Am I blocked in China?

“I think you’ve been blocked!” read the subject line of my good friend Trevor’s email.  A Minnesotan expat who had been living in Hong Kong for more than a year, Trevor recently moved from Hong Kong to Nanjing, China to work as an English teacher at the university.  Now officially a resident of the People’s Republic, the poor guy is experiencing culture shock yet again — in the form of censorship.

“I’m having a hell of a time connecting to your blog.  Think you’ve gone big time and the Chinese Commies are shutting you down?” he joked.  I figured my slow server was to blame.  He countered with the fact that Facebook was also banned in China, and that attempting to access The Wanderkind on Internet Explorer will result in the same endless loading cycle that happens with Facebook.

“It always gets stuck on the fifth green bar,” he explained, reloading my page again.  “Ooh, four bars this time.  Movin’ up in the world!”  He sent me a screenshot to illustrate:

I’m at a loss for words as to what I could have possibly written to have red-flagged myself with the Chinese government.  Perhaps my Khmer Rouge post?  Or maybe they don’t like me calling them out on the shamelessness of their street vendors?  This post probably isn’t going to help things either.  But I’m not alone — I’m in line behind the ranks of Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Blogger and just about every other social media site in the world.

If you want to check to see if your site is also banned in China – and there are hundreds of reasons and “keywords” that could result in your site being banned — you can check your URL with sites like Website Pulse, which will ping your site from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.  Apparently Hong Kong thinks I’m A-OK, but as for mainland China, they can suck a big fat First Amendment.