All the Tea in China - Observations

Full of excitement as we began our round the world trip, our first stop was Beijing China.  It had been a whirlwind last couple weeks getting ready before we left, and we were looking forward to sharing our adventures (via the Internet, email, pictures, blog, etc.) as the journey started.

Unfortunately, we were unprepared to find out that in China they block most of the stuff on the web that we use everyday to communicate.  We were stunned when we realized that everything related to Google was blocked.

No Gmail, no You Tube, no Google Search, and worst of all - no blog!  Wanna use Google maps to find your way around Beijing?  Ain't gonna happen.  Need to access your documents on Google Drive?  Not in China ...

Facebook?  No way, it is not just blocked, it doesn't even exist in China (they have some bogus Chinese substitute).  Twitter?  Nada, zero, zilch.  And they're not too friendly with Apple either. And, oh yeah, your smart phone doesn't work.

Okay, so I'll just Google an alternative to ... Dang it!  Doesn't work.  It's a world with no access to most of what you use everyday on the Internet.  Furthermore, often when you try to get to some of the really common stuff, it locks up your device.  Bummer dude!

So we had to work around the Chinese censorship and send messages by carrier pigeon to my daughter Alison who could then post and share updates.

And you have to be careful what you say because in China they read and scan your emails and everything you send.  Don't even think about logging into your bank account.  And all that "monitoring" makes the Internet really sloooow.

We really enjoyed our time in China.  The people were very friendly, and it's a fascinating country, but they need to open up their society to freedom on the Internet.   We had to learn to adapt using some pretty creative methods to communicate with the outside world.