My connection and links with the BIG motherland – the gargantuam super power in the making (supposedly) place – China, is pretty tenuous. I consider Hong Kong as my hometown (let’s not get into the specifics about why I still consider it a separate entity despite the handover in 1997) and China for me is a bit of a mystery. I’ve never been more than a walking tourist whenever I have been there which is not to say I don’t have love for my ‘roots’ but I frankly feel like a foreigner there.
China clearly reciprocates those cold and detached feelings as a reader recently alerted me that I have been blocked by China’s internet filtering systems and the Great Firewall of China confirms this. I believe this is more to do with the fact the blog is hosted by Typepad rather than Chinese authorities having a problem with my love of Carine Roitfeld and platform shoes. However, it does sadden me a little as this is part of a whole bigger gripe with China’s governing body, which I wouldn’t even know how to discuss (and I would refuse to anyway…).
Therefore, the only way is to look to solutions. I’m not sure what is the situation with RSS feeds by Feedburner being blocked in China as well but that is one route to try if you read blogs via RSS. If you subscribe to my email feed on the right hand column under ‘Get Style Bubble in your Inbox’, that could work. There are other more complex solutions of getting round firewalls but it all seems a little bit dodgy geek to me. Failing all of that, send me your personal email address if you are in China or know of anyone in China having this problem, and I’ll send over some html attachments each week. Or maybe people in China have no interest in my blog whatsoever and this post has been a bit pointless. I just felt like posting the big red screenshot stating my URL has been blocked. It’s funny and tragic all at the same time.
Google were accused of “selling out” because they allowed their search engine to used by China but in a much more restricted format ie search results are all government approved. If someone in China should search for Tiananmen Square protests they’d get something entirely different from what everyone else would get. It’s what happens without free speech – even fashion blogs are considered with suspicion!
hey susie,
i don’t know if you’ve tested the website, but i typed in http://www.gov.cn and that’s blocked as well! might not be too reliable…
china.. don’t even mention china ppl to me >,< I just got back yesterday from HK and aaargh! it was so frustrating shopping anywhere, getting neglected as a customer because i wasn't speaking mandarin. I'm in HK every summer and there has been a steady influx of 'chi yau han' ppl but this year it really was bad, ocean harbour city mall is full of them now and that used to be relatively classy! And now all malls have the same shops to appeal to those money spending rude ppl! Even Sha Tin is completely different now. Oh and louis vuitton! I got barricaded in the one at central because they thought i was one of the mandarin tour (which they were letting into the shop 5 at a time)! I then proceded to scold the doorman in very loud english and he went the brightest shade of red before opening the door for me lol. *cry* hong kong is no longer the same place as my childhood memories holds.. this years trip squashed so many of my hopes of returning to the place I consider home
I have to say I’m a little insulted by the previous comment. Things change and spitting sucks but there’s no need to be so class-ist about it. HK people are kind of prissy (no offense. But half my family’s from HK, and it’s true.). If you were a white person from the US complaining about how your neighborhood’s now overrun by impolite nouveau riche black people, you’d get skewered. There are pros and cons to both sides of the border.
But what I got on here to say is that there are easy ways to get around the firewall. You can just go to proxy websites and input the link and go straight to it. Anonymouse.org, http://www.theproxyfree.com, and http://www.surfall.net are good ones (although anonymouse is really slow. But it’s the only one that American Apparel will work on).
I have friends who were travelling in Vietnam recently who couldn’t access their own blog, tho they could see others. Just bizarre. And it was a travel blog. Praising Vietnam. Just bizarre.
I just checked my website with that site and it’s blocked as well, and it’s not even under blogspot or typepad. I must be spouting too risque over pleats
Starting around March, the Chinese gov’t also started blocking LiveJournal (found this out during a vacation there).
reply to susan ; I’m not actually from Hong Kong, I was born in UK and have lived here for the last 22 years. I never mentioned the spitting, i just disliked the fact that even though I was every much a tourist as they were I was getting neglected in shops.
sammi & susan:
i’m still in Hong Kong right now. I come here ever year as well, I have a home here and a home in new york city.
– HK teens really are prissy. yeah. it’s unbelievable.
