Saturday, July 13, 2013

Behind the Great Wall of China

I had these posts from Australia planned in my head.

There were roads worthy of Top Gear and some rather nice paddle steamers, but there was a problem: I was in China.

And in China there are various sites that mysteriously (or maybe not so mysteriously) fail to load.

I never got into Facebook, nor Blogger, but also many actual blogs were inaccessible. So no updates from the worlds of Tillerman and Bonnie.

China is making an effort to welcome foreigners, with many signs in English, but this wasn't one of them. For anyone from the PRC reading this: social sites are how we connect to friends and family and to be cut off from them is not welcoming.

And it can be counter productive. For example I read in one of the local papers about a recently produced video called "This is Shanghai" - but you can't actually see it in China, which is a shame.

Anyway, back in blighty now so normal service will be restored.

2 comments:

Tillerman said...

I am banned in China? Wonder what I did to deserve that?

JP said...

Well if you will go around claiming lands such as Spar Island for King George you will get a dangerous reputation!

I suspect it was a blanket ban on blogger hosted sites but didn't do exhaustive research