This turned out to be a great thing because blogs that I already like were carefully selecting articles that I probably hadn’t read before, being that they were published months or even years ago. I thought an internal link roundup like this would be a great thing to do and Chengdu Living was nominated shortly thereafter by Far West China, a great Xinjiang blog authored by Josh, and then by Steve of You’re Not From Around Here, Are You?

Without further ado, let’s get into the seven links:

Chengdu Living’s Most Beautiful

Interview with Gas, Chengdu’s Most Prolific Graffiti Artist

Years ago I first started seeing the “Gas” tag appearing around Chengdu. Unlike the other tags around town, which were mediocre at best, whoever this Gas character was, he had real style. I wondered who he was and where he was from. And as the tag became more prolific, the desire to discover who the person behind it became greater. After asking around I finally found another graffiti artist who knew him and would introduce me. Since then we’ve become good friends and I love seeing Gas’ artwork around Chengdu. It’s not hard to find considering it’s showing up at official Nike events, cool bars like The Lazy Pug, and much more. Just feast your eyes on his “Chengdu” pieces.

Chengdu Living’s Most Popular

Anti-Japan Demonstration Ignites Chengdu

Picture this: one day I’m walking around minding my own business and I get a call from Sascha who tells me that an anti-Japanese protest is happening in Chengdu. At the time I was at an electronics store signing the contract for an iPhone 4 on China Telecom not far from Chunxi Lu, the shopping district where the demonstration was to take place. With no time to return home to grab proper photo equipment, I tear the plastic off my new phone and put it to good use… taking photos of people burning Japanese flags, smashing windows, and causing absolute mayhem in Chengdu’s most popular commercial district. This post was linked to by dozens of blogs and websites including the well-respected China blog Danwei, the LA Times, and many more.

After affixing the flag, a protester's "thumbs up" emerges and the crowd erupts with cheers

Honorable mention: Chengdu Living Has Been Harmonized

Chengdu Living’s Most Controversial

Attempting to Talk Your Way Out of a Visa Fine

Published on January 1, 2010, this was the original featured post on Chengdu Living. Written by Eli and documenting his experience trying to evade a P.S.B. fine in Chengdu, it drew dozens of comments about P.S.B. rules and regulations, the morality of skirting the rules, and grown men crying. The post itself is fantastically well written and Eli engages each of his detractors one by one in the comments below. If this post was designed for controversy, it was a smashing success.

Chengdu Living’s Most Helpful

The Chengdu Living Forum 

This isn’t a post at all, but without question, the Chengdu Living forum (accessible from chengduforum.com) has become the most helpful single resource on the site. Every week new members sign up and are participating in what is a growing body of varied and up-to-date information on everything Chengdu. Authoring blog posts and interacting with friends and readers is fantastic but the forum really brings a new level of interaction. And I can’t go without mentioning how helpful the forum has been for me personally and other long-term Chengdu residents.

Honorable mention: The Giving Birth in Chengdu Post Series. A year and a half ago Sascha begun a storied journey into fatherhood that has taught him countless lessons. In that time he’s published an ten-part post series breaking down an incredible amount of useful information about giving birth and raising children in China.

Chengdu Living’s Surprise Success

Greed & Corruption: the USA Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo

This was Elias‘ first post published on Chengdu Living, and man, did it get read and commented on by a lot of people. This first-hand account of a Student Ambassador at the Shanghai Expo detailed the greed and corruption that led to the Pavilion receiving condemnation from all sides. The comments field on this post alone alone erupted into heated debate over the moral and legal implications of the US Expo’s conduct. I had little foreknowledge of the Expo and didn’t comprehend the implications that publishing such a detailed insider account would have.

Honorable mention: Enduring the China Blues. Since “China Blues” has been published, I’ve heard the term casually used in conversation at least a dozen times. It just fits.

Chengdu Living’s Under Appreciated

The Most Potent Fertilizer on Earth

The “Jin ke la” post on Chengdu Living has to be the funniest one we’ve ever published. A Chinese fertilizer company produced a series of videos promoting a product called “Jin ke la” and decided to turn the ridiculous up to eleven by associating it with U.S. Presidents and global agricultural revolutions to name a few. From the post:

Honorable mentions: Enjoy Some of the World’s Greatest Teas in Sichuan, China’s Soul Search

Chengdu Living’s Proudest

The Ace of Diamonds: Surviving the Earthquake

Aside from being among the most life-threatening and eye-opening experiences of my life, I love reading this story. I’ll never forget returning from Qing Cheng Shan a day after the earthquake – it took me that long to climb down the mountain and hitch a ride to Chengdu – and telling this story to a circle of close friends. As I shared each vivid detail from my very recent memory, Sascha sat across from me silently writing. Furiously writing. I paid no attention but a day later this story, based on my account, was written. I originally intended to write it myself but Sascha has a way with storytelling, and once I read it I felt immense satisfaction.

