Oh yes!
Victory is sweet! The Great Firewall has been getting worse recently. It's had a number of things to provoke it - but if you want to read about anything newsworthy relating to China don't come here, read e.g. Danwei. Anyway, the banned list of what you probably think of as benign, essential websites is getting longer. It's all fine as long as you have ways of getting around it - but one of my favourite GFW-dodging sites (http://www.proxzee.com - proxy service for people who don't know what proxies are) was blocked yesterday, forcing me to 想方设法。
Then today I discovered that if I connect to my home university's Virtual Private Network (which they offer us so we can use campus-only library resources abroad), it acts as an all-useful, probably fairly invisible hole through the Great Firewall. I can surf exactly as I would in Europe. Why didn't I think of this before?
It's great but unfortunately it's not something I'm able to share around. People are getting more frustrated by the day at the worsening functionality of the internet. The GFW is becoming the single most blockheaded aspect of the power structure as it stands. It makes the leadership look more weak and illegitimate than necessary, and the people it most angers are the young and the smart, which seems pretty stupid to me.
Then today I discovered that if I connect to my home university's Virtual Private Network (which they offer us so we can use campus-only library resources abroad), it acts as an all-useful, probably fairly invisible hole through the Great Firewall. I can surf exactly as I would in Europe. Why didn't I think of this before?
It's great but unfortunately it's not something I'm able to share around. People are getting more frustrated by the day at the worsening functionality of the internet. The GFW is becoming the single most blockheaded aspect of the power structure as it stands. It makes the leadership look more weak and illegitimate than necessary, and the people it most angers are the young and the smart, which seems pretty stupid to me.