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?

Shengdiyage seems to be the pinyin for San Diego, but other than the pronunciation there is no clear connection between the city and the company. China’s online Baidu Encyclopedia, however, does have a listing for the company and describes their main product, Jin Ke La (“Golden Clumps”), as “non-polluting, non-harmful, long-lasting, seedling-strengthening and disease resistant while improving soil, increasing crop-yields, quality and more. It was countries and regions like China, Japan and Africa that started the agro-craze. Agriculturally advanced countries including America, England and France are now in fierce competition for Jin Ke La.”

The use of foreign influence to peddle a domestic brand is not uncommon in China: there are countless examples of a Chinese company using a “white face” to add a bit of prestige to their product, but no one comes close to Shengdiyage’s brazen genius in this regard.

Foreigners fight over Jin Ke La on the street. Click to view

In video linked on the right, an African of unknown origin and a Japanese man struggle to gain control of a truck load of Jin Ke La (notice the distinguished old white man on the side of the truck). They scream Jin Ke La repeatedly in clumsy, retarded Chinese. The African eventually punches the Japanese and an American comes in to stop the fight, telling them to come up with the best reason why one should buy Jin Ke La. Whomsoever comes up with the better reason, gets the truckload. An English translation of the exchange:

Japanese, African: Jinkela! Jinkela! It’s ours! Ours!
American: What are you doing??
Japanese, African: Jinkela! Jinkela! It’s ours! Ours!
African: I want Jinkela! African agriculture is undeveloped. We need Jinkela!
Japanese: I want Jinkela! Japan lacks natural resources. We need to use Jinkela!
Japanese, African: Jinkela! Mine! Mine!
African: Mine, dammit!
American: No fighting! No fighting! Whoever better states the benefits of Jinkela will be awarded with the product.
African: Africa needs Jinkela, our agricultural infrastructure is undeveloped. Jinkela doesn’t run-off or evaporate!!
Japanese: Japan lacks natural resources, we need it. Jinkela nourishes roots two meters deep!!
African: World fertilizer prices are going up. Use Jinkela! Twice the potency, half the cost!
Japanese: Use Jinkela for millet and get 1,800 jin per mu. Japan no longer needs to rely on American imports for its grain! Hahaha!
American: (to self) Clever devil! If I give him the Jinkela, it’s a threat to American agriculture. I won’t do that.
American: African agriculture is underdeveloped. We need to aid them. Don’t even think about getting the Jinkela, Japan.
Japanese: Sneaky! What will happen to our crops without Jinkela? Jinkela!!!

The commercial demonstrates the power of the fertilizer in Third World countries as well as developed countries, but assures the background dominance of the Chinese product overall. Shengdiyage’s crude racism might work in backward parts of China, but for the educated web-savvy populace of this nation, the commercials are just pure entertainment.

Ever since the tainted milk scandal, Chinese food inspectors have been strict in enforcing safety standards, while advertising remains largely unregulated. A general argument goes “While it is a shame, it’s will remain uncontrollable due to our oversized population and poverty.”

Foreign scientist verfies Jin Ke La's superiority. Click to view

Now that video looks pretty poor and might not qualify as best in show, but things get better for the Shengdiyago Co. In this next commercial linked on the right, they really up the ante, featuring Presidents Clinton and Bush, actors in white capes and flashing lights. They claim that every US President visits the Shengdiyago headquarters before stepping into the White House, to consult with company officials about the right path for America’s agricultural development.

They also claim to have a special fertilizer from America with twice the potency of ordinary fertilizer. The very same stuff that helped America rise to the top of the world and will help China do the same. They sell all over the world and are engaged in discussions with G8 leaders on on a weekly basis. The daring of it all is really admirable.

Some of the claims made in the video linked above:

“Jin Ke La props up America’s agriculture…. It has become self-evident that Jin Ke La is the nuclear weapon that has changed national agricultural.”

“Large scale computer positioning refines this product from 80 kinds of scarce minerals at precisely 30,000 degrees Celsius!”

“One kilogram of Jin Ke La can be valued at up to 5 million dollars!”

“Jin Ke La has helped over 68 countries realize agricultural modernization (more so in Africa!)”

“Over 3000 freight trains, 1000 cargo ships and 500 planes carry Jin Ke La to over 129 countries around the world, daily!”

“Jin Ke La came to China in 2007, at the turning point when Sino-US relations had proven an honest 30 years, helping Chinese agriculture to soar!”

“Jin Ke La was named “Greatest Discovery in the Promotion of Agricultural Development in the 21st Century” by the United Nation’s Agricultural Cooperatives Organization.”

“Experiments conducted in 129 countries have proven: Using Jin Ke La is a small investment with huge gains!”

“NASA has proven through research that Jin Ke La is an effective component in terra-forming Mars, substantially increasing the survival rate of plants and driving forward the program for human migration.”

“Believe in Jin Ke La and you can be the president of America!”

For more, you can check out more Jinkela videos on Tudou and take a look at their company site. Perhaps one of these days we’ll actually start switching our ordinary fertilizer with the doubly-potent Presidential-grade Jin Ke La.

Notice: Reed assisted in research and translation of this article. Thanks!

What is a Proxy Server / VPN?

A virtual private network is defined as: a computer network that is implemented in an additional software layer on top of an existing larger network for the purpose of creating a private scope of computer communications

What does that mean in layman’s terms?