Honorable mentions: Chengdu Living Has Been Harmonized, The Murky Evolution of the Chinese Education System

Conclusion

That about wraps up this post on Highlighting 7 Links. Here go my nominations:

• Ryan at LostLaowai
• Mike Weed at CQScene
• Richard at Notes from Xian
• Sasha at Shanghai Novice
• Seeing Red in China

Currently we’re in the midst of another massive QQ-style internet takeover. This time it’s Sina’s Weibo micro-blogging service (think Twitter) that’s swallowing up millions of users. After hearing about it for weeks on end I registered an account and downloaded the Weibo app on my iPhone. After several months of exploring the system, interacting with old friends and making new ones, I barely even bother to get on QQ anymore since virtually everyone has already made the switch.

Here’s how and why you should get on Sina Weibo to begin interacting with friends in your neighborhood and across China.

The Weibo.com post interface alongside the logged-in user stats

How Does Weibo Work?

From the beginning (almost two years ago) Weibo has been described by nearly everyone as the Chinese Twitter clone. This does a serviceable job of describing how Weibo works: at it’s heart it’s a chronological timeline of less-than-140 character posts authored by people you follow. Simple enough.

Since its inception though, Weibo has added several features distinguishing itself from Twitter and becoming something of a Facebook-Twitter mashup. Since both of these juggernaut social networks are inaccessible to users in this country, this unison makes a lot of sense since Facebook and Twitter have already gone through the trouble of spending years figuring out how social networks like this should work.

Quick Facts About Weibo

• You follow people, have followers, and save favorites. Very similar to Twiter.
• Photo sharing is easy since Weibo automatically hosts images for you. Upload them from your phone or computer and they automatically appear directly inside the timeline. Like Facebook.
• In addition to pictures, you can also upload audio and video. These also appear in the timeline and play instantly just like on Facebook.
• There’s already over 150 million registered Weibo accounts and the user base will soon eclipse Twitter. Adding tens of millions of new users per month.
• Just like Twitter, Sina has verified accounts, indicated by a “V” insignia, for celebrities. Or anyone with a pinch of guanxi with Sina.

Why Weibo is Worth Your Time: Making Connections

New & old friends on Weibo

Being connected to your friends is a wonderful thing. Facebook or Twitter on their own don’t hold much appeal to me and I don’t think my case is very extraordinary. It’s the connections that are valuable. Weibo offers the exact same thing: a connection to all of your contacts in China.

If your friends in China are like mine (mostly people in their 20′s and 30′s), there’s a good chance that they’re all on Weibo and cruise their own timelines from their office computer or smart phone. And once you’re connected to them, you’ll stumble upon others with similar interests.

For instance, one of the first people that I followed on Weibo was Gas, Chengdu graffiti artist and friend. A few weeks ago he traveled to Changsha to participate in the biggest annual graffiti event in China. During his extended weekend in Changsha he posted dozens of photos of artwork all around the city and through those posts I got connected with artists I hadn’t even heard of before. The same thing has happened in many of the other social circles that I’m in be it technology, photography, or music.

In short, Weibo is a great way to connect with people who have similar interests in China. Or just connect to Tom Cruise or Bill Gates who have recently joined Weibo and accrued hundreds of thousands of followers in a matter of days.

Another Benefit: Improving Your Chinese

It goes without being said that since Weibo is mostly dominated by Chinese people who don’t speak English, almost no one is using English at all. This is either a huge problem, if you can’t read any characters at all, or will really catapult your written interaction in Chinese.

Like many of you, I’ve been (informally) studying Chinese as long as I’ve been in China, experimenting with different tools and tricks along the way. I’ve already gone on about Studying Chinese with an iPhone or iPod Touch and Weibo is really an extension of that.

J-Dilla (US hip hop producer) tribute on Weibo, courtesy of Zhenkai, Chengdu local B-Boy

I cannot understand everything on Weibo upon first glance (not by a long shot) so here’s what I do: tap and hold to copy something I want to translate to the clipboard. Then pop over to Pleco (the best Chinese-English dictionary app) and paste the contents into the pasteboard reader. Any words or characters that I don’t understand and are likely to be used within the next 6 months get added to my flashcards. Using this technique alone I’ve added 500+ new flashcards to Pleco that I’ve stumbled on in Weibo. Since I don’t have much time to sit down and read Chinese books for hours at a time, collecting and recording these bite-sized pieces of vocabulary works great for me.

