Life Behind the Great Firewall

Before coming to China, I knew about the Great Firewall, which is the Chinese government's attempt at regulating the internet.  In case you've never heard of it, it's basically a form of censorship where certain websites are inaccessible within China, including most of popular western social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WordPress, Blogger, etc.), anything from Google (including Gmail), western news outlets (like the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, etc.).

I've come to realize that basically all of the media I consume is blocked in China.  The only way I can access it is using a VPN, and even then, it still lags.  The Great Firewall brings everything down to a crawl, and if I want to upload one picture to Instagram, it could take me a good 10 minutes to do so with the VPN.  Sometimes going on the NY Times is impossible.  Quite often, the slow internet is so frustrating that I just don't go online and will just watch whatever's on TV instead (I've become a fan of Masterchef).

Basically, whenever you want to access a site that's blocked without a VPN, you get this:

5 Apps Making My Life Easier in China

One major difference between the first time I moved abroad and this time around is having a smartphone.  Admittedly, I was a bit slow to jump on the smartphone bandwagon and only got one at the beginning of 2014.  My main reason to finally cave was because working at a tech company, my colleagues would laugh mercilessly at my old school Sony Ericsson, but I also wanted a new compact digital camera.  I figured I'd just get a phone with a great camera, which is why I decided to get *gasp* the Nokia Lumia 1020, a Windows Phone.

Since getting here to Shanghai, I've really come to appreciate having a Windows Phone because the native apps aren't blocked here.  Frankly, I don't get how Android works in China since the majority of Google services are blocked; even Gmail has been blocked via protocol (supposedly it's working again, but I haven't gotten any emails from my Gmail account on my phone for days).  Some may argue that there aren't any good WP apps available out there and everything is being developed for iOS and Android.  This may be true, but by doing some research and following sites like Windows Central, I've found some great apps that have helped me greatly here in China.  Here are five apps that have made adjusting to life here much easier.  (Note that I'm not including photo apps here because although they're great to have, these apps are really about adjusting to life here in China.)

Figuring Out Chinese E-Commerce Websites

Now that I've been here for about a month, I'm starting to get into the daily grind of living in China. Most of my time is spent job searching, discovering the city, or doing mundane tasks like grocery shopping. The latter two are always an adventure since there's something new I'm going to learn or discover. For most people, shopping online is nothing difficult, but living in a country where my literacy is very limited is a challenge.

In the last few years, I started buying vinyl records again because I like having the physical product. Quite often, new releases also come with an mp3 download code so I can listen on whatever digital device of my choosing. Additionally, I like a lot of music from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, so I just enjoy having the original records, which I have to buy secondhand. About two years ago or so, I went with a friend to Utrecht for the Mega Record & CD Fair where I looked for a lot of old Beatles records. I realized then that being an avid traveler, I could always go hunt for record shops while on vacation and perhaps find releases that would normally be harder to come by.

With that in mind, I thought that looking for records here in China would be interesting since western music isn't common here, and therefore, if there are releases that I could find, they're probably rare and/or fewer people are interested in them. Moreover, China is closer to Japan, which comparatively listens to a lot of western music, so finding Japanese releases here is easier than in either Germany or the United States. Having thought this out, I decided to try out Taobao.com, China's answer to eBay and Amazon. Essentially, it's an e-commerce site that connects small businesses to people and you can find everything under the sun there, including secondhand wares.

How Social Media is Ruining TV (for me)

I don't consider myself a big TV person, but I am a loyal fan of two current shows: How I Met Your Mother and Mad Men.  I keep up-to-date with them, as well, meaning, I am on the current season for both shows.  Thank God for the internet.

But seriously, even though the internet allows me to watch these shows, I can't watch them on Monday (for HIMYM) or Sunday (for Mad Men).  In order to avoid finding out anything that happened, I practically have to avoid all social media the day after new episodes air.  I have too many friends that watch them and will write something about it.  Twitter is the worst, especially when it comes to Mad Men.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the Mad Men/AMC social media team and think they are doing a fantastic job of hyping and getting the show discussed.  But I know that tomorrow morning, about 3/4 of my Twitter feed will be filled with reactions to Mad Men that the show retweeted.  A good example is when the current sixth season started -- I knew before I watched the episode that (SPOILER ALERT!) Don was back to his womanizing ways and sleeping with his neighbor.  As a result, the suspense from the fifth season's cliffhanger was sort of anticlimactic.  Of course, I still watched the episode, but my reaction was sort of, "OK, I know that already."  Here's some examples of what I don't really want to see at all, even though I would click on it after watching the episode (this past week was surprisingly not too bad):

The funny thing is that after I started writing this blog post, the AV Club tweeted about an add-on which essentially makes social media ruining your TV viewing habits your own fault.  It was as if they read my mind or something:

I guess I'll have to try it, but I wonder if it would block everything related to the shows I watch?  Because I like reading about the non-spoiler stuff, like production or what have you.  I'll give the add-on a whirl and see if I like it.

On a related social media note, is Facebook asking anyone else for more information?  I constantly get this screen when I log in:

It's great that Facebook is trying to get more information from me and I get it.  Try to make the whole social media experience more personalized, "more social."  But there's quite obviously a reason why I haven't shared 40% of my information nor updated anything relevant.  So Facebook, please, stop asking me for this information.  At least add an option to not see this screen again because it's just annoying.  I also find it slightly irritating that I can't delete my college information.  This isn't really relevant to have on my Facebook profile anymore; it was useful when Facebook was only open to college students.  Has anyone else figured out how to get rid of that information?  I've tried with absolutely no luck.

And now I officially feel like I'm really going retro.