Monthly Archive for 十二月, 2008

Photo by keso

• Outside the Great Firewall “在墙外”

The first day that Peter came to Shanghai, I talked with him about the great firewall in China and something about how to buy a domain and build wordpress(the famous open source blog system) on the domain. He asked me about how to surf the Internet without the annoyance brought by the most powerful Internet censorship system in the world, I introduced him the VPN software  hotspot shield I used everyday,  but I was not sure whether it  had a Mac version. It was great to find that hotspot shield could work very well on mac system, so he would not troubled by the GFW system, he could visit every website on the Internet just like he was back in Kansas. We often use the name of a famous Fujian food 佛跳墙 Fó tiào qiáng（Steamed Abalone with Shark’s Fin and Fish Maw）to mock the process we surf the Internet, because  the name 佛跳墙 means “Buddha Climbing over the wall”  if we  translate it word by word.

• Inside the Great Firewall “在墙内”

Today he encountered another “tricky” stuff with Chinese characteristics— The censorship on these BSPs(Blog service provider).

Via: Peter’s Post (告国内同胞：你需要VPN或者海外代理佛跳墙才能访问)

“For my 口语 speaking class final test, we have to prepare a short speech concerning something about our home country. I chose Abe Lincoln. I finished my rough draft and posted it on my new blog that I just started last week. (The blog is in Chinese and hosted at a location in China.) In my speech I include a synopsis of his Gettysburg address with the famous line of “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people”. After posting it, I got these error messages when trying to view it:”

Peter’s Chinese blog (hosted on ifeng)

http://blog.ifeng.com/1817224.html

My reply for his post:

That is the blog service provider’s censorship system.If your blog content contains some sensitive words, like the full names of the Chinese leaders , lastest news about strikes happened in China , falun da#fa or 民主(democracy) or something that the goverment does not like, the BSP will block the blog entry or make it not accessable with the public automatically.These BSPs are just made this censorship system by themselves to provent themselves from shutting down by the goverment.I recommend you to write the chinese blog on blogspot(available in China right now but  it was blocked sometimes) or wordpress.com(blocked all the time).
:-), That is why I bought my own domain and blog host space from America.”

• Other resource for the blog censorship in China:

Maybe some people still want to read more about thse BSPs’ Censorship in China, here is a report worked by Rebecca Macknnon from University of Hong Kong . Please click full screen to have a better view.

China’s Censorship 2.0

“防民之口,甚于防川,川壅而溃,伤人必多,民亦如之。是故为川者,决之使导;

为民者,宣之使言.”

《召公谏厉王弭谤》左丘明