Rob and WeiLing

Those're nice. One common theme throughout them was the sheer massiveness that is China, both in people and in nature. Two I particularly liked were the nurses and the prisoners. The photo of the Hong Kong Porn producer with Japanese adult actors didn't really fit in with the rest of the photos. I don't see how it's relevant, and the picture just looked like people watching a video of themselves. I also saw griz over there. And some ignorant kid's reply. (edit: add links to griz and response there)

Do you mind if I ask what some of those other factors are? I don't really see advantages to the K-1: K-1 is much more expensive than DCF K-1 is generally more restrictive when entering the US and your fiancee will--for all intents and purposes--be considered an illegal. There's a whole section of this form for post-entry K-1 troubles. CR-1 (through DCF) grants immediate green card status and social security card application is automatic upon entry. You don't have to do anything extra. Trends seem to show that DCF is considerably faster; again, each case is different. The only advantage I'm seeing is that your marriage certificate will be issued in the US instead of China. If you get the marriage certificate in China, nothing would stop you from having the ceremony in the US later... Again, I'd be very interested to know the factors that make K-1 better---but only if you're willing to share.

I dropped mine off with the I-130 DCF in Beijing. I also had a ton of other junk, including things like ticket stubs of tourist places we went together and Chinese train tickets. The guy at USCIS in Beijing told me that I didn't need all that, but took my packet of pictures, phone records, and my EOR. He didn't look strangely at it at all, so I'm sure he'd seen plenty of them. My EOR was 4 pages and described in detail the significant parts of my relationship with WeiLing including dates, locations, and my feelings. I detailed how we met (online), the circumstances of our first face-to-face meeting, when I knew she was the woman I wanted to marry, meeting in China a second time, the proposal, time spent with her family (included getting the approval of her father), the wedding ceremony, my family's interaction with hers, and hopes for the future. Double-spaced, it was 1 paragraph more than 3 pages. I got a pink, but I can't say if my EOR had any effect. A lot of people get by fine without one. If you want to do it then I'd recommend, as Dan did, to include it with the initial petition. And if you do write an EOR, you'll have to come up with it yourself. I doubt you can apply anyone else's experiences and feelings to your own situation, not that you'd want to anyway. The EOR is as unique as your relationship, so just write what you feel. Some people avoid emotion, but my feeling is that this is the one place the VO can read your own thoughts and should be cherished as such. The dry facts can be found from other places in the application, and just listing them again is redundant in my opinion. Just be sure not to use too casual of a style and then have someone proof-read it when you think it's ready.

When I was in China, Cydia worked some weeks and didn't work on others. the Rock App (RockYourPhone) seemed to handle it a little better but doesn't always install as consistently as Cydia. If you can find a L2TP VPN to work with, that was how I got my Cydia to work more consistently...

Congratulations! Take your time resting and be sure to let us know the details!

No. You aren't. The visa is valid for entry and doesn't specify visit duration. That's one of the duties at the POE. In fact, if the visa expires tomorrow, she can still enter today and legally stay as long as the officer grants her. If you have a return ticket that's within 6 months or so, you shouldn't have any kind of problem.

We're hoping all goes well. As Randy has stated a few times, tax problems are with the IRS and not with GUZ. GUZ is just looking that your wife will be supported. When they give your daughter IVs, is it in her head? WeiLing was telling me that children here get IVs in the head because their arms and legs move around too much. That just sounds awful and borderline cruel... Could just be a Hubei thing. Anyway, best of luck!

Okay, so visa would be required. That site is pretty unclear (and when I view it, multiple clauses are left unfinished--I'm not sure if that's my connection or just the site being strange), so would we have to follow with a tour group as most mainland Chinese are required to? Or would we be able to get tourist visas and do our own thing? I did notice that the site says exit tickets (continuing on a journey or returning) are required...

I know that a US Green Card holder can visit Canada without a visa, but I'm curious if holding a green card (and flying from the US) would loosen the restrictions for a mainland Chinese visiting Taiwan. There's no near-term plans, but WeiLing is hoping that she can visit Taiwan some time in the future (and probably before citizenship). Anyone have experience with this?

Oh yeah. Interesting is a word for it. Even with my in-laws, I learn new things about Chinese logic every day. (And I never quite understood how logic was subjective before I married WeiLing.) I've got another quick story, not about WeiLing, but about my dear mother-in-law... We had just moved everything back to Hubei from Zhejiang. Classes finished and now we're hanging out until the flight to the US. I normally use a large towel when I'm done showering. Chinese use things smaller than what I'd call a "hand towel", and expect me to use the same. I do, of course, because Hubei is so damn hot that I'm soaked in sweat as soon as I "dry off". But in any case, I was getting ready for the shower, and Mom ran to grab me a small sized towel, stating that it would be easier to wash. As soon as she brought it in, she took it straight to the sink and got it all soaked. I was just thinking "WTF? I wanted to DRY off with that, or at least TRY with something so small." It turns out, she was worried about the dust that would be on it from being out in the sun all day.

