Tag Archives: censorship

Saying goodbye to Google China

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Eariler today, I followed a tweet from Twitter to this link, A new approach to China. After reading this entry, I felt so sad!

I'd been working as a vendor for Google China during Oct, 2008 to Apr, 2009. (Except some very detailed ActionScript codes, I have NOTHING TO DO with Google or Google China)

Personally, I am quite sure that every Googlers from Google China loves this country so much. Google China had tried its best to improve the search experience in China and had achieved a lot of great localized projects,  including Google Music. And I can't imagine how big trouble/pressure they've faced since it'd be a nightmare to censor every single word in the serach result pages. Even with the best affort, Google China was blamed for many times about "spreading illegal information" in search result pages.

Quit from this country would be a great relif for those hard-working engineers. (Though Baidu also faced the same troubles, they are based in Beijing and easy to control/compromise.)

Goodbye, Google (China)!

Pictures of Google's headquarter in China (via a friend of mine who's working at Google China):

Twitter is blocked in China finally!

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After Facebook, Youtube, Plurk, Twitter is now finally blocked in China. Though people have predicted this and I know it's sooner or later, it still make me so sad.

I am a super fan of Twitter and I have got nearly 4000 followers, 70% of which are from mainland China. Now I cannot talk to them and nor can they talk to me. some of our authors and readers are also very active in Twitter.

What a stupid censorship! What a shame!

FYI:

  1. In the "China Twitter user investigation" I made few weeks ago, more than 70% twitter users from China said they'd keep using Twitter with proxy servers. Only very few of them would consider to join other twitter-like services in China.
  2. Wikipedia is also blocked today!
  3. Bing.com and Live.com are also blocked!
  4. Almost all the Chinese twitter users are spreading #FUCKGFW, #FuckGFW and #fuckGFW around and it soon became the hottest Trending Topics couple of hours later!

Youtube is finally blocked in China (updating)

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Update on Mar 23: Now it's blocked again :( - even with OpenDNS, I cannot access Youtube in Beijing!

Update on Mar 07: Now the block has been removed, we're still now sure why this happened. I really hope that we could stop updating this post by now.

Update: Now Youtube is finally, finally, completely unable to access even in Beijing (northern China). Fuck GFW!

Well... many friends told me (via IM and Twitter)  that Youtube, the most popular video sharing site is now blocked in southern China. The ISP is China Telecom, which covers mostly in southern China.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=youtube+blocked+China

I am so sorry to hear this news. It's such a sad March. As far as I know, Youtube (Google) is doing a very great job in China and paid a lot for a CDN in China. Not matter what ISP you use, Youtube is as fast as any local video site. And the most outstanding feature is that Youtube offers a "embeddable" version with smooth fullscreen-mode and search support!

PS: Fortunately, I'm in Beijing now, so I can still visit Youtube. But I am not sure whether I can still enjoy the clips from Youtube tomorrow.

God bless Youtube!

How the Chinese bloggers use a creative way to express

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It's been discussed that the censorship in China would come to a climax for some special reasons this year. And actually, the anti-vulgarity movement early in 2009 has showed how they can dominate our internet. Even Google was branded as the most vulgar site in China due to its image search results. It sounds ridiculous but that's the very current situation here: if you got some naked girls on your web page, no matter where it is from (eg, uploaded by registered users or externally back-linked in search results), your site could be judged "vulgar".

As our servers were host in China, I have to check and review the posts and comments on ifgogo carefully to avoid "being harmonized", but some smart bloggers here found some very interesting way to express their attitude to this ridiculous anti-vulgarity movement, here're some interesting pictures from Douban:

Continue reading →

Facebook blocked, but Wkipedia Chinese version is now available in China, wtf?

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While Facebook's finally crashed inside China, the zh dot Wikipedia dot com comes back. It's really ridiculous and I am puzzled. As for as I know, the Wikipedia is much more "sensitive" and "harmful" than Facebook (considering the content), but the block and censorship to Facebook might be due to the sensitivity of the "social effect"? All, maybe the censorship itself is Who knows, just let it be.

Update: Wikipedia seems to go back "inside" while Facebook seems to return to us. It's really very strange that maybe it's due to some "upgrades" of GFW system?

Anyway, let's keep in track.

UPDATE: facebook.com is completely blocked in China then

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Update on July 10 / 2009:

It's been a year since I wrote this post, now in 2009, facebook.com is again blocked in China. What a pity, what a shame! The same of you all, I want my Facebook and Twitter back!

