My IP: 42.96.136.216

Posted: 29th January 2014

There are a lot of perks for having a job where you get to travel around the world. The first thing I do when I land into a new country is find a Wifi to get hooked up with a local IP address. Surprisingly enough, depending on the country this can be more or less difficult to achieve. But ones you break in the local network, you can start to lay your foundation in the city. Find out about things to see, read expat opinions, plan your stay, connect with local friends.

One very interesting country for “getting connected” is China. I often travel to Beijing for work and find the internet connection one of the most peculiar ones I have ever seen.

Browsing inside China is a breeze.. also some Hongkongese and Taiwanese websites work like a charm. Which actually is a much preferred method to host websites to avoid the complicated Chinese web hosting regulations. I managed to book online tickets to the Beijing Acrobatic Show which shows the advancement in Chinese web design. Or perhaps it’s a foreign run website.. either way I haven’t been very happy with Chinese web design. But I was extremely satisfied with the acrobatic performance here in Beijing.

For me that’s the essen of China. They have perfected their traditions to such extreme extent that hardly anyone can beat them in acrobatics or basically anything that they have been doing for a long time.. in a repetitive fashion. It’s actually quite amazing to see people in their dedicative moments at work.. it’s really very efficient.

When it comes to something new.. they still struggle. They need partners and foreign ones. In fact, this partner-hood can be the most perfect there is.

But going outside of the mainland. I prefer using VPN to get a faster connection as speeds without it can be absolutely dreadful. Also there are some other “blocked connection issues” that can be avoided. I’ve used VNet before with great results.

However the problem is, that routing your traffic outside for using internal websites is extremely inconvenient and slow. Because it’s not just the outward traffic but equally inward traffic that’s overflowing in China. Thus a system of “two worlds” is created.. where you tend to separate the times when you use internal and external websites. Or just mainly stick to the other. The situation is of course unfortunate but undoubtedly has an interesting effect on the Chinese internet community.

All right.. it’s time for me to catch my acrobatic show! See you in a next country, perhaps.

I’m outty,
Carl Carroll

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