Memoirs of Beijing

July 7, 2009.   The day when China banned facebook.   Expats were scrambling to find ways to access this site as for some it’s their only economical way to communicate with their friends and loved ones.  For other bored expats, they while away their time using the numerous applications this site has to offer.

In any case, I’m one of the expats who were outraged when they banned this site.  I’ve scoured the net to go about the ban and here are some which I’ve tested and it worked.   Please note that they’re not fast as if you’re directly accessing it without the firewall.

1.  Freegate – it’s a software that was created by Falun Gong practitioners to help work around government censorship of their group.  Currently, the only way to download this software is to get your friend download it from another country and send it to you through an online data storage website like yousendit.    If you’re behind a firewall at work, this won’t fly.  Let me know if you want this file as I have till Sunday on yousendit.

2.  UltraVPN – it’s a software you need to install to connect to a free VPN service.  Access to this VPN service sometimes is so slow.  I sometimes just give up and try to find other ways to bypass it.

3.  AnchorShield – another software with a lot of ads.  If you don’t mind the ads, it has its moments wherein the access is quite fast.

4.  U95 – a software distributed by UltraSurf.   This software has been around for quite some time and only in Chinese version.  I remember using this in the south but can’t make it work here in Beijing.  Some friends of mine use this to access facebook.   If you want to download this software, click here for a working link.

5.  Jondo – it’s a java script which access to a German proxy site.  The speed is similar to UltraVPN.

Well.. if you know any other way to make it work, please feel free to share it.  Hopefully, none of these sites will be blocked again.

It’s Day 7 since the Great Firewall of China blocked access to Facebook due to the “Xinjiang riots”.  Facebook officials are saying that they’re not blocked but I would say otherwise.  A lot of expats are scrambling and begging IT geeks on ways to go around the firewall.  Advice range from having your own vpn, accessing through companies overseas access, proxy or by installing a software.   For me, I’m lucky enough to have overseas access at the office.

In any case, if you’ve been following my personal blog, I got hooked into playing facebook games.   I sometimes play all of them at the same time as they involve time.    Let’s see.. last count I was playing Restaurant City, Pet Society, Mafia Wars, Be A Tycoon and Vampire Wars.  Right now, with the low resolution and old version of IE, I can only play Mafia and Vampire Wars.

Now I know how those people who got addicted feel like when they’re in withdrawal.  I do hope that the government unblock it soon.  I mean, I can do without youtube.  I’ve already worked a way to blog without resorting to wordpress.com and I’m happy that they’ve brought back Flickr.

I hope the government is listening to the clamor of the expats.  They could always just ban by keyword not the entire social networking site.  I mean you’re grouping everyone as someone who supports the riots when for some people they just use it to connect with their friends and loved ones.

PS.  Bypassing the GFC on my next blog.

I now believe that China is becoming more paranoid with what’s being broadcast on the internet. The government is so strange in telling the world that China is free but living here for the past 6 years, I would know that they’re not.

Freedom of speech is pretty much controlled and if you know the Chinese way, I would say most of the things reported are either half truth or total lies.

I moved this blog out of wordpress as I was frustrated with the numerous blocked sites in China. First, they started with youtube, then they blocked blogspot and wordpress. Now, they blocked flickr, twitter, hotmail, bing and live.com. Who knows what they’ll block next. In some posts there were reports saying they’ve already started blocking gmail.

Geez.. what kind of people are they? They might as well just go back to the stone age and get rid of the internet. Let’s see what will happen if they do this. I mean it’s like the whole China is one big company with the government as the management. They’re worse than some companies were they restrict some sites to office employees.

Sorry.. I’m just pissed off as I just bought a year’s subscription to flickr.com and this afternoon, they suddenly blocked the access to that site. Just when I’m uploading more and more pix of my travels. *sigh*