Registration & Weibo Clients

After you head over to the Weibo site to register your account, you’ll receive some suggestions on who to follow. If you aren’t interested in following Mainland pop stars and celebrities, I suggest you find at least a single friend who’s on Weibo so you can get connected with people you actually know. If you get connected to a few people that you know from the beginning, you’re likely to stumble upon more people that you know or are interested in. I’ve found a handful of local artists, musicians and photographers who I’ve met (so to speak) through Weibo.

Once you’ve got that covered, you have just to select whether you’ll be accessing Weibo from a computer or a mobile device. Here are your options:

Web interface

The traditional method of accessing Weibo is through their website at Weibo.com. The interface looks virtually identical to what Twitter.com looked like before it’s redesign about 6 months ago. It’s a 2-column chronological listing of posts by people you’re following. You can hover over usernames to see information on their account like where they’re located, who their following and so forth.

iPhone & iPod Touch

Although there’s an official Weibo client (developed by Sina) which does the job perfectly well, there’s a superior third party alternative called Weico (App Store link / official site). It has virtually all of the same functions as the official client but is better designed and includes several different themes which you can toggle in the app settings. I’m using the Graphite thing which works well and looks great (pictured at right).

Android

Similar to the situation on iOS, there’s an official Sina client as well as Weico. The Weico app on Android is still in beta but is available for free download just as on iPhone and iPod Touch. I haven’t used either of these apps (I don’t have an Android phone) but expect them to be virtually identical to their iPhone counterparts in function and design.

Personally I much prefer accessing Weibo from my iPhone since it perfectly fills idle moments throughout the day: waiting in line, taking a taxi from here to there, etc. If you have a smartphone with 3G access (either an iPhone or Android device), reading and posting on Weibo will be especially quick and convenient for you.

Join Tom Cruise & Bill Gates on Weibo

Since going through the paces of registering an account on Weibo and locating friends, I barely even bother with QQ anymore. Although I was never a fan of QQ to begin with, it was the connections it provided – to virtually everyone in China – that were really valuable. Since Sina’s Weibo network has been spreading like wildfire over the previous year, I can retain all of the same connections on a service that’s much less intrusive.

If you haven’t already, it might be worth your time to check it out and see what it can offer you. If you do, send me a message and say hello!

And, since 2006 he’s been the co-author of China Law Blog, one of the best China blogs in the blogosphere.

So when Eli invited me to attend his lecture in Chengdu hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce, it was a no brainer. The topic alone was intriguing and something I knew little about: China’s 12th Five Year Plan.

Lecture at the Chengdu Sofitel

I hadn’t attended a lecture like this before so I wasn’t sure what the atmosphere or presentation would be like. Here’s how it went down:

• The event was hosted in the Sofitel Chengdu, one of the most luxurious hotels in the city
• Tickets cost 180 yuan and included a buffet dinner in the hotel
• About 25-30 people attended the lecture
• Apparently I under dressed; most people were there in suits
• The talk itself was fantastic. The line between Chinese culture and state institutions is a fascinating interplay and Steve is at the center of it. His fluency in written Chinese helps when he burns through hundreds of pages of government documents to understand the system.

Read the Transcript for Free

During the lecture most people in the room were taking notes. However you won’t need to do that (or pay the 180 yuan cover charge) to get the same information since it was posted on China Law Blog in it’s entirety. It’s absolutely worth the read if you’re interested in learning about where China is headed and why. Check that out here before you read the interview with Steve Dickinson below.

Interview with Steve Dickinson

Chengdu Living: Who are you?

Steven: My name is Steven Dickinson, I’m partner at Harris & Moure, resident in Qingdao, China.

Chengdu Living: We know you as one of the authors of China Law Blog, tell us a little about that. When did that get started?

Steven: Well, it has an interesting start. Dan Harris and I (the other author of China Law Blog) have known each other since 1986, we both practiced law together in a big Seattle law firm. He went one way and I went another and in the early 2000′s we decided to get back together to try to do a program in China. It was Dan’s idea, not mine, to use a blog as our primary vehicle for creating our identity in China.

My idea was, I’ve been working in Asia since 1984, and consistently the law is misunderstood and misreported. Not just in China. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, it’s all misreported. And so I agreed that I would do that with Dan under the agreement that I would be able to write about what’s really going on in Chinese law.

The real impetus for the blog and what kept it pushing forward was Dan Harris, not me, because Dan blogs every single day. I blog less often because I tend to do quite detailed pieces and he does more topical, you know, current information kind of things.

With that agreement, that we would use the blog to talk about what China’s really about in terms of the legal system, that’s been our focus with the blog.

Chengdu Living: How long has China Law Blog been published for?

Steven: We started in 2006, and we’ve been going continuously since then.

Chengdu Living: Since 2006 what has been the greatest benefit or surprise of the blog?

