Halfway Home Part I

Note: because of the accumulated backlog, I'm updating The Great Escape in two installments. This time, it's less about my travels and more about the unique country, it's problems and virtues I'm currently travelling in. The next installment will be in a couple of days. Enjoy the read!

For once, I am not to blame for the lack of updates on this weblog. Ever since I set foot in China, I haven't been able access certain websites such as youtube, facebook and even this site, blogspot. This is not a new phenomena and I'm not the only one who has this problem. I'm currently being denied access by the Chinese government thanks to the so-called “Great Firewall” a pun on that famous Chinese feat of engineering The Great Wall.


It's internet censorship and technology in it's greatest form. Not only normal websites, such as facebook.com or blogspot.com which enables your average netizen to start a blog, get blocked, but also websites the Chinese government deems offensive (such as pornography), the Chinese version of BBC, websites that belong to outlawed groups like Falong Gong and even individual search strings.

It doesn't matter if I'm on Google or Wikipedia looking for “subversive” material. For example, if I would look for Tianamen Square (Plein van de Hemelse Vrede) or Tibet or the Daila Lama, the search result will automatically get blocked.

There are ways to get around the Great Firewall. Using proxy servers, little software tools, or in my case, hopping over to “that other” China: Hong Kong. Because, even though this magnificent, former city state is nominally a part of China, it's still independent in many ways. And one is internet access. And Hong Kong is where I'm currently at.

The Chinese government calls it “monitoring and control” to safeguard the social security (whatever that means) and to keep all those evils and propaganda spawned by the Western cultural world away from the pure and innocent Chinese. For all intents and purposes, it means that China (with it's 360 million internet users) is outside “the internet” and using it's own, domestic version.


A lot of the blocked sites are renowned English digital domains, which is for the average Chinese internet user no big concern. According to some sources an astonishing amount of ten million Chinese speak English. Sounds alot? That's 0.77 percent of the total population (of 1.3 billion people – 1.3 miljard voor de Nederlanders). Everything in China's version of the internet gets replicated – in Chinese. So Google becomes Baidu, Youtube Tudou and the copycat of Facebook is Xiaonei.

This is just to show that China is big. Very big. I've spent the last month in the southwestern most province, Yunnan, and even now I've only scratched the surface of this magnificent province with it's diverse landscapes and people. And that's only one region. Travelling through Yunnan made me realize, maybe really for the first time, how big China actually is and the ridiculous amount of people that live here.

The last couple of weeks I have travelled and stayed with a Dutch friend from the old days. Together with another Dutch guy, he lives, works and enjoys himself in Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan. The so-called “City of Eternal Spring” has a population of six million. That's as big as Hanoi or Saigon in Vietnam. It was a great base for exploring the province.

Frank, (check his excellent Dutch blog here, and his English blog here) speaks the language, immerses himself into the culture and country and has plenty of Chinese friends. Chinese people don´t really talk about politics and I actually haven´t had any discussions about censorship or democracy. He was an invaluable help showing me the “real” China. Going south, to small cities, talking with the people from the street, going to karaoke bars and sauna's, tasting genuine Chinese food. Without him I wouldn't have had such an valuable experience.

The Chinese have a feeling that they are going somewhere for the first time in recent history. The big question is: are they going forward , to being a respected, international player, into the future or are they going to go inwards, closed off, unwilling to deal with the big, bad (Western) world, much like previous incarnations of the Chinese empires in the days of yore.

Like I said before, I am in Hong Kong staying with the family of a friend from previous travels (remember Wai from Vietnam?). Chinese New Year is just a couple of days away. It's been a while since I've been in Hong Kong, but this place is magical.
Don't worry, I'm back from the internet void. Expect Halfway Home Part II in the next couple of days.