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:

Working in a Chinese office -- cultural + development differences

I've just recently reached the seven-month mark working here in Shanghai.  The company that I'm at was actually founded here by an Indian and an American, but the majority of my coworkers are Chinese (although we also have an office in Kuala Lumpur and one in Mumbai).  We're only a team of about 20 people in the Shanghai office, so comparing work styles between a Chinese, German, and American company isn't really possible since the other jobs I've had were at bigger companies.  However, there are a few things I've discovered working in China, and if you know me, I love lists.  So here are five things I've noticed about working in the Middle Kingdom.

Pictures of the office are boring. So here's a picture from Hangzhou's West Lake instead.

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.)