Bypassing China's Firewall

Yes, and Im going to tell you how. It's not too complicated, but a little computer knowledge helps. The key is to use a secure, encrypted connection, which can be set up using Tor.

Tor is an Onion routing system that allows you to browse the net anonymously and without interception. In Onion routing, data is repeatedly encrypted and then sent through several network nodes called onion routers. Each onion router removes a layer of encryption to uncover routing instructions, and sends the message to the next router where this is repeated. This process makes your web activity completely anonymous and makes it very difficult if not impossible to intercept your data. Sound complicated? Well it is in some respects. You can read more about it here. The reason Im telling you this is because onion encryption can be used to bypass censorship firewalls, including China's.

Before you get too exited, Tor has limitations. Due to the "detour" onion routing makes your data take, your internet speed will be significantly slower. Also, rich web applications such as Java, Flash, ActiveX, RealPlayer, Quicktime, PDF's etc will be disabled. You won't be able to use sites that completely rely on these services such as YouTube.

Here's what you will need to use Tor effectively:

Vidalia Tor Client
Mozilla Firefox
NoScript
Torbutton
HTTPS Everywhere

All of these are available for all operating systems. It is important that you download these tools before you go to China, as the websites for the Tor Project and the EFF are blocked.

Start up Vidalia, after it connects, start Firefox and toggle Torbutton. Next go to the following address:

https://check.torproject.org/

If everything is working properly, the page will confirm your connection to the Tor network and you may begin browsing. Other applications that use the internet can also be configured to use Tor, but this requires much more technical skills. The important thing is, you have a browser.

An easier way to encrypt your web browsing is to use Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). This encrypts your connection with the website without Tor. I used this trick all the time to visit facebook at school. However, not all websites support HTTPS, but many important ones do such as Facebook, Wikipedia and Google (websites in the search results my not however). Use the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox extension above to automatically visit sites in HTTPS mode.

Since I do not live in a country with censored internet (yet) I cannot guarantee first hand that either of these will work, but its your best shot.

If Tor is not for you, an alternative way to bypass the firewall is to use a proxy site courtesy of PeaceFire. PeaceFire maintains an e-mail list it sends out weekly of different proxy sites that can be used to bypass the firewall. The proxy site will give you further instructions. You can join the e-mail list here.

Happy Browsing

UPDATE: One reader has commented that Tor is no longer effective against the Chinese fire wall. Im not sure as to what extent this is true, but as he said, a VPN is the most reliable method for bypassing the firewall. Although you will likely have to pay for it.

Marriage

Dear Chinese guy

As a fellow Chinese male but living in Canada how do you get your parents off your back about getting married? Every conversation I have with them and each week I have dinner with them they seem to bring up this topic. Or they will ask me to play sports with them and bring along a single girl.

I'm not really interested in getting married yet.


Raymond.


Dear Raymond..

Quite simply you can't, they will consistently pester you about marriage until the day that you get married. My parents pretty much do the above tactics all the time ALL of the freakin' time.

Its not just men that have this problem my sister has a similar problem but it is more intense as she is older.

They try all sorts of things like reverse psychology, about how having children is going to be good for you about being in the in crowd. I don't care about being in the erm in crowd. Or they will have massive dinners and play with other peoples children and hint (untactful). Wouldn't it be nice to have my own grandchildren to play with....




The Chinese parent (doubly so for tiger parents)

"It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are married."

Apparently Indian people and people from Pakistan have it EVEN worse.



Yeesh.

Over time TCG has become fairly adept at avoiding the marriage question. Note that these tactics may or may NOT work.

Firstly get a beard. There are women who are Lesbians who get male friends to pretend to be their boy friends, thus deflecting suspicion away from their sexuality. There are still people who care about this apparently.... this will placate them a bit.......

Except you will need to keep this charade up, i.e. you will need to bring them to dinner and they will ask intrusive probing questions. This annoys me greatly and my beards seldom last long. You can go halves with a girlie who is also facing similar grillings from her parents too to keep up the charade. I've known Men in Hong Kong to do this with working girls and it costs them massive amounts of money to hire the girl who also tends to blackmail them too.

This also has the nasty side effect of the question of when are you going to get married persisting still. I mean you're together right why don't you seal the deal and get married. Though this is stunningly effective for a while....

Second - Pretend you are gay, Chinese society is more accepting of LBT types. Its the grandchildren they want... bring home the campest and I mean campest person or leather boy home with you.

This may have the side effect of being disowned and or stabbed in the face by your dad, or they may well be extremely naive and not pick up on the hints. I have a who is gay who is a bit camp. Actually calling him a little camp is like saying Hitler was a bit naughty in WWII.