When you type Facebook.com into your browser the Great Firewall blocks access because that site is on a list. Anything on the list cannot be accessed directly from within the ‘Firewall because it controls incoming and outgoing connections. A proxy is an intermediary server which is not on the list and it, in turn, connects to any site you want since its access is unrestricted. Once software is installed and activated the process is seamless and you won’t notice which sites are blocked and which aren’t. Browse your friends Facebook photos to your hearts content and tweet about them if you like.

Freedur's control panel

Is this free?

Of the services available several are free and monetized by advertising and others are ad-free but require a monthly fee. The most well known among free options was Hotspot Shield, although it bombarded users with advertisements and didn’t always work – that was before it was blocked outright. Unfortunately free proxies seem to get nailed pretty quickly so if you want a reliable solution you’ll be paying for the privilege of unrestricted internet access.

The best option that I’ve found is Freedur, which costs $6 a month or $60 annually. After downloading the small program, registering, and completing checkout with credit card or Paypal, you login with your username and password. You’ll be prompted to install a Firefox plugin (you are using Firefox, aren’t you?) and after that you simply press the enormous “On” button to start filtering all of your browser traffic. There are several servers you can select in a drop down menu including locations in the US, UK, and one specially optimized for Beijing. Simple as that. Even better, if you enter “chengduliving” into the coupon entry box at checkout you’ll save 10%.

Another option which also costs $60 annually is Witopia VPN. After signing up, a program creates an encrypted connection to an overseas server that grants you unrestricted access. Witopia actually goes a step further by offering the “Cloakbox”: a modified router which automatically routes all of its traffic through a private encrypted connection. It costs $200, which seems steep, but includes a year of service. Because they don’t offer a free trial I haven’t tried Witopia personally but judging by the glowing reviews online it looks outstanding. One thing to note about Witopia is that it’s a real VPN which routes all traffic through the encrypted connection – not just web browser traffic. If you’re downloading something on Bit Torrent, for example, that traffic will be routed through the VPN. That will work fine, but for people in China it’s not really necessary because the blocked resources that we’re trying to access are websites.

Another option (thanks, Callum) is the The Onion Relay, also known as Tor. Using this method, traffic is routed through a myriad of encrypted proxy computers like layers of an onion. Although designed as a tool for scientists, Tor has been abused by p2p downloaders and child pornographers in recent years.  The downsides of this routing method are significant: because traffic is routed through a series of proxiy servers, speeds are often very slow and the whole thing is somewhat of a hassle to set up and configure (as evidenced by this 50-page FAQ). However, if you have the time and will to get it working, Tor is totally free because it operates on donated bandwidth.

Witopia's $200 "Cloakbox"

How fast is it? Are there any downsides?

Since average internet speeds in China are sub-par even for developing countries, Freedur can easily max out my residential 2mb China Telecom internet connection which at its fastest, is downloading at 200kb/s. The Freedur application is small and works flawlessly – once the accompanying Firefox plugin is installed the giant On button works like you’d expect.

Conclusion

Whether you decide to try Freedur or Witopia, $60 for a year of service is a great value when you consider how much content it allows you access to from China. Free proxies are ridden with advertisements, distractions, and hassle – skip all of that and pay about 1 yuan a day to get unrestricted internet access with a VPN.

Are you using a proxy to access the internet? If so write about your experience in a comment below!

Disclaimer: Freedur doesn’t pay me and the opinions above are my own. Your VPN experience with Freedur or any other service might differ from mine, although I did test each VPN mentioned above on multiple computers at different locations. Should you have problems with Freedur or any other VPN, I suggest you contact them since I can’t help you.

Youtube

Techno Viking doesn't dance to the music, the music dances to Techno Viking

Fortunately there’s a way around this and you can learn more by reading our article. Unfortunately the staggering wealth of information on Youtube is inaccessible to virtually all of China.

Tudou

Streaming more than a petabyte a day – that’s a thousand terabytes, which in turn is a thousand gigabytes – Tudou (“Potato”) is one of the worlds largest bandwidth users. 60 million videos are streamed daily to a mostly Chinese audience although recently it’s starting to catch on in the West due to American TV shows which play in their 30 or 45 minute entirety. Things like copyright and ten minute limit on videos don’t exist on Tudou and you can find anything in Chinese you can think of if that’s your thing. Inside China the videos stream instantly and without pause, feature relatively unobtrusive advertisements, and good all around production values. Following Youtube’s lead, they’ve recently added a HD streaming service called Heidou (“Black Bean”) which streams higher quality videos – great for watching movies on your PC.

Youku

Like Tudou, Youku (“Excellent and cool”) has no limit on the length of uploaded videos and turns a blind eye toward copyright infringement. And also like Tudou, it streams million of files a day and is popular among foreigners due of its comprehensive collection of American TV shows. Actually, there isn’t a lot to separate Tudou and Youku aside from the HD option since they largely share the same content. Registered users can upload as many videos as they want of any length.

Hulu

Hulu is the first legal streaming site to feature full TV shows directly from NBC, Fox, ABC, and others. All of the most popular shows are here and it all streams instantly with two caveats: Hulu doesn’t allow streaming overseas due to licensing issues and will report an error when you try to stream content from from outside of the United States. You can bypass this restriction by accessing Hulu through Hotspot Shield Freedur.

You'll meet this error message if you try streaming on Hulu in China

The Others

There’s 56.com, Ouou.com, and a string of other followers which mostly offer a slightly different way to access the same content, so Tudou and Youku will probably have what you’re looking for whether it’s Chinese programming or high profile shows from the US & UK.

In addition to these sites there’s also software like PPStream which streams content straight to its dedicated media player which you can download to your Windows PC. Western programming requires paying a membership fee (thanks Callum).

Have your own experience or anecdote to share? Leave a message in the comments