The Great Firewall of China

Introduction

For the past week, I’ve been in Xinjiang, China on a road trip. At this time, I was also studying for my exams and doing work that I had synced online. Now if you’ve heard anything about China and the internet, you might have heard that typical services like Google, GitHub, and many others are blocked there. Ok no biggie, I’ll just use a VPN, I’ve used one of those before. Surely that would be enough. Little did I know how wrong I was.

The GFW

The Great Firewall of China (GFW). They have a whole-*** name for this thing. The GFW is basically a … This is what prevents you from falling asleep to your favourite YouTube video at night. Of course the next question is, how do I not make it do that? First we have to understand how the GFW works.

• Explain
• Does it block ports? IPs? ISPs or Global something (think networks)

The Solution

A not-so-obvious solution, yet one that I came across accidentally, is to buy an international eSIM. This turns out to be the most reliable, de-facto standard for avoiding the GFW. An eSIM allows you to route traffic from outside …

Okay, your phone doesn’t support an eSIM, or you need WiFi for specific reasons. You’ll have to use a VPN. But wait, I thought you said VPNs don’t work in China! They don’t, so we’ll have to get a little tricky with them. Notable VPN providers like Mullvad, PIA, and LetsVPN, either don’t work in China or they are highly unreliable. Just one or two years ago, they were the best at providing much-needed access to blocked apps in China. What happened in that time?

maybe a pic here would be nice

openvpn, wireguard,

Notes

• Briefly explain eSIM
• Make another blog post on VPNs
• Make another blog post on Deep packet inspection