Thirdly - Beard but break up, and have a nasty break up in front of parents, pretend you are heart broken and so devastated you are not ready for another relationship. Anecdotes of how marriages end horrifically badly (i.e. one person being cleaned out by the other) are extremely useful in this regard.

Again stunningly effective for a short amount of time, but after a while. Hey why don't you come out to play badminton with us... at which you go and there happens to be a single girl there who's parents have bought along to try hitch you up....


Fourthly Nuclear weapon time - So you still get pestered all the time right, and you've tried the above and it has ceased to be effective.... this is a red button moment. I.e. it is a highly risky dangerous strategy. I'm sorry if you find this offensive but there is always the X in the top right corner if you do.

As I have written on here before Chinese people can be incredibly racist fact of life. Since our parents were born around the 40s 50s and 60s and some late ones in the 70s. They all have non liberal attitudes, ok that is a generalisation but Chinese can be terrifically racist* (if you are a laowai go outside a major city in China and it can be very overt). Therefore you exploit this to your advantage. For example all of the places my dad worked were always racist. When black people came into eat they had to pay first. I've seen a few bars in Hong Kong of all places where darker skinned people are asked to pay first while everybody else can stick it on a tab. (though I prefer to pay as I drink as I have run up stunningly big bar tabs).

much like this:

White Women's Workout - watch more funny videos

Simply get a non Chinese non white boyfriend/girlfriend and introduce him or her to your parents at dinner. Unless your parents are extremely liberal and open minded their prejudices will often take over. It will be an awkward dinner. At which you announce that you are engaged. Which is like a nuclear strike hitting Beijing, it can go one of two ways. They grumble and disapprove but most definitely will not egg you on to get married. Or like the film Festen (good film) When she brings her Black boyfriend to the party she is taken to one side and they have a talk with her.



When my cousin did this, there was a very awkward silence for a very long time as she did it at a very big gathering. Nasty nasty whispers in Chinese of course (note we in China Chinese whispers are merely called Whispers). And the encouragement to get married all of a sudden completely vanished.

However the I know a nice man/woman you'd like to meet who is better than your current b/g will still occur. As my sister encountered when she was dating an English bloke from London.

Therefore you cannot win ever ever.....

Unity/politics

Dear Chinese guy

Why do Chinese people have no political power in the UK?

Kayce


Dear Chinese guy

How come casual racism seems almost accepted in British society? Why has it become acceptable? My work colleagues talk about Chinese food as Chinky food.

Brian.


Dear Kayce/Brian

Its a simple question of numbers and unity. The Chinese population in the UK is somewhere around 600,000 people, which out of about 62 million is absolutely nothing. The fact that we are spread out all over the place unlike Muslims who are concentrated in Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford and London. Politicians are focusing their efforts on the bigger shares of the votes. I.e. the natives then the majority groups in their areas. Chinese people are not a majority group anywhere in the UK.

I mean when living in the South West people looked at me as if I were an alien or something.

Therefore since we represent so few votes politicians completely ignore us.

Secondly the lack of unity. I've written before that China is not one country. It is more like the USA - United States. China is similar in structure (if not in politics) in that it is a union of provinces under a sort of federalised centralised government. Its a bit like when I see Americans on their travels, a lot of them don't seem to call themselves Americans. They'll say I'm from Texas or I'm from California or Ohio or something (though this may well just be the lack of interaction than any Representative view).

Therefore while an outsider sees a group of Chinese people as 'Chinese people' They aren't Back in the 70s it was Hakka people Vs Cantonese people. Today its Fujian, Hakka, Hong Kong, Cantonese, Malaysians etc. Although they have commonish roots they are different.

The lack of unity is exacerbated by the fact there is less unity than other communities in other ways and less intermingling. Muslims and Indians have religion and worship to get them to join together and discuss problems they have. They are obliged to attend such forced gatherings while Chinese are not.

The Wai Yin Society in Manchester for instance the attendance is low, very low. You go sit in the waiting area at any Chinese restaurant for tea and only people who know each other talk to each other.

All of the above means there is no unity and no political power and thus we're ignored completely.


Which leads onto Brian's point, because there is no unity there is no pressure to change things. I.e. Chinese communities in general tend not to fight back.

Consider the Islamic community about 20 years ago. When Salmand Rushdie wrote the Satanic verses he had to go in hiding for decades due to the unified death threats against him.

A few years ago there was a play which was considered inflamitory to the Sikh community, they held a massive protest and applied political pressure to get it closed down after a few.

