China - Blogging Issues
 

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere but I've been searching for a while and can't find any info about it.

I'm now in China (though the bike is stuck at the border due to the bridge near the border being destroyed by an earthquake the day before I arrived - but that's another story)

I've been trying to update my website, photos going on fine, no problems, but I seem to be unable to blog. My webmeister in the UK updated one blog for me and is looking into the problem (when he gets up!).
However Ms Naive here has just had a thought and wondered if it's that pesky Chinese Government not allowing me to blog....

Did anyone else have that problem?

Thanks in advance for any advice or help.

wouldnt surprise me, especially as you are in Xinjiang!

hi Tiffany,
i had the same trouble when i was in Kashgar, september last year. i was tryng, in many ways, to send pics abroad to italy, but there were's no way.
by the way; did they, chinese custom, ask if you may carry a laptop and checked it? they did it with ours and once we were in kashgar, no more fun...
regards,
www.lungastrada.it

Yes, the Chinese government do suppress you viewing your blog.

However, my experience was that I was still able to update my blog by logging directly into the blogsite (blogspot.com which was NOT suppressed) and then going into edit mode for the pages. This may work for you.

Hi Guys
thanks for your words of wisdom, I've tried several ways to get stuff onto my website but to no avail so far.

Hey Nicoletti
no, they didn't ask about laptops etc. and the funny thing was that they INSISTED that we posed for photos with them all at the border. None of the usual, no cameras here. In fact this was one of the nicest border crossings I've experienced, even if it was a bit loooooooooong.

still waiting for the bridge to be fixed...

Hi Tiff
I also recall hearing that the Ch govt restrict access to blogging s/w.

Enjoy the rest of your trip.
cheers
C

If you use a popular site like blogspot, or host your videos on YouTube, you will need a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to get access when you are in China.

There is a firewall that blocks about 30% of the internet here. It has little to do with politics, it's more of a business decision to protect Chinese companies from outside competition.

Cheers!
ChinaV

Identity Cloaking
 

Here's a link to a decent ID cloaking application (not free though):

Internet Privacy and Identity Protection by IdentityCloaker.com!

Is there anything better out there? (Note - I'm no expert on this subject.)

All good for watching BBC iPlayer when outside the UK, etc. Good to get for on-line security reasons too.

Cheers


.

Tor (https://www.torproject.org/) is an open souce and free "anonymizer" that would probably work but I would be a little cautious installing these apps in case your laptop is searched (don't know how likely is that). You would probably have to explain why you have it in the first place (if you don't have anything to hide why it's there and crap like that... but than again I'm just guessing.)

ν.

Hi Tiffany,

I used Strong VPN to bypass the Skype restrictions in Belize and the SMTP restrictions in Mexico. It's not horribly expensive. It basically reroutes everything to one of several servers across the globe. You could give that a try.


...Michelle
Victoria, BC, Canada