Steven: Well, the benefit has been, Harris & Moure is a very small operation. I mean, it’s a boutique international law firm and without the blog, Harris & Moure would be meaningless. No one would care about us. But because of the blog, we now have a stature in the world of law and business that we would never have without the blog, so the blog has been very valuable to us. That’s number one.

Number two, we’ve met many interesting and pleasant people through the blog and that’s been a big benefit for us also.

Chengdu Living: Was the blog created with a business motivation or was that an ancillary effect?

Steven: There was a business motivation, but in 2006 blogs were pretty new. We had no notion of what blogs would become or how blogging would become integrated into the business world, so we’ve kind of developed with the blogosphere together.

We were kind of a leader in certain elements of the blogosphere but again that was Dan Harris, doing the leadership.

Chengdu Living: It’s interesting that China Law Blog is a category and yet it has such a broad appeal in the China blogosphere. Was it intended to be for a wide audience or were you thinking it would be for people in the industry and legal trade?

Steven: In terms of what we were thinking and what happened, that’s interesting. In the United States, China Law Blog has been voted several times as the best blog in the legal area, period. Nothing to do with China. And the reason is that most legal blogs are frankly, without any personality and quite boring. Where our blog has our two personalities and we let the personalities show through. Most lawyers don’t allow that and so most law blogs have never succeeded for that reason. And it’s still that way, there has not been any improvement in the law world on the blog side. But we’ve enjoyed it, it’s been fun for us.

Chengdu Living: Among readers and clients what are some of the greatest misconceptions that people have about China or China Law?

Steven: There’s a couple. The first is that, we’re Americans and much of our readership is from the US, Canada, and England. And much of what’s strange about Chinese law is because it’s civil law, not common law. So a lot of what we have to explain is that Chinese law is based on a completely different legal tradition. And that’s the area that I enjoy working with, because it’s been my area of research and interest for a long time.

The other, of course, is that most foreigners believe that China doesn’t have any law, period. And so a lot of what we’re doing is just making clear to people where the law is in China and how it affects their daily life and the fact that there really is law here and it needs to be used effectively and creatively. So most of our readership is completely blank. That’s why they enjoy what we write so much, because they’re coming at it from complete blank.

The other group we have are people who think we’re full of nonsense and are critical of what we say. And they’re fun to deal with, too. Because there’s two groups like that:

• There’s the Chinese people who think that what we say about China is based on the fact that we don’t understand China. Everything I write is based on Chinese sources, so that’s a funny comment, I believe.
• Then there’s the other group where we’re not China cheerleaders or detractors, we’re kind of in the middle. And the China cheerleaders don’t like what we write.

Chengdu Living: You do a great job of staying neutral.

Steven: Yeah, that’s our goal. To be as neutral as we can while still being true to our real beliefs.

Dan and I are politically very far apart but we both like and are willing to accept foreign countries and foreign cultures. And we don’t expect them to be clones of our own culture and that’s what gets us through a lot of these things. To have a genuine, not just respect for, but a genuine affection for foreign cultures, and we both have that feeling about China.

Chengdu Living: Thanks for answering our questions.

What do you think?

Have you heard of China Law Blog before? How do you feel about China’s 12th five year plan? If you have an opinion, leave it below.

Chengdu Living suddenly became inaccessible from within China on Thursday March 10th.  Hoping for the best, we held on for a day until we were able to confirm that indeed, after 14 months of being online, we are now officially blocked — otherwise known as being “Harmonized” (被和谐了) to use the local terminology.

Update: Chengdu Living is currently accessible from Chengdu without a proxy. It’s evidently blocked in other locations in China so the block might be intermittent or based on region. As always, we recommend using a VPN so won’t have to concern yourself with this at all. See below for our free VPN giveaway.

How Did This Happen?

The short answer is that we don’t know.

Although “the rules” of publishing a blog about life in China don’t exist, we knew from the beginning that being blocked was a possibility. Over the years we’ve developed a deep love and respect for Chengdu and we feel satisfied that Chengdu Living reflects that, but there’s another side to this. We didn’t want the content to be too far removed from the social and political realities of Chengdu. It’s a delicate balance to maintain and in this situation you will get no warnings: you go straight from business as usual to being blocked with no explanation.

Foreigners who’ve spent considerable time in China know how the pleasures and trials of living here are complex. As with anywhere else, there’s good and bad. We wrestle with the hardships and frustrations of China like everyone else, but our ideal has been to cultivate a platform which celebrates the positive aspects of life here. Those which excite us, which we talk about amongst ourselves, and we want to share with everyone.

In short, the block is a surprise to us and we aren’t clear for what reason we were blocked. However, our current best guess is that it has something to do with a story we published several weeks ago about the effect of China’s burgeoning middle class on recent political unrest in Egypt.