While


Oriental themed parade.... yellowed up people, coolie hats, fu-manchu costumes, stereotypical BS which doesn't actually exist. Even people pulling their eyes for news paper photos. Even bowing and the stupid Thai hands together praying sort of greeting. TCG does none of those things.

The Chinese community response? Nada nowt nothing, well one strongly worded letter to a shopper newspaper. No outcry, no violence to stop it......... hey nobody complained which means its OK....

For starters the PRC doesn't care about us. (The UK foreign office does semi look after British tourists trapped overseas). Thus there is nobody to challenge such casual racist attitudes. With a less confrontational society we're raised in few people challenge these sorts of things. I don't always challenge such things 100% Sunday for instance on board a small light aircraft somebody made a nasty comment to me. He should have known better as he's an old man. I was so very tempted to start a fist fight on board. He was most surprised when we got to the ground and I told him it wasn't funny and quite offensive.

And thus casual racism is to the natives seen as completely acceptable as apparently 'nobody complains about it'


Still blacking up these days after decades is no longer considered acceptable, maybe by 2030 it will be unacceptable to 'yellow up'

Monday comedy spot/ Wanna be a Kung fu star?

Much as I hate the word kung Fu (as it means result of ones hard work) and martial arts is more wushu than kung fu.....

In the UK the Shitty TVB Chinese channel wants YOU yes you, even Laowai non Chinese readers in the UK to become the next Kung Fu star for TVB. All you have to do is present a 30 second clip of your signature 'move' and be a UK/HK/Chinese citizen of some sort.

The application form is here

Free Internet!

The city of Chongqing is trying to establish uncensored internet access for foreigners and foreign companies, hoping to a center for the IT industry in China. They might want to be careful about opening up their internet, as this slashdot user sums up perfectly:

Be careful offering a little freedom. In former Eastern Germany, their communist regime provided retail stores only for foreigners (or specially privileged East Germans with western money). This made people there very resentful of their government ... and eventually, they got rid of it.

Although Chinese citizens won't be allowed to use the free internet, it make them feel more jealous about   having their internet censored when westerners are using it in the middle of one of their major cities.

Chinese Innovation

A Chinese man has built his own version of an iPad. Really, its a tablet PC he built from scratch! It can run any OS and is more powerful than the iPad. Best of all, it only cost him $300. He even stylized it with Apple stickers and everything.





Apple Status:

[   ] Not told
[X] Told

[X] Really Told

[X] Toldstone Creamery

[X] Told man river

[X] Told Testament

[X] Cash4told.com

[X] No country for told men

[X] Knights of the told Republic

[X] ToldSpice

[X] Toldman Sachs

[X] Pokemon Told and Silver

[X] The Legend of Eldorado : The Lost City of Told

UFC and MMA

Dear Chinese guy.

Why are there no prminent Chinese MMA or UFC fighters? Why aren't there some Chinese kung fu masters competing? They might even win!

Joe

Dear Joe

This is my theory and I could be wrong, but it boils down to several things:

One Chinese men are by and large smaller than caucasian and black men, sure we get people like Yao Ming who is massive and Mongolians who can be massive. But these are the exceptions and not the rule.

Apparently I'm a fairly tall Chinese person who is overweight..... I weigh 10 stone, I have to wear weight to skydive and a fast fall suit because I fall so slowly. My English native peers are about 4-5 stone heavier than me and much taller than me.

Take for instance Bruce Lee, he is a pretty small bloke compared to western natives. And he was half German. Or Bolo Yeung, Mr HK a massive massive body builder when stood next to Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. But not that big compared to westerners who primarily make up MMA, UFC.

I mean would you fight against a bloke who had 100 pounds on you in pure muscle?

Secondly, a great deal of Chinese martial arts emphasise defence by parrying, blocking and avoidance. I mean look at any wire work Jet Li movie. Yes it is a movie, but it shows him avoiding, blocking and parrying. Compare this to fist fights in Western movies. They pretty much stand there and knock the hell out of each other. Which was lampshaded by Tom Cruise in the film Far and Away. It sort of makes sense, i.e. it is better NOT to be hit than to be hit and to take less damage. I mean would you rather be punched in the face or not? Southern Martial arts based around Wing Chun for instance all emphasise superior blocking and parrying techniques.

But then it sort of like a Samurai sword duel first blow is almost always lethal and is the winner.

Compare to boxers who can pummel each other repeatedly and get used to the pummelling. Ali fighting Foreman took a massive beating for ages and ages. Joe Frazier did the same to Ali. Or Muay Thai Kick boxing, the proper proper art of eight limbs Muay Thai (though even the westernised softened up version seems pretty brutal to me). They pound each other like no tomorrow, they brutalise and train themselves and they get used to it.



