Internutters

We are used to the mind-numbing slowness of China’s internet connection, especially with overseas sites. We are used to having to use proxies to get round their silly blocking. Now we have to get used to something new.

 

 

Not content to rest on their laurels, China Telecom have decided to improve screw up our browsing pleasure. They are experimenting with forcing us to view advertisements when we attempt to access our favourite sites.

It works like this. You type in the address of your site of choice, the browser does its thing and suddenly you are looking at an advert for something you don’t want. A few seconds later, your browser carries on to where you wanted to go.

At least, that is how it is supposed to work. But it doesn’t work. What really happens is that it attempts to divert to the advertising site, but half of their random links are broken so your browser sits there waiting for information that doesn’t exist. After a while it gets bored and returns an error message telling you that it is impossible to reach the site you never wanted to reach in the first place.

Sometimes, but not always, this error message isn’t provided by your browser. Instead Telecom diverts you to a custom error message which is stuffed with adverts, none of which actually work.

Yesterday afternoon, around 2:30, the system crashed to a near complete halt. Almost no sites were available (surprisingly, this one was still OK) and the few that could load were even slower than usual. I have no idea how long it took them to fix it. I gave up after an hour and went out. It was back by 8 pm when I returned.

No one will complain or even notice. Chinese people’s internet usage is strange. Mostly it is used at home or in internet bars (as they call them here). Relatively few people use the internet at work. Few know how to even do a simple search on Google or the Chinese equivalents, I am often asked to help people find pictures or information and they are amazed that I can do so in seconds. 

In China, computers are only for chatting to your friends on QQ messenger service, downloading movies and uploading viruses. By the way, a moron disguised as an IT employee told me last week that a computer at work couldn’t have the virus I reported because it wasn’t connected to the internet. The idiot couldn’t understand when I said that that made it more likely rather than less. The anti-virus software on the machine has never been updated since it was installed back in the Tang Dynasty.

In the meantime, China Telecom is still experimenting away, even as I type. The problem is not confined to Liuzhou. Friends elsewhere in Guangxi are telling me they have the same problems.