– the halfway suggestion that anti-mainlander sentiments suggest an attitude akin to racism (whites vs. new money blacks) is really wrong. Most HKers wouldn’t give a shit about mainlanders if they didn’t feel that most of them were rude. It’s not the difference of language or the preference by shopkeepers. HK’s economy is pretty happy with mainland influx. It’s a culture clash, simply put. I haven’t heard a good word about mainlanders by any Hong Konger except an economist. I think they’re pretty goddamn rude and they probably think their attitude is normal and we’re being overly sensitive. I feel like they don’t respect my personal space and they probably don’t realize I have one. etc.
also it doesn’t matter what language you speak, look and act your status and you won’t be denied at the doors or neglected inside.
and one more thing: Hong Kong considered a separate entity is pretty self-apparent in the basic law. they run under two separate systems. and as is already apparent in the comments here, Hong Kongers consider themselves vastly different from mainlanders. You can even pick out a mainlander from a Hong Konger by the difference in dress… it’s as different as a typical Korean girl and someone from Tokyo! But it’s almost an insult to be asked if you’re from “Dai Lok” here. Derogatory phrases like “oh, that guy must be from Dai Lok.” or “What, you think this is the mainland?!” are pretty common. There’s an apparent rift, but it’s also a rift that suggests kinship.
sarah i have to say i agree completely with everything you said and I take ur point on acting my status.
i too have a home and many relatives in HK which I’ve returned to every year since I was born which was the only reason I thought I had the right to make such a comment.
And also because I am damm right disappointed with HK right now because of their influx! I graduate from med school in 2 years and have been planning for 6 years now to return to Hong Kong to work and to be with my longterm boyfriend, a place I considered home even though I wasn’t born there but after this years trip I am so so torn! I just can’t understand the ‘money’ culture in HK now and accept the rudeness of those from the mainland.
I guess that is all, i am just confused. I don’t want to rethink my whole future so perhaps I just have to grin and bear it.
hey guess what, plenty of mainlanders in china think the same thing of people from hong kong. stuck up snobs. reality check, there are nasty and nice people from each side so stop making all these lame narrow-minded generalizations.
That website blocks everything, I just typed cartoonnetwork.co.uk and it was blocked too! Is there any site they don’t block? I tried about 4 or 5 very light sites but they were all blocked. Anyone?
was pretty insulted when first saw the post and a few comments.by the time I finished looking the comments, felt a bit better. glad not all ppl think us ppl from “Dai Lok” are rude and unberable.
Thanks Susie for bringing this subject to the fray.
The quality of the comments is superb and I happily say that thanks to this fact I’m getting more conscious of the situation in China, something people don’t really take into consideration for many reasons, one is the lack of information.
I am so glad you pointed out this fact in your article.
As a french girl expatriated in shanghai,this is the first time today since three months that I can access your blog as well as facehunter.And trust me,I missed you !
The simple solution I found today is http://anonymouse.org/.It is really awesome!
hi~susie~
I just found your style bubble a few weeks ago,and I can’t open it in my IE. So I subscribed it in my GOOGLE READER and it really works. I can read it with GOOGLE READER, including all the pics. So I think it’s a good and easy way to read style bubble directly.
Many websites are blocked by GFW,and no one knows the reason…….
I survived living withint the confines of the Great Firewall of China for a year because of the wonder that is the proxy server.
http://www.anonymouse.org is a very good site.
Speaking as one in China (now in HK, though I lived on the Mainland for many years):
1) You are correct; Typepad is currently blocked. The people at the GFW have been getting more and more diligent at blocking and unblocking and reblocking various journaling services thanks to Papa Hu’s harmonious society through greater restrictions initiatives.
2) People on the Mainland can access both regular Google and restricted Google. Restricted Google generally takes out the sites that one wouldn’t have been able to see anyway and doesn’t include the “Cache” function (blocked on the Mainland).
3) There are ways to get around things that are very obvious and well-talked about. Maxthon, a popular web browser, even includes a built-in proxy function that works quite well, last time I had to check (in Qingdao, Shandong June 2007).
4) Disgust at Mainlanders is really quite silly in HK. Their coming down to HK brings *so* much money here that it’s unreal. Everyone on the Mainland knows that if you want luxury goods, you go to HK — the luxury shops on the Mainland rarely have more than one or two articles at most.
Ok, I want to clear the air here as I just want to say that the comments have gone off in such a nasty tangent that I need to steer it back on course. I had NO INTENTION of causing offense to people from mainland China. I have many a friend from mainland China but I cannot deny that I feel disconnected to China as I quite simply don’t know the place all that well. I’ve visited it many times as a tourist. I don’t consider it my home. It is my right to disagree with Chinese government policies but that does not mean I’m disrespecting the PEOPLE from mainland China. You can all at least allow me to my own opinion of the Chinese government right?
