Having now spent close to a month in Shanghai, I've seen The Great Firewall in action. It is frustrating in ways those of us living and accessing the internet outside of it can't comprehend. The seemingly arbitrary and on/off nature of the censorship makes accessing the web a neutered and unpredictable experience. A lack of access to Wikipedia, Flickr, Blogspot, and most recently, the popular RSS feed serving site Feedburner, has pushed surfing in China to new levels of braindeadness.

However, this censorship can be completely circumvented through a couple of simple pieces of technology. Having found no non-techie friendly step-by-step guide or explanation to getting around the blocks, I'd like to try and provide to anyone who is living in China or planning to visit China the steps necessary to have a normal browsing experience.

Many foreigners in China have told me they use proxy websites to access blocked content. The problem with this is that your browsing experience is no longer seamless. If you encounter a blocked site you have to go to the proxy, enter the URL and view the censored content that way. This is especially unreasonable when you're dealing with reading RSS. Now that Feedburner is blocked, half of the links in your reader will no longer function. As such, my goal was to attain the most seamless and simple combination of software to achieve browsing normalcy.

1) Download Firefox. Firefox is an open-source, multi-platform browser.

2) Download and install TOR.

3) Download and install TORbutton for Firefox.

TOR is, fundamentally, an IP anonymizer. I'm sure I'm simplifying the software greatly but the one other huge benefit is that it acts as a sort of roaming proxy. Proxy servers often get quickly blocked in China and this keeps you from having to constantly search for and enter new proxys. Once TOR is installed and running you never have to think about proxys again.

TOR, when activated on your computer, turns your localhost into a web-proxy, filtered through the TOR network. This proxy is located at a default port of 9051 on your machine. The TORbutton simply shifts Firefox's web access from going direct over your internet connection, to being filtered through localhost:9051.

Why not simply keep TOR turned on all the time? Well, because it uses proxys and because your traffic is being routed in convoluted ways, it does slow down the browsing experience. So it's nice to be able to browse non-blocked content using your normal connection. When you encounter blocked content you simply click the TORbutton at the bottom of Firefox and view the blocked content. You can also keep it turned on when using an RSS reader or viewing Flickr to ensure all links will seamlessly load, Feedburner fed content and all.

Regarding Flickr, there is another Firefox plugin which will allow you to use your normal, non-TOR connection to access and view Flickr content (nice because Flickr is image heavy (obviously!)): Access Flickr!. Originally written for accessing Flickr in Flickr-censored Iran, it also works perfectly in Flickr-censored China.

I hope these notes will be of use to anyone trying to achieve free access to information. Feel free to add other tips or notes in the comments.