The Great Firewall

The Golden Shield Project (nicknamed The Great Firewall) is the censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security in China. Since 1998, the Golden Shield Project has been protecting Chinese from:

• Pornography
• Anti-social opinions and activities
• Ideas, organizations and opinions which are a threat to national security
• Ideas, organizations and opinions which undermine the government’s policies on religion or are seen as subversive

Basically if your site contains reference to REDACTED REDACTED, REDACTED Movement in China, or REDACTED Square, then you run the risk of being harmonized. It’s estimated that there are tens of thousands of civil servants propping up “The Shield”, presumably by searching for sites including certain keywords. For this reason, many dissenting Chinese choose not to share or discuss their opinion on sensitive topics at all.

The political and ideological root of the Firewall carries an ironic and almost poetic twist, though. Deng Xiaoping, the real revolutionary hero of China and shining star of Sichuan legacy, said in the early 1980′s:

“If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in.”

The idea is that economic reform and market economy (fresh air) were essential to China’s growth, but would simultaneously introduce unsavory elements (flies) which had to be eliminated.

The Technical Details of Our Blockage

Immediately after suspecting we were being blocked we contacted some friends who helped us investigate the details of the block (thanks, you know who you are). It turns out that this was a DNS Poison attack which confuses the servers which translate ChengduLiving.com into an IP address, sending you to the wrong destination. This results in a page not found error. The website is exactly where it should be, but you’re being intentionally directed to the wrong place. Because this type of attack is linked to our domain name, there isn’t much we can do but hope that it gets unblocked.

In the last day we’ve talked to some more people and have some leads on a solution. It might be possible to overcome the block, but there’s no way to be sure. When we have more information, we’ll share it.

Update: Chengdu Living has been unblocked, at least in some locations. We aren’t sure how long the site will remain accessible without a VPN.

We Recommend You Do Not Use Your Chinese ISP’s DNS Servers

Since China’s major internet service providers are all state-owned, pushing a DNS Poison attack through the thousands of DNS servers across the country is very possible. However, you can avoid using their DNS servers complete and easily by using OpenDNS or Google Public DNS.

Whether you’re using a Windows or Mac computer, switching to another DNS server is easy. For me, I opened System Preferences, clicked Network, then Advanced, and entered 8.8.8.8 into the DNS tab. Here’s an image to illustrate:

Using Google Public DNS takes 30 seconds to setup on a Windows or Mac computer

Three Reasons to Continue Despite the Block

We’ll continue to publish content on Chengdu Living and build the audience as we’ve been doing. Here’s why:

• According to our website analytics, an enormous percentage of readers are located overseas or are accessing the site through a VPN from China. Our Facebook and Twitter accounts alone, with thousands of fans and followers on each, demonstrate the size of this audience.
• We have an obligation to continue the work that we started. Every meaningful accomplishment is achieved after overcoming obstacles like this and it’ll add to our experience.
• We don’t know how to stop. Chengdu Living is an extension of our lives. We’re writers, bloggers, and otherwise creative types who want to contribute the lessons and adventures that we’re privileged to experience. Engaging local culture, language, and society and sharing it with others is a fulfilling pursuit.

Freedur VPN Giveaway

We’ve long been advocates of using a VPN because such an enormous portion of the internet remains inaccessible to surfers in China without one. If the internet is anything more to you than a conduit for email, we believe it to be essential since more and more of our lives move online every day. With that in mind, we have 25 Freedur VPN accounts (3-month duration) to give away so you can get started now if you aren’t already on a VPN. All you have to do is leave a comment below and we’ll select 25 commenters at random to receive free accounts.

Note: Freedur has been generous enough to offer dozens of free accounts to Chengdu Living readers and contributors and we personally use this VPN provider although we think any VPN that works is great. If you have an alternate VPN that works well for you, feel free to post the details below for anyone else who’s interested. If you’re a VPN provider and you’d like to promote your service by allowing us to donate some accounts to readers in China, contact us.

When I first came to China, that meant routinely strolling to the corner store to buy international phone cards.  After taking off the plastic wrapper and revealing the code by scratching with my fingernail, I’d call a long number, enter the code, and then the number I wanted to dial.

Aside from costing a lot (I paid 100 yuan per card, which sometimes lasted me a week), this method of calling overseas is really a hassle. It takes a long time to initiate the call and you frequently get dropped calls, frustrating everyone involved.

Fortunately there’s a much better way. I’ve been using it recently to contact friends and family in the United States from China for free.

VOIP: How It’s So Cheap

Over the last 6 years there’s been a major shakeup in the telecommunications industry as international calling has been getting swallowed up by the internet. Voice over IP has gone mainstream and the costs of overseas calls are plummeting to ridiculous lows (and in this case, free).

