experience PPTP is faster and easier to setup as services go, but is easier to get blocked.
And blocked I think is exactly what happe…
Welcome one and all to the debut of a new (ir)regular feature here on Lost Laowai, entitled Fact or Fiction. The premise is very simple, each edition I will be joined by a Guest and we will briefly discuss some of the hottest topics in the laowai world. Myself and my guest will respond to each topic with either FACT or FICTION. This concept was borrowed by one of my favourite sites on the internets, 411mania.
A…
The already unfortunate situation of internet censorship in China - imposed by the so-called Great Firewall - has been slowly getting worse this year, making a mockery of claims that the Olympics would open up China in terms of allowing a greater spread of communication and discussion. This year the Great Firewall has metamorphosed from a paranoid bug into a malignant disease, a raging cancer, blighting creativity, f…
If you read nothing else today, read this: "How Did I Break [out of] Jail?". The incredible first-hand account of how Chinese blogger Peter Guo (Guo Baofeng), better known as Amoiist, was arrested but managed to get an SOS message out via his Twitter, which then turned into an international campaign to see him released. Peking Duck did a lengthy post on this earlier, but it was great to read the story in the words of…
I went to the supermarket today, but was blocked at the entrance by some dude checking his receipt and yelling at someone on his phone. Shrugged it off. Grabbed my gear and headed for the bus stop, but was blocked by some old lady super excited to bear witness to China's mass-transit system in motion. Shrugged it off.
On the bus, we headed away from the bus stop but were blocked by a black sedan idling the wor…
When I was back in college we were expected to read and/or watch several sources of news daily. My Journalism-Print program even had a "Current Events" course requirement in which we would discuss, debate and be tested on - what else? - current events.
This was just before the Dawn of Blogs and the coining of the term "traditional" or "old" media. We still idolized journalists, figuring in our slightly hung-over s…
As a blogger in the China expat niche you tend to make a lot of fast friends, as we're all sort of in this together. The downside is most of those friends are better known for their avatars than their actualities.
Fortunately there are events like the one this Saturday (February 28) at M1NT in Shanghai where all us digital laowai can congregate and inebriate together - IRL. SXSW @ M1NT is "an official pre-SXSW coc…
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 o…
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