tai4ji2x
06-28-2001, 03:11 PM
this is a question for people that have spent extended time in china (prc), specifically beijing:
greetings,
i'm a 21-year old chinese-american (US-born) student, and am currently planning on spending the upcoming academic year at beijing university in a language immersion program.
i intend on bringing my laptop with me (yes, i'm getting it theft-insured). i am wondering what the difficulties are in a US-citizen (like myself) obtaining dial-up internet access. is it even possible? i'd like the privacy of surfing in my own dorm room (it has an individual phone line), and not have to spend time in the always-crowded internet cafes.
plus, there is the issue of censorship. i'm not a big mainstream-news (CNN, NYT) or "china-human-rights-violations" junkie, but i don't want to be inconvenienced by a blocked site. i've also heard that the popular search engines are often blocked. i was in beijing last summer, and didn't notice much (if any) website censorship, but that's partly because i didn't bother looking - the connection at the internet cafes was too slow for any extensive and serious websurfing. i'd like to hear what the current trends are for circumventing the censorship (as the government probably tries to keep up with a list of proxy servers and other methods that keep getting invented). i also never bothered to check newsgroups either. are they banned wholesale, or just certain ones? my main newsgroup usage is for non-political tech-support and computer-related groups.
so, any veteran travellers to the PRC here that can share their experiences?
thanks,
x.yuan
greetings,
i'm a 21-year old chinese-american (US-born) student, and am currently planning on spending the upcoming academic year at beijing university in a language immersion program.
i intend on bringing my laptop with me (yes, i'm getting it theft-insured). i am wondering what the difficulties are in a US-citizen (like myself) obtaining dial-up internet access. is it even possible? i'd like the privacy of surfing in my own dorm room (it has an individual phone line), and not have to spend time in the always-crowded internet cafes.
plus, there is the issue of censorship. i'm not a big mainstream-news (CNN, NYT) or "china-human-rights-violations" junkie, but i don't want to be inconvenienced by a blocked site. i've also heard that the popular search engines are often blocked. i was in beijing last summer, and didn't notice much (if any) website censorship, but that's partly because i didn't bother looking - the connection at the internet cafes was too slow for any extensive and serious websurfing. i'd like to hear what the current trends are for circumventing the censorship (as the government probably tries to keep up with a list of proxy servers and other methods that keep getting invented). i also never bothered to check newsgroups either. are they banned wholesale, or just certain ones? my main newsgroup usage is for non-political tech-support and computer-related groups.
so, any veteran travellers to the PRC here that can share their experiences?
thanks,
x.yuan