Adventures With the Chinese Internet

Accessing the Internet in China is stupidly frustrating. And it keeps getting stupider and stupider.

While I've been on the road, Gmail, Facebook and my Blogger-hosted blog have been my primary tools of communication. Facebook and Blogger are blocked by the authorities but I wasn't willing to give up my ability to subvert the Chinese Government¹ and armed myself with a onion network solution² (Tor) before leaving Hong Kong.

On my arrival in Xi'an, I found out that the administrators of the Great Firewall had finally wised up to Tor and I was unable to access the network. But I noticed that Patrick, a Dutch guy in my dorm, was happily surfing Facebook on his laptop so asked him what he was using to get through the blocks. He pointed me towards a little proxy tunnel program called FreeU13 and I was back in business. Things were slow as all hell, but I was functional through my time in Xi'an and Tibet. By August 5th, I was back in Hong Kong, revelling in the fast and uncensored connection at my parent's place.

Since I re-entered China ten days ago, things have gone from bad to patently absurd. First I spent three days in Guangzhou with a WiFi connection that had me flashing back to the early 1990s when I was pulling data packets through the phone line on a 2400-baud modem. But FreeU13 still worked, even if everything was now slower than all hell.

Then, in Kunming, FreeU13 broke down. Either it failed to connect to the proxy servers, or the servers were responding with incredibly slow relay times. The service was completely unusable. At first, I thought it might be the fault of another slow WiFi connection at my hostel, until I was able to grab the latest episodes of Entourage and Mad Men with 200+ kB/sec download speeds. (That's right, to the Chinese Government: subversion = bad but piracy = woo hoo!)

Fast forward now to Lijiang. The wireless adaptor on my laptop is having a fit with the router at my current hostel, returning multiple networks and local-only access (no Internet) when connected. To be fair, this is probably more an issue with the router settings and a possible Windows Vista bug than anything inherent to Chinese Internet access -- my BlackBerry can connect without any problems. So, in order to access the Web without having to do everything on my BlackBerry's 4x3-inch screen, I've had to tether my laptop through my phone, using it as an IP modem to send and receive data through the hostel WiFi.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.

But, on a brighter note, I'm getting good download / upload speeds (for China anyway,) through the BlackBerry. I was even able to hunt down some proxy tunnelling software that works³.

Related Entries:
1. Travelling in China and Tunnelling Through the Great Firewall
 
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¹ If members of the Politburo are reading this, I'm joking about the whole subversion thing. Any criticism is meant to be light-hearted, tongue-in-check and written with the upmost respect. I think a strong, authoritarian Central Government might be the best thing for China in it's current state of development. I love you guys. Really. Please don't hunt me down and lock me up.
² For the non-techies, an onion network is just another form of proxy service allowing encrypted and anonymous surfing on the web. The Chinese Government can't block the data when it can't read the data.
³ No way I'm divulging the name of my current solution. The less they know, the less they can block or interfere with.