This is not a post about HK snobbery! Yes, I do consider HK a separate entity but not because I think it’s oh so much better than HK but as Sarah pointed out, Hong Kong has a separate government and is in itself a vastly different place to mainland China in many respects.
This was supposed to be a random post about Style Bubble being blocked by China which I’m not that happy about. Again, how is that causing offense to people from China? I’m struggling to to find in my post any comment that pertains to pointing the finger at people from mainland China. All in all, I’m just damn confused!
Some of the comments have sort of steered that way and that again is their opinion and I am not about to judge them back and start a petty comments war about which is better; Mainland or HK.
I also don’t really condone stereotypes which WEREN’T BROUGHT UP IN MY POST at all! So I’m not entirely sure how the comments spiralled into that direction.
Jojorocks: What part of the post offended you exactly?
Various: Thanks for pointing out the use of anonymouse… I’ll pass that tip onto the reader who alerted me.
Censorship sucks, all right- I remember a situation last year when the Indian government blocked access to Blogspot and blogs on it, but that was remedied after the media raised hell about it as a result of public pressure(they’d apparently found a so-called ‘terrorist”s blog and tried to block it but ended up bringing down the whole site). Unfortunately, the mainland Chinese media doesn’t seem to be in a position to do that.
On a much smaller scale, I’m also subject to site blocking on my own campus- I can’t see my own blog or comments unless I log in and check individual posts, but the bigger tragedy is that I can’t see some of the blogs on my blogroll. Though maybe I’ll try the proxies..thanks Susie.
WOW.
chinas ridiculous.
seriously they need to stop brainwashing their people into all goverment approved ideas.
and this whole taiwan deal im hearing about in the news?
BAHHH thats dumb.
its like china trying to take over japan or italy or something crazy.
hahah retarded.
MESSED UUP/
hello! I’ve been in China for the past year. In my experience, your blog (typepad) has already been blocked for a while (at least a few months). Luckily my internet at work runs through HK servers so I can get my wikipedia/blogspot/livejournal fix.
as mentioned above, anonymouse is good, but for some reason I think it was in german (?) for me, which made accessing some sites difficult.
If you want to access style bubble in China but do not want to fiddle with pesky proxys, you can also head to http://www.youhide.com. I’m not entirely sure what it does (magic?), but it ‘hides’ your IP or sends you through a different channel, allowing you to access ‘blocked’ sites. It’s a bit slow but it’s worth it!
hello! I’ve been in China for the past year. In my experience, your blog (typepad) has already been blocked for a while (at least a few months). Luckily my internet at work runs through HK servers so I can get my wikipedia/blogspot/livejournal fix.
as mentioned above, anonymouse is good, but for some reason I think it was in german (?) for me, which made accessing some sites difficult.
If you want to access style bubble in China but do not want to fiddle with pesky proxys, you can also head to http://www.youhide.com. I’m not entirely sure what it does (magic?), but it ‘hides’ your IP or sends you through a different channel, allowing you to access ‘blocked’ sites. It’s a bit slow but it’s worth it!
hello! I’ve been in China for the past year. In my experience, your blog (typepad) has already been blocked for a while (at least a few months). Luckily my internet at work runs through HK servers so I can get my wikipedia/blogspot/livejournal fix.
as mentioned above, anonymouse is good, but for some reason I think it was in german (?) for me, which made accessing some sites difficult.
If you want to access style bubble in China but do not want to fiddle with pesky proxys, you can also head to http://www.youhide.com. I’m not entirely sure what it does (magic?), but it ‘hides’ your IP or sends you through a different channel, allowing you to access ‘blocked’ sites. It’s a bit slow but it’s worth it!
Hi
because of some of the comments of this posts. I was so curious I came back to check out the comments again. after re-reading the post,I feel the need to apologise to susie_bubble,as there is no part of the post is insulting, it was some of the comments that sent me off. I think I wasnt expressing myself clearly.
it is just openly dismissing Chinnese Gov made me a bit offened,afterall, you were there.
We are not brainwashed, We can think for ourselves. sometimes, I think foreign mediim are trying to brainwash non-Chinese.
Our family gets together for all the holidays. One year I switch up on everyone and we did a progressive dinner. It was wonderful, everyone took part in it. Everyone should try it at least once. We did it for Thanksgiving! You can break it up in any different ways. Our first house we had a prayer and a toast it was wonderful I would do it again and I know my family would do it again, but I would have to do the planning. And that is just fine.
I want to thank everyone for the previous comments, which are very helpful for someone like me. I am still learning so this is great.
Well done!! I’m not surprised though, this blog is brilliant!!