Double Sadness Internet Hell in China

I spent a week in China on business. To my dismay, I was all but unable to access my www.netidentity.com e-mail account (Boyd@JonesEmail.com ) and many Web sites in the West were incredibly slow or blocked by the Chinese Internet censors -- or both. Gmail worked well though (for the most part) and I tried to move all e-mail traffic to Gmail during that week.

Truly Internet hell. "Double" in the sense that the sites like Wikipedia.org remain blocked by the China Internet cops -- and in the sense that the Taiwan earthquake in late December 2006 (and the cutting of underseas cables) is still slowing Internet access in China.

Things were a little better in Hong Kong (I assume Hong Kong has some Internet access redundancy of some sort) and back to normal when I returned to Taiwan (although the earthquake cut cables south of Taiwan, Taiwan's access itself to the Internet cloud was not affected).

Fu Zi Miao - modern retail & Confucian temple in Nanjing

Fu Zi Miao - A trendy retail strip near an ancient Confucian temple in Nanjing, China. Old meeting new and all that. Some videos:

No! Really! We REALLY don't want Hong Kong dollars!

The big news is that the RMB has hit parity with the Hong Kong dollar. The Hong Kong dollar has been fixed since the 1980's at 7.8 to US$1. Yesterday, the Chinese Yuan hit 7.8 to US$1.

The results were to be expected in Shenzhen. Sure enough, I was in a taxi. I gave the taxi drive a choice -- break a big ole RMB 100 note or accept a HK$20 note. He could not decide but really did not want the HK$. I tipped him RMB 0.50 and then he accepted the HK$ reluctantly.

No thank you to Hong Kong dollars!

Having spent the last three years or so in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (across the border from Hong Kong), I became accustomed to using Hong Kong dollars (HK$) occasionally for anything from taxi fares to meals. In the near past, the HK$ seemed to have a bit of a cachet in Shenzhen.

However, in the last four months or so, with the rapid appreciation of the Chinese yuan (or renmibi, RMB), the HK$ has fallen out of favor -- and fallen hard. The RMB was pegged at about 8.2 / US$1 , but now is on par with the HK$ at about 7.8 / US$1. I think consumers realize instinctively that the RMB will appreciate further as well.

As a result, Chinese in Shenzhen now eschew the HK$. You almost can't give the stuff away! Case in point, a recent taxi fare came to RMB 20.6. I gave the driver a RMB 20 note and a HK$2 coin. All I had. The driver refused the coin although that would have been a rather robust tip by Mainland Chinese standards (tipping of any sort is not done in China). He said "I can't give this away."

Great Asian Internet disruption of 2006 continued

Although 90% of the sites I visit are not affected, I have noticed that sites hosted in Hong Kong or Mainland China are loading VERY slowly indeed. Sites and e-mail accounts hosted over there.

Furthermore, many friends in Hong Kong and China continue to complain that maybe they can get Skype to work, but not MSN Messenger and that foreign sites (such as blogspot blogs) load very, very slowly for them if at all.

Great Asian Internet Disruption of 2006

The earthquake last night near Taiwan seems to have caused quite a lot of Internet access issues:

My colleagues in China report huge problems accessing foreign sites and Hotmail and Yahoo mail. I, in Taipei, Taiwan, however, have had absolutely no problems today accessing any of the "usual suspect" sites such as Yahoo, Google, Gmail, Blogspot, Techcrunch, etc.

One friend in Taiwan indicated that he is accessing Web sites rather slowly though.

Photos from ITU with Hulion

At ITU Hong Kong with Hulion.















Albert Yao and me.















The Hulion (video conferencing) gang and me.