Thirdly erm (for laughs)


Granted those people can probably snap my neck in a pinch


Fourthly Martial arts is dying out, the old grandmasters are dying out and people simply don't have the time to practice their skills and hone them. There is little incentive if you are a trainer in China, as very few people get into the training program to be an instructor and when they do become instructors the wages are LESS than working in factories. Thus while there may well be a lot of theory and lots of in action a lot of people simply don't bother. I mean you gonna fight hand to hand against this?

Asian Turf War

I recently saw an episode of South Park in which the Chinese guy who owns City Wok is forced to contend with a new sushi place that moves in next door. The whole thing turns into a giant episode spanning fight between them, while most of South Park thinks that China and Japan are the same. Its quite hilarious.

Embedding is not allowed so heres a link. I think its viewable in the US only.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e06-city-sushi

Angry Canadian

American aren't the only ones.

Chinese vampires

Dear Chinese guy.

How do you kill a Chinese vampire.

Mike.


It depends do you mean a Chinese person bitten by a vampire or a Chinese Jiang shi type vampire.

If it is a Chinese person bitten by a vampire, then the usual things apply, stake in the heart, beheading, garlic, true faith, tainted blood. Holy Water and sunlight..... though Chinese people are naturally adverse to sunlight anyway. Since tanning is bad m'kay (people think you are a low class farmer or something). Fire is also good as are Applied Phlebotinum weapons like UV bullets as seen in underworld.

If it is a Chinese Jiang shi type vampire then you have all sorts of problems. As Jiang shi are nearly indestructible. Jiang shi are less vampires and more akin to zombies from Quake, you can shoot them but they keep getting up, much like the terminator

Depending on which movie you see them in they are invulnerable to many things western vampires get killed by:

• Daylight does not kill them. They do however go and rest once a rooster makes its morning call.
• Holy water is useless.
• Garlic is useless.
• Explosives are useless
• Sharp stabbing and slicing weapons are also useless even to the head eyes, heart neck.
  

However you can stun Jiang shi or 'hurt' them to make them go away for a bit. Note stun and not kill.

Stunning is often via a yellow bit of paper on their forehead. Which contains a spell of some kind written in blood. This only freezes them to the spot though. They are very much alive you remove that yellow bit of paper and it'll tear your head off and spit down your neck. In fact if you should encounter such a Jiang shi and happen to find your head detached from your body and a copious amount of spit which does not belong to you in your neck then the thing I told you did not work. Ok so I made that up since they don't spit at you.

I will be happy to offer a refund on bad advice which gets you killed. Heh.

In various movies various things hurts Jiang shi that makes them retreat recover for a day or two and come back even stronger. Does anybody remember the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3? When you killed it with one weapon it would take double the amount of damage from the same weapon which put you in a whole world of shit.

As said it varies from movie to movie.

Rice will burn Jiang shi lightly.

Blood of various types will stun Jianshi, Chicken blood which has been blessed and the blood of a black dog works. And in Typical teenage horror movism. Peeing on them if you are a virgin will work like Holy Water against said Jianshi. Women probably need not apply.

Duck eggs will stun Jiang shi.

Large caliber guns will push them backwards a bit like house of the dead:



But you didn't ask that you asked how to kill them.

Fire much like this



Or the much more dangerous method is the vampires kiss. In some mythology Jiang shi exist because it draws one last breath in its body it cannot rest. Therefore you have to kiss the damned thing and suck out this last breath. Which will make the Jiang shi instantly deanimate. This is akin to kissing a pissed Grizzly bear which can tear you limb from limb. Except the Grizzly bear is indestructible doesn't feel pain. Kinda like the speech from the Terminator:

"It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

Good luck with that.

As a note if you attempt to try the vampires kiss, or rather the vampires suck Jiang shi are worse in that they too turn you into Jiang shi if they bite you as well.




Alternatively prevention is the best cure...

Therefore:

Choose cremation over burial.

Do not piss off dying relatives and leave things unresolved, i.e. give absolution to the dying.

Unfortunately TCG did leave something seriously unresolved with a buried relative recently which is why I keep a bedside flame thrower when I am in Asia (it is actually a chemical weed whacker which I tried with petrol and set myself alight but still works as a flamer).

Unfortunately I am not kidding either..... as my mum has seen a zombie. Her uncle died suddenly and the body 'moved' when it was left alone during the wake. The body was found to have moved upstairs and had opened up a secret cubby hole with the life savings of the family in a box it was clasping. And these stories seem a bit too common to be all lies.

