The Internet

Even though many people in the west are aware of the restrictions to the internet in China when it actually comes to going there it’s still a bit of a shock. The internet is heavily censored and the government works tirelessly to identify anyone who writes anything outspoken and remove their comments from the internet.  For foreigners spending time in China it doesn’t really make much difference to our day to day lives as the majority of the censorship is on Chinese sites however there are a number of more famous foreign websites that may have more of an impact when you’re in China.

For most of us the 3 main websites that are notably blocked are YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. China has their own versions of all of these sites widely used by everyone and that’s how the Chinese Government want it as views and opinions from outside China is not something they are keen for people to be seeing on a regular basis. However the growth of the internet has meant its becoming harder for the Chinese to prevent their citizens using alternative sites.

For many travelling to China this poses a welcome break from procrastinating and quite frankly wasting too much time looking through photos of people you don’t really care about. Even though Facebook is great for keeping in touch with friends after a few weeks I really enjoyed getting out of the habit of just logging onto it every time I turned on my computer. I was even more pleased with the endless notifications I had after 10 months on not looking at my Facebook profile…I had 13 and very few of them were directly to do with me.

Now for all you computer boffins out there I’m sure there are endless  free options to get around the amount of sites that are blocked unfortunately I am close to useless on computers and went for the safest, most well-known option of Astrill. By downloading Astrill for a small monthly fee you are able to access whichever websites you like. The server is redirected as if you are online in the UK or the U.S. meaning you can roam the internet freely and even watch BBC IPlayer or Netflix. One subscription allows you to use it on as many as 3 devices so I had Astrill on my phone, laptop and IPad, this would only put you back about £50 for the year so is well worth it if you’re planning on using those sites regularly.

In all honestly it’s not really a great problem when spending time in China if a few websites are blocked, some of our applicants have concerns about not being able to contact home freely but it’s simply not an issue. All email accounts will work in China as does Skype which are the 2 main methods our teachers use to keep in touch with loved ones back home.