Category: China

Literal Chinese Translations of Country Names

The literal Chinese translations for everything. Pleased to see Ireland is ‘Love your orchid’. They should be very happy with that.

 

Have you ever wondered what your country’s name looks like in Chinese and what its meaning is? The literal Chinese translations of country names often results in some funny interpretations. Many of the Hanzi writings of foreign countries are supposed to reflect a nice meaning and also be phonetically similar (transliteration) to the original. However when translated from one language to Chinese and then to English, the meaning may be lost in translation and changed to something completely different. I tried to choose some of the most interesting literal translations, but as with all translations there is a multitude of meanings and understandings, hence results may vary from translation to translation.

So, to be clear, these are not “literal translation of the Chinese names”, rather they are literally translations of characters used phonetically.
Continue reading “Literal Chinese Translations of Country Names”

Chinese Hot Water

The Chinese firmly believe in hot water, or at least warm water. I’m not a great fan. I prefer mine chilled. Thankfully.

Visa for travel?

Looks like the woman at the Chinese embassy didn’t know what she was talking about and I actually DON’T have a valid visa for China.

Luckily, I’m one of those people that doesn’t believe what he’s told, and rather than chance it at the border, I decided to call it a day in SE Asia.

Leaving of Hanoi

Had a good look around this city. Seems a cool place – in many ways, not least because the weather was about 11 °C.

Pork dumplings
Vietnamese street food – Dumplings and egg

I took some photo’s and mooched the streets.

On many days it was raining, at least in the afternoon.

There are many places to eat in Hanoi. Perhaps too many.

Vietnamese Street Food
Vietnamese Street Food – Sausages and other offal

Shopping is also good. There are many nick-nacks to be had. Prices are cheap, bargains can be struck and there is an abundance of other shops to try if the price doesn’t suit. Continue reading “Chinese Hot Water”

Life behind the great firewall of China: VPN in China

Update China internet – January 2015

As of 1st January 2015, the Chinese government further tightened it’s grip on the nation’s internet access.
A rude awakening for many expats hoping to get on the ‘net – nothing worked.

Things have calmed down a little, but the fall-out is as follows:-

1) All foreign sites are throttled.

Regardless of CDN’s, font-libraries, supplementary elements, platforms etc.; foreign sites are subjected to government level ‘throttling’.

2) Mobile VPN’s don’t work.

Astrill, one of China’s largest VPN’s – no longer able to support mobile VPN access.
Hidemyass, the VPN I use, connection is intermittent at best.

This thread on Shaghai expat reports, some are experiencing more luck than others, depending on what VPN you subscribe to.

China’s Internet access – Life behind the great firewall

Since May of last year, when the troubles in Hong Kong first erupted, the Chinese government has been changing the way the internet works inLife behind the great firewall of China China.

We’re all aware of the ‘great wall of China’, the system by which China monitors and prevents sites it doesn’t wish it’s residents to view.

Previously, this would have been Facebook, Twitter, certain searches or selected content would be blocked.

Also Youtube.

Not really a massive problem, you could still update your phone, look at maps and do a quick translation. At home, sites were slow to download, but acceptable.

Since May 2014, that’s all changed

China internet restrictions since May 2014

The following sites have been blocked wholesale.

Twitter, Facebook, Google (all sites), Soundcloud, Instagram.

New York Times, Bloomberg, selected international Wikipedia pages, Wikileaks, BBC news and radio.

Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, iStockPhoto.

Flickr, Change.org and most VPN sites.

China now throttles all foreign websites

Something the government does now is ‘throttle‘ foreign websites. ‘Throttle‘ it, makes elements ‘timeout’ and leaving you with an improperly rendered and unreadable page.

This maybe due to font libraries, or CDN (content distribution networks), such as Google font libraries or Edgecast respectively.

Many sites access these services to serve content in a more efficient manner. When this content is blocked, the whole site fails to work.

As a foreign speaking resident, this causes you problems.

The only way to get around this is –

China VPN

There are a number of companies offering VPN, or Virtual Private Network services

**A VPN is a protocol executed to access the internet through a tunnel, a tunnel where your real IP address and location is never revealed.

to get round these restrictions, and be able to go on the websites and access the services you would at home.

I won’t trawl through them, there are sites which tell you how much and the relative features etc.

I picked the one with the largest network of servers. Hide My Ass!

It’s got services in Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. Continue reading “Life behind the great firewall of China: VPN in China”