Qianziwen

I didn't think it was possible, but it turns out theres a nursery rhyme for learning Chinese characters (well sort of). Its called the Qianziwen (literally: Thousand Character Classic) and was created by Zhou Xingsi by order of Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty as a way to help his son learn Chinese characters. It consists of 1000 non-repeating characters arranged into 250 four character phrases. Not only does no character occur twice, but the whole thing rhymes! Its not used anymore however because it follows the grammar of Classical Chinese, which may confuse those trying to learn the modern language.

Still, you can read the whole thing transcribed and annotated, here. You can also find it broken down by character here.

Still not satisfied? You can even listen to the damn thing!

	Zhou Xingsi - Qian Zi Wen .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Remember the kidney guy?

Prepare to have your faith in humanity tested yet again. Remember that rather silly kid who sold his kidney for an Ipad? Here

Here we go again...... girl offers to sell her virginity for an Iphone4, Here. I detect however a viral advertising method though seeing as Steve Jobs (in my opinion) is evil.

Something

Sort of. Notice how everybody rushes to help this poor woman. Here

Evolution

Dear Chinese guy

Is evolution taught in Chinese schools?

Hannah.

Dear Hannah.

A variation of evolution and creationist theories exist instead (note how I say theory since although there is compelling evidence different people have different beliefs...... cripes I sound a lot like my environmental science professor over ten years ago).

A commonly theory is most people came out of Africa. The Out of Africa theory. In a nutshell as I understand it, humans can all be traced to a small tribe over time which sort of moved out to colonise the entire African continent and eventually moved out over other land masses.

An opposing theory is that humans developed all over the place rather than originating from one tribe.... (hey look your GF is your long lost sister!). Which is gaining some sort of traction as there was a jawbone found in Southern China in a cave somewhere. It was carbon dated to be 110,000 years old. Which is inconvenient to those who believe in the out of Africa theory. As Chinese folks or rather the people who became Chinese folks were only supposed to have migrated out of Africa 70,000 years ago.

I'm not a biologist per se but there is a strange anomaly in that as a whole we're pretty compatible in terms of baby making.

Here

Whats new?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13923082

Chinese being attacked in Paris...... tbh whats new this has been going on for decades if not centuries......

Asians and Chinese people are seen to be prosperous says the report, what it doesn't go into is the back breaking labour put in to become prosperous. My work week (hence my lack of updates and postings and rantings) has grown somewhat and I average at 80 hours a week now, sometimes going over 100 hours a week.

People see me as 'lucky' to have so much money and they think it just appears in my pocket or something.....meh.... I need a vacation or something

Voting

Dear TCG,

How do elections in Hong Kong work? I know it isn't completely democratic
but can you give more clear explanation than Wikipedia?

凱文



I'm afraid not, namely because I don't actually vote, no I am not a non voting felon either its just that tbh I don't believe in voting and believe it is an activism sponge when really only direct action works.

A Taste of American Politics Part 4

It just keeps getting better.




Heres a bonus video for the lolz

China gets 1-up'd

Story

In October 2010, America was once again beaten by the Chinese. When the National Computing Center of China in Tianjin unveiled the Tianhe-I, the worlds fastest supercomputer. At 2.5 petaFLOPS (Im not even going to bother trying to explain what that means) it beat out America's former top contender, the Cray Jaguar which ran at 1.75 petaFLOPS. But now even China has been out done, by their neighbor. Earlier this month, Fujitsu of Japan unveiled the K Computer, which runs at a whopping 8 petaFLOPS.

America and Japan have been neck and neck for the last decade in the race to see who can build the worlds fastest supercomputer. But now China is entering the race, and its proving to be a powerful contender. The International Supercomputing Conference releases its list of fastest computers twice a year. I'd be interesting to see if China reappears on the list come November.

Views 2

Hey. KaiWen got me hooked on your blog.

I guess my question is, and forgive me if you've answered it before, what do Chinese people actually think of Americans? Do they think we're nice? Ugly and stupid? What's the deal?

You might be interested in my blog. I do a lot of current event stuff so check it out if that interests you. http://wanderingamericantravelblog.blogspot.com/ Stay cool.


Um this was sent to me, but answered here

Extraordinary Fidelity

Movie Time!

The CIA, yes the CIA, has released a documentary called "Extraordinary Fidelity". It tells the story of John T. Downey and Richard Fecteau, who were two CIA agents shot down over Manchuria during the Korean War. Their mission was to extract a Chinese agent who was organizing a guerilla rebellion to take down Mao's government. The two were captured and imprisoned for 20 years.

The film wasn't originally intended for the general public, but as a video for new recruits to help them learn about the agency's history. But now its coming to a YouTube link near you! (or embedded here)