Pictures of Xujiahui Area in 2007 - Difficulties

By Jian Shuo Wang on 2007-08-10 22:40 · Attractions

Wondering about what the world I, as a normal person in Shanghai, see everyday? I am trying to capture the short period of time I experienced, and show you my world with a series of pictures. Thanks to my good habit of bringing a camera with me all the time.

Hmm…. Stop here.

I was planning to upload a lot of photos, but I do encounter some technical difficulties. So the bad news is, I cannot upload it today. However, to explain the difficulty itself can be an interesting topic.

The First Problem: Flickr was Censored

This is maybe the second or longer month after Flickr.com was banned by the Great Firewall. Flickr is a powerful tool to allow people to see pictures of the world, and pictures of my own country, which is so scary for some people, so they banned the site. So, I can visit Flickr.com but cannot see any of the photos on the site, and I cannot upload any pictures to Flickr - for months.

Google Picasaweb?

Google’s PicasaWeb is still too new to be banned, so I can still use it, but the speed is significantly slower than flickr. At home, I still cannot upload my picture after waiting, retry for 30 minutes. What happens?

Well. Let me try to complete this article the other day, using a proxy. I will be back to complete it…

9 Comments

I use Yupoo for photos that I share with friends in China. It's the official image hosting site of the Chinese Bloggercon, too :)

The only downsides are that they're a little slower than Flickr, and they have an upload limit with no chance to increase it :(

— Micah Sittig · 2007-08-11 00:10

I wrote this for some of my friends today. Maybe it is also useful to you or your readers. From my experience, tor is very fast.

to install the tor proxy:

Tor is a p2p socket proxy. It opens a port at localhost: 9050 and all traffic go through this port will be anonymous and encrypted and unstoppable by The Firewall. It will work with any network programs like IE, Firefox, outlook, QQ, ... with the right configuration.

1. Install Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Firefox is not a must but is the easiest to config

To config it with IE instead of firefox

Tools->Options->Connections->Lan Settings->Advanced and the specify 127.0.0.1 : 9050 as a socket proxy

2 install tor + Viadalia http://tor.eff.org/download.html.en

tor is the back end program to provide the proxy,

viadalia is the GUI for tor and is optional.

3. optionally install FoxyProxy https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US ... policy/0/2464/14508

FoxyProxy is a Firefox plugin and is optional. It is nice to have if you want to specify which website you want to visit with tor and which one you dont. There are many similar plugins, but this is the only one I have experience with.

— xge · 2007-08-11 00:45

There are many ways to work around the flickr issue, but the frustration is never less.

— Jian Shuo Wang · 2007-08-11 01:08

BTW, I also have Pro account with Flickr that I keep paying every year.

— Jian Shuo Wang · 2007-08-11 01:26

Why not use a China based equivalent to flickr? Save a lot of gnashing of teeth.

— The Dog · 2007-08-11 02:12

u can use http://www.zooomr.com/ instead.

— Romeo Chen · 2007-08-12 00:23

I am confused...

I am in Shanghai, using the standard China Telecom DSL service...

I can upload photos no problem to Flickr... I just cant see them here in China :-)

I am busy renovating an apartment, and regularly posting photos to keep the friends/family back home updated on this bizzar experience :-)

— RWM · 2007-08-12 22:06

@RWM, I can also post (some) pictures to Flickr, while posting many via the Flickr uploadr, it is always broken - interrupted in the middle of the uploading. Loading the flickr.com website, it is a site without picture.

— Jian Shuo Wang · 2007-08-13 00:03

Maybe you can try using "access flickr", which is an extension of firefox.

It Bypasses the flickr.com filter in Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, China and other banned countries and places...

— mp · 2007-08-14 12:59