How is this possible? It’s due to a technology called Least Cost Routing. What this does is send your voice over the internet, for free – to a destination nearby the number you’re calling and then converts it to an analog call. Effectively making a call from any internet-connected device in the world a local call.

Google Voice and Gmail Integration

A Voice keypad in Gmail

This summer Google integrated Voice into Gmail, allowing anyone with a Google account to make calls from within their email inbox. Instead of having to register an account and download software like Skype, you could make a call immediately using an account you already have. It took VOIP technology and Google Voice, which was something that few people understood or used, and brought it to prime time with Gmail as a delivery platform. edit: and today, they’ve renewed their commitment to it.

I was excited to see this unveiled since I use a lot of Google products and think they’re pretty great. I’m happy to report that this is no exception: it’s a cinch to use and call quality is fantastic – more clear than an ordinary call, provided your internet connection is adequate.

Here’s how to make calls for free to friends or family overseas for dirt cheap. Or free, depending on where your friends and family are located.

Calling The US for Free With Gmail

Voice integrated into Gmail offers super low prices to begin with. To give you an example, calling China from the United States costs $0.02 per minute – but in this case, we’re most interested in free. The reason this works is because Google offers domestic calls (within the United States) for free. All you have to do is appear to be in the US and you’ll be granted just that.

Here’s what required to make this work:

Requirements

• An internet connected computer
• Gmail account
• A headset or earbuds with microphone, ideally
• Working VPN or proxy connection

It’s a safe to say that the vast majority of people reading this meet the first two requirements already. If you don’t own a headset, you can pick one up and any computer shop in China and look kind of like you’re landing planes as you speak into a protruding plastic microphone attached to headphones. I use the standard Apple earbuds which came with my iPhone for this purpose – they have a microphone build in and are light and easy.

The VPN is bound to be the biggest stumbling block but everyday there are more and better options available. We’ve been using Freedur for the last year to access everything on the internet and it’s been great. But to be clear, in order for this to be free, you need to be accessing Gmail through a proxy or VPN with at least one server in the US.

Step by Step

1. Fire up your proxy. If you’re using Freedur, this means installing the software and hitting the giant “On” button.Otherwise, you’ll want to go to System Preferences > Network (on Mac) and Start > Control Panel > Networks on Windows. From there you can set up a VPN connection by entering the username, password and server address. Your VPN provider will arm you with this information.
2. Load Gmail and notice the Call window seated at the bottom right corner.
   

   Click call phone

   If it’s not there, click “Call phone” in your list of Gmail chat contact in the left column. If it doesn’t automatically detect your settings (it did on my Mac), go into Gmail settings > Chat and select your microphone and speakers or headphones from the drop down list.

3. Enter the number you want to reach and click call. The call connects and everything is seamless. I haven’t had it go any other way yet.If you aren’t going through a VPN or you’re calling another country, the cost of the call will be deducted from the pocket change that they grant you for free to begin with. If you decide you want to add more, that’s easy too.

Now go give your mother a call!

Note: This content has run its course and winners have been announced below! The “chengduliving” coupon code still saved you 10% on Freedur, though.

About Freedur’s 50% Discount

Although we’re in the midst of a proliferation of VPN services, more than a few of these services have turned out to be sketchy or difficult to configure – or both, which makes Freedur that much more attractive. After installing a small program (available on Windows and Mac OSX) you’re able to access everything the internet has to offer. It’s really that simple.

And now is the best time to sign up since Freedur has reduced their prices by 50% on all subscriptions, whether you want to sign up for a year or just try it out for a month. Plus, use the code “chengduliving” at checkout and save an additional 10%! Can’t beat that.

Freedur’s Official Press Release

In the past year, we have received amazing support from customers and partners. As a result, we are now in the position to buy servers in bulk and greatly reduce our cost across the board. We would like to say a big THANK YOU by extending our cost reduction to our customers: All Freedur VPN packages are now 50% off of its original price!
We are grateful for the love and we hope to continue earning your support. Here are the old and new prices:

Old prices:

1 month: $19.95
3 month: $49.95
6 month: $79.95
1 year: $119.95

New prices:

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3 month: $24.95
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Please take advantage of this amazing offer and tell your friends!  Freedur is committed to being the best option for your VPN needs.

How to Win a Free Annual Subscription

To participate in the drawing, all you have to do is one of the following:

1. Subscribe to our RSS feed or

2. Join our Facebook Fan Page or

3. Join the Mailing List

Then, leave a comment on this post and you’re all set. If you’re already a Facebook fan or subscribed to the RSS feed, no problem: leave a comment and you’ll be included in the drawing.

Winners will be selected at random and mailed login information for your year-long account.

Good luck!

