China used to be surrounded by a great brick wall, stretching for thousands of kilometers across the northern east of the country. It´s purpose twas o protect the country from evil enemies trying to come in. All that is left from this great wonder are sections of ruins, fulfilling a much happier purpose these days: Tourist attractions and theme parks.
But the middle kingdom of the 21st century has a new great wall - a virtual one , endless high and well protected saving country from false information coming in. You can not see it, but it is still there: On the internet and is called censorship.
It is usually no big deal for us, but today I feel the urge of writing about it because today I was personally affected by it: After weeks of preparation I noticed that I built a a webiste behind the walls of China - and my Shanghai based clients can not access it.
The control of information coming in to China is something well discussed in the rest of the world. Particularely now. And yes it is true, this country has it´ s virtual eyes everywhere. Mostly we don´ t notice it. We can google, we can listen to our favourite radio stations abroad and we can watch international TV - but the information you are getting is filtered. Depending on how much it is filtered the web is every day a little bit faster or slower.
Some friends have told me that sometimes even when watching TV and there is critical talk about China, the screen goes black for a few seconds.
So how come I can freely write this blog (this site is actually banned in China) you can find me in Facebook and can access no censored news? The answer is quite simple: We dig a tunnel underneath that virtual wall and get out the country.
It is part of my every day procedure. Along with switching on the computer I open up my VPN and dive through an electronic "tunnel" to Europe. So despite me sitting here in China, I´m writing this blog actually out of the UK which is the other end of the line.
There is nothing wrong in this. A lot of foreigners (and you can be sure a lot of Chinese, too) do this. The only thing that can happen is that the "eyes" find your tunnel and shut it down… which is when you start looking for another tunnel and life goes on as normal.
So despite an extra click on the computer we are not really affected - until today:
For many, many weeks I have been working on my new photography website. Sunday was going to be the big day when I wanted to publish it. After good 9 hours of work I looked at the rebuilt website and phoned Paul proudly to take a look at it for reviewing on his Ipad which does not acces a VPN.
A couple of minutes later he called me back and said: “What have you done? Your page is not loading any more. It is blocked!!”…It took me a moment to realize- without thinking I had introduced a new blog into my website which was going to be my publishing platform for new photographs.
The word “Blog” and “Censorship” basically go hand in had here. But because I had been working with the VPN switched on all the time I had not noticed that my proud work was not acessable to anyone within the "great Wall" .
I rarely get frustrated, but when In noticed what I had done I felt like it BIG TIME!
But I have also lived here long enough now to having established a network support who I know can help me to fix the problem. There is always a way round.
And I assure you, we will find it!
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