Several people have messaged me to ask why I haven't posted anything since my arrival in China two weeks ago. Aside: thank you for your interest =) Despite China's dive into capitalism ("socialism with Chinese characteristics"), she is still very much a communist country with her eyes all up in everyone's business. China does not want her citizens accessing networking sites that promote the sharing of ideas and, goddess forbid, tools that enable large groups of people to organize themselves into a unit of like-mindeds. Facebook and Blogspot are blocked. There are many more blocked sites, but those are the ones that have impacted my ability to reach out to yous.
A friend I work with (Rebecca from Colorado), turned me on to WiTopia, where I purchased a VPN (I have no clue what the acronym stands for). Now, to access the blocked sites, I simply click on the tunnel icon the VPN software installed on my desktop and scroll down to Hong Kong... I am now free as a bird to fly all over the internet. Yay!
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. :) When I was in China, I used a program called Tor, but that program takes a lot of computer knowledge to use... and it was slow. You can't download it while already in China anyway, so oh well.
ReplyDeleteSorry I couldn't come see you in Beijing! We were so busy!