Freedur VPN Giveaway Winners

1. John

2. Joel

3. Samantha

4. Adam

5. Jacob

6. Angela

7. kkorange

8. Maree

9. Chrystal

10. Dave

Congratulations to all of the winners! Account information will be e-mailed to the addresses that you left along with your comments.

To everyone else, Freedur was nice enough to offer us a great consollation prize: a free one month trial of Freedur. If you like the service and want to continue using it, you can still save 10% because it came from Chengdu Living.

Thanks for participating!

If you’re already using Freedur or have any questions about how the service works, drop us a note in the comment field below.

Whenever I speak with 90后 kids, I am struck by their optimism and above all their supreme self-confidence. I am also struck by their resignation and flippant disregard for the “important” issues of the day. The 90后 generation (those born since 1990) has been the target of everyone’s ire and/or hopes since they first came on the scene as “adults” in 2008. In that momentous year, China’s youth rallied around the country, alarming foreign commentators who remembered the Brown Shirts of Germany, just before the Nazis rolled into Poland in 1939.

Nationalism?

While talking with one particular group of 90后 teenagers, this idea that has brewed in the West of a nationalistic, brainwashed youth determined to rule the world garnered snickers and jokes. For them, the response to the earthquake in Sichuan was their defining moment, not the wild cheering of overseas students in Korea and Europe as the Olympic Torch made its slow journey to Beijing. There’s a big difference between blind nationalism controlled by bureaucratic censor-puppeteers and clear patriotic love based on the little things: those noodles down the street that only our town makes; the smell of plum blossoms in winter; the cries of the hard-sugar guy and the knife-sharpener as they make their rounds through the suburbs … all those familiar, comforting things that make Chinese watercolors Chinese as opposed to Greek. The youth know that.

The 90后 kids told me matter-of-factly that the fate of the nation rested upon their shoulders. For some of my friends born in the 1970′s (“70后”), this is a scary thought. This new generation has no concept of suffering, loves to have fun and dress wild and might be gay today and straight tomorrow. Basically, my 70后 friends are sceptical and wary of the new kids crowding into the discos and coffee shops (as we all will be of the generation that follows, into eternity). The older generation might be worried, but they are also hopeful, because everything that makes the new kids contemptible (consumerism, indifference, lack of work ethic, access to too much) gives them the ability to resist and change the China that the old bureaucrats are trying to build.

Here We Are Now

Sites like ChinaSmack and ChinaHush are the children of this new generation. They are the vehicles through which foreigners catch a glimpse of how the Chinese ridicule and celebrate their own absurdities. Every week there is a new hero held up and a new goat eviscerated in full view of 300 million netizens, and this is the environment in which the 90后 are growing up and learning about where they are, who they are and what they are supposed to do. Witness how quickly “Fen Qing” (愤青) became an insult and 被和谐 (“Bei He Xie”) became a term to describe being censored.

Take any other past generation and examine their environment: the Starving 50′s, the Insane 60′s, the Even More Insane 70′s, the Everything We said Then was Wrong 80′s, the Make That Money 90′s, the We’re Coming Up Millennium and now The Almost Modern Years we live in today. In the Almost Modern Years, we drown in a sea of information and so do the 90后 despite the Party’s best efforts to maintain a dumbed-down society. The Internet is illuminating gaps in the Great FireWall faster than Beijing censors can hide them and the absurdity of information control in the Information Age gives rise to phenomena such as the Human Flesh Search, Douban as the forum for China’s elite netizens and the content that makes ChinaSmack so entertaining.

The 90后 youth are the clean, sleek dragon emerging from the dry, brittle skin of generations past. When the newborn dragon looks back at its old self, he can’t help but laugh at the foolishness of government-subsidized concepts like 和谐社会 (“He Xie She Hui”), while at the same time recognizing the old Chinese idea of harmony as a characteristic of a people that should be (and needs to be) shown to the world at large.

Entertain Us

As with everything in the world, there is a downside.

The 90后 love to have fun and ridicule the Party for the old, plodding dinosaur that it is, but as we all know in the US, this adoration of the Cliche as a means for rebellion leads to couch-surfing and a slow but final dis-engagement from civil society. Who can blame them? The more you see how governments work, the more laughingly disgusting it becomes and in the end, who wants to deal with that? The older generations tend to see the 90后 as empty people who want to have the best looking cell phone and the coolest fashions with the least amount of responsibility. These kids need to be entertained, the old folks say, or they get bored and do nothing. Foreign media have tried to understand this group of kids and pigeonhole them as best they can, but the real truth is they cannot be categorized and that is why they will have more success than any other generation in changing China. Past generations were indoctrinated to believe one or another slogan, but this 90后 one has a dozen Party slogans plus the lure of a million more bouncing around in their heads. They can and do and will access reports in Chinese and in English about Party censorship and the corrupt forces that keep Chinese people down. The question is, as is it is for Americans who know so much about their own country’s duplicity, what to do?