BTW, this blog (ifgogo.com), aka Chinese in English, is a blog with different authors from all over the world blogging anything about China, Chinese, etc. I'd like to know whether you'd wanna be one of us :)

Update on July 3 / 2008:

It's back again, but not quite stable. There are occasionally package loss in the data transmission.

Anyway, I hope I was wrong, I hope it's just a little mistake of the censorship system. But for the damn censorship, my Application would get more users ;)

Update on July 2:

It’s totally down now. The other 2 IPs are also blocked. Take a look at this screenshot:

My ping result:

however, seems the Application server is "a little safer" than others :)

My tracert result:

C:\Users\awflasher>tracert 69.63.178.11

Tracing route to www.facebook.com [69.63.178.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1     9 ms     7 ms     7 ms  221.223.96.1
2     8 ms     8 ms     7 ms  61.148.36.85
3     7 ms     7 ms     7 ms  61.148.5.209
4     8 ms     7 ms     8 ms  61.148.154.17
5     8 ms     8 ms     7 ms  202.96.12.197
6    51 ms    51 ms    51 ms  219.158.7.178
7   151 ms   151 ms   150 ms  219.158.3.118
8     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Update on July 1: It's okay now, 2:58PM. Facebook.com now changed a new IP at 69.63.178.11. I am sorry if this post cause any inconvenience.

But they still blocked one IP(69.63.176.140) from Facebook: take a look at this pictures:

ping from inside China:

ping from outside China:

It's really a pity that I cannot access www.facebook.com. It's blocked just now on June 30, 2008.

It's "Beijing time 12:52PM".

I am just a web developer. I am not at all interested in political issues. But how can they just completely block a whole site? It's so rude!

My first Facebook Application is going to ship, what a pity!

It seems that only the www server is effected. The app server and developers server are all available and very fast.

some screenshots:

Ping from One of my server hosted inside the U.S:

Ping from China:

Tracert from China:

So, how do the Chinese Bloggers avoid the "censorship"

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As I had mentioned in the last post about Facebook's IP-block in China, the censorship is now becoming more and more "sensitive". This time, even as a supporter (for the Olympic Games), I got a lot of trouble accessing necessary resources to launch a widget for the Olympic countdown. Fortunately, I modified my host file and assigned a "safe" IP to facebook.com to finsih and ship my Application (Beijing Olympic Games countdown)

Yes, censorship takes a lot of trouble to bloggers, but there are many funny ways to avoid the censorship. Let me introduce some of the methods here:

1) An old way - "Spliting-Character-Way"
As we know, Chinese characters are made up of various components regarded as radicals(BuShou, aka 部首 in Chinese"). And some of the components are themselves individual characters. So it's a great way to "split" one character into two or more characters.

For instance:

"软件", aka "software" in English, can be "re-rendered" as "车欠亻牛".

There is even a funny IME software to help you input such characters on the fly:
http://go.6.cn/d379

2) Another old way - "Mars language"(aka "火星文" in Chinese)
This is not originally for getting rid of censorship, but just for fun amoung the young netizens. However, young students are alway like to go against the tradition. By making the Characters in another style, they successfully fooled the adults.

However, people now called it "Mars language", it is said that this name is originally from Taiwan.

For instance:

"游戏里用不了或新闻" can be "re-rendered" as "蝣戲裏苚吥ㄋ吙煋攵"

Also there's an IME helper to let you input such "Mars language":
http://go.6.cn/0r80

3) The latest way - "Classical-Chinese-Style"
Well, as we know that many years ago, Chinese people wrote and read in vertical directions. I'm sorry that I don't know how to accurately explain it in English, but a simple demo would make you understand it soon (the demo is presented in English):
║Ｃ│＇│ｗ│ｌ│ｅ│ｏ│　│　│ｉ║
║ｈ│ｓ│ｏ│ｌ│　│ｍ│ｂ│ｉ│ｆ║
║ｉ│　│ｒ│ｉ│ｗ│ｅ│ｌ│ｓ│ｇ║
║ｎ│ｈ│ｌ│ｎ│ｈ│　│ｏ│　│ｏ║
║ａ│ｏ│ｄ│ｇ│ｏ│Ｃ│ｇ│ａ│ｇ║
║　│ｔ│　│　│＇│ｈ│　│　│ｏ║
║　│　│ｗ│ｔ│ｓ│ｉ│ｂ│ｔ│。║
║　│ｉ│ｈ│ｈ│　│ｎ│ｙ│ｅ│ｃ║
║　│ｎ│ａ│ｅ│ｔ│ｅ│　│ａ│ｏ║
║　│　│ｔ│　│ｅ│ｓ│ｓ│ｍ│ｍ║