Visiting China

November 7, 2008 | Written by Darius Razgaitis

I’ve always believed that visiting a country is the best way to understand its people. Robert Scoble, Fast Company journalist and tech evangelist, is currently on a trip to China and is posting some fascinating stuff (IMHO):

• "Just got into China. Funny thing, my blog doesn’t work here. The blogger can visit, but can’t write. Heheh." (via FriendFeed)
• "Funny, Google Reader works in China. Which means people can read my blog via RSS." (via FriendFeed)
• "Being on the Web in China is like Web 2.0/2. I can’t get to a ton of sites here. Weird that Twitter and FriendFeed are wide open, though." (via Twitter)

All these "funny" and "weird" statements about Chinese Web 2.0 could have been avoided had "Scobleizer" visited China Channel before his trip. Tech blog CrunchGear posted on this free program that allows you to surf the web China-style.

What it does is makes your computer think it’s in China by temporarily giving you a Chinese IP address. It allows you to "visit" the Chinese web without having to go there. Try searching Chinese Google for "democracy" or "Wikipedia," and you’ll be stymied.

While this is useful in understanding how the web works in China, you still have to visit - it won’t it won’t feed you Chinese food!