For the US, hipsters and Simpsons and South Park are the answer: snarky consumers and irreverent-to-the-point-of-vulgar media. I would argue that snarky-ism and increasingly vulgar media in the US are both an escape and a lazy comment on tired reality. But, I think this is exactly what China needs: the searing gaze of the bored girl with the biting comment that rings true through all of the smoke and mirrors. Chinese society is different from ours and the mindset of 90后 kids is something so alien, so rebellious, so un-Chinese that the impact is very hard to imagine. Remember when that 21-year old waitress stabbed a party official to death when he tried to force her to have sex with him? That’s what I’m talking about. Perhaps a few years ago, the girl would not have dared to stab a government official, good ole’ 和谐 might have stayed her hand. But not these 90后 girls – they know it when they smell it and they are not trying to step in it. But then again, my older friends will point to the college girl all done up getting into the Lexus after school as evidence of what these girls really want.

Cliche Rebels

We in the US had our Obama Surge, when everyone thought that Change truly was going to happen, and it mobilized our Cliche generation (the generation that gave rise to the all-consuming culture of the Hipster) for a while. I doubt that a Chinese official will rise up a la Zhao Ziyang and that is not what this generation will do anyway. The 90后 will change the world with People Power, with repeated threats to Search out the Fleshy Human, with face-ripping ridicule that reaches the entire nation and makes governments get naked and forces old men bow down to little man pressure. Smoky netbars and androgynous people, those are the hideouts of China’s future guerrillas. When I asked one group of 90后 kids if they could change the world (or something to that effect) one girl with a pierced lip and tattoo said “Yes, We Can!”

The laughter that erupted in the group summed it all up: a witty comment made by post-90 girl who text messages her way through school but knows enough about society, politics and the media to whip out an Obama-ism and know that her whole generation will get the joke.

Where do you think China’s emerging youth will take it as we move into the new decade?

How long Google.com.hk remains unblocked from the Mainland remains anyone’s guess, but Google has prepared a China Service Availability page which shows the status of Mainland access to Google’s various services. With more than half of the list blocked or marginalized (like Youtube, Blogger, and Google Docs), the prospect for Google in Mainland China appears alarmingly bleak at the moment.

David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer posted in the Google’s Official Blog:

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.

After being so blunt about China’s refusal to negotiate its terms of self-censorship, I’m not very optimistic about Google’s future in China. If you aren’t already, now’s a good time to suggest that you check out the VPN options available for all of you in Mainland China.

This news has just been released, so stay tuned for updates.

What do you think? Did Google make the right decision, or should they have stuck it out?

Click play to check it out:

I got a kick out of the end.

Would you be scared if you walked in and saw her staring at you silently?

With a VPN, you can access Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and everything else on the internet anonymously. After using Freedur for several months and enjoying unrestricted access to everything, we know how good it feels to browse unrestricted. With this in mind, we’re giving away 10 six-month Freedur VPN subscriptions, valued at $40 each!! More information below.

Why Freedur is Awesome

It’s cheap, easy to use, and it works great.

For $60 a year (about 1 yuan a day) you can access everything on the internet. I’ve tried other VPN’s and decided: Freedur is the best of the pack since it loads sites so quickly and seamlessly (and ad-free) that it’s easy to forget I’m using a VPN at all. The support is quick and effective and Freedur is available on Windows, Mac, and even Linux.

When you decide you want to sign up to Freedur, enter the checkout code “Chengdu Living” to get a 10% discount!

Giveaway Details

Freedur's control panel couldn't be simpler

To participate in the drawing, all you have to do is one of the following:

1. Subscribe to our RSS feed or

2. Join our Facebook Fan Page or

3. Join the Mailing List

Then, leave a comment on this post and you’re all set. If you’re already subscribed to one, leave a comment saying where you’re subscribed and you’ll be included.

Winners will be selected at random and mailed login information to activate the 6-month account.

I’m glad to be able to share this with you because Freedur is a service that I think you’ll really enjoy. After a few months of having access to everything, it’d be difficult to go back.

I’ll announce the winners here, in ten days on Saturday February 27, 2010. Good luck!

Results

Listed below are the ten winners, who’ve been contacted by e-mail:

1. Alecio
2. Joel
3. Jnhng
4. Carl
5. Nicki
6. Bailan
7. Darren
8. Rick
9. Kerwin
10. KKOrange

For those who didn’t win, we still encourage you to sign up for Freedur‘s VPN service using the code “Chengdu Living” at checkout to save 10%!

Thanks to everyone who participated, we’ll have another great giveaway very soon.