I recently put a small blog online using Wordpress (The site is 努力队). The point of the blog is to practice my Chinese writing and reading, and especially to keep in touch with my classmates in China with whom I studied Mandarin. I sent the link to all my friends on the mainland only to realize that the website was not accessible from there. I guess thanks to “The Great Firewall of China”.

I called my hosting support staff for help only to learn that if I wanted to be granted access, I had to contact every ISP in China and ask them to allow my website. As a result I have been gathering some general information about the matter. Here are three links that I found pretty interesting:

• See if your website can be accessed from Mainland China using GreatFirewallofChina.org. It seems that the test does not always work. Still, I tried a few. The result: my blog was not accessible while Facebook was, which is accurate.
• Learn about how censorship is organized in China from the Human Rights Watch website
• Of course, you can also find plenty on the matter on Wikipedia with more links and references

Well, at least, with a link to the Human Rights Watch website on this very blog, I am sure Psychobserver will never be accessible from the Mainland. No need for me to bother about the issue.