I don't quite have the same touch for theater that Dave does, but I'm just remembering a story that happened the other day. WeiLing is really looking forward to the States; she doesn't entirely know what to expect, she just knows that it's totally different from the country she's lived 25-years in. Oh, and she likes oatmeal, breakfast cereal, Western salads, and steak. Of course, not as much as she loves Chinese food though. In any case, we were discussing pets that our future children might raise: WeiLing: I don't want to raise a dog. American's don't like the idea of eating dog, so why would we raise one? Rob: Because they're like a friend. We could also raise a cat, they aren't as dependent on humans as dogs are, but can be very sweet and sit on your lap more easily. WeiLing: No. We need to raise something else. When our kids are still young, we'll give them a chicken as a pet. Then, when it's grown fat, we'll all eat it together! Rob: No! That's traumatizing to kids. A pet is a pet, and you can't eat it. WeiLing: So when the kids are away, we'll secretly kill it, and then serve it for dinner when they return! Rob: No! Do you really think that our kids are going to be stupid? Am I stupid? (Yes) Are you stupid? (Angry look) Then why would our kids be stupid? They wouldn't fall for such a transparent trick. WeiLing: Okay. Fine, since it would be their friend we couldn't eat a Chicken. How about a Cow? We don't have to kill the cow right away, and it will still give us milk we can drink! Rob: Where in hell are we going to keep a cow? And you would probably STILL want to eat it. WeiLing: You're right. We could keep the cow for milk until the kids are teenagers, and then we'll all eat it together. American's like beef, right? Rob: Why are you only concerned with eating the animals? They're raised as friends for the children. WeiLing: Better question: Why shouldn't we eat the animals? They're delicious! Rob: We don't live on a farm. City people don't eat animals they raised themselves. WeiLing: Then we need to live in the country-side. Rob: ...Sigh... We'll talk about this later. Of course, this was all in Chinese, and I've added a bit of flourish to the story in translation. But that was the general idea. I'm sure we'll probably raise a dog... And NOT eat it. I do wish she was more keen on the cat idea, though. She does sometimes defer to me, but only if I've been "right" multiple times in the past. Multiple. I just won't let her read Dave's story with the free-range chickens. Especially not that man-chickens just walk around and party, drink, and do a lot of nothing. Man, I was chuckling at that... Before I end, I've gotta say that I've come to like eating chicken feet when I'm drinking with Dad-in-law at the nearby SaoKao. Part of it is that I'm drunk, part of it is that I'm stuffing my mouth so he's not telling me that I'm not full yet, and part of it is that I'm pretending it's lamb (which isn't served in summer )!

I would agree with Dave that each woman is different; however, he's talking about "wasting family money" from the standpoint of a married man. I just talked with WeiLing about this and she knew immediately (without me telling) that Dave is already married. She said that during courtship, gifts are more appreciated as it shows that the man isn't just whispering sweet nothings. She gave the hypothetical response of her mother receiving flowers from her father: "Éñ¾­²¡£¡ÄãÂò»¨¸ÉÂïѽ£¿"--or, Retard! What the hell are you doing buying flowers (for me)? When I got my wife's (still girlfriend at that point) address, I only told her it was to send a letter--which I did send. I never told her I'd be later sending flowers, chocolate, or gifts. The address she had me mail to was her office, so that's what I used. She was always excited beyond belief (WeiLing gets that way, it's really cute). The first time I sent flowers in a vase, the second time I sent flowers and chocolate, and the third time I sent flowers and a stuffed bear. All were from a Chinese website and delivered the same day I ordered--even on weekends. (I could have ordered to be delivered at specific times on specific days; pretty flexible). I could look it up if you'd like. In fact, the first time I met WeiLing in person, I gave a box of See's Candies chocolates. She ate three and gave the rest to family during Spring Festival. I was appalled, I gave her a 2lb box to enjoy herself over time. It turns out, she's not a big chocolate-eater, and it's Chinese custom to share gifts like that with people around. (Then again, some things she says are Chinese custom appear to only be local to her hometown, or that area. China is as big as the States, and probably has a set of unique customs for each dialect in the PRC!) Months later, when she joked around that she wanted to share chocolate with her friend at work, I surprised her by actually sending flowers and chocolate that day. She still mentions the Dove chocolate from time to time. The stuffed bear that I sent her is still propped up by the couch at her parent's house. Dave is onto something with surprises and with keeping track of Chinese holidays. I'll give a hint that one is coming up. Aug 16th is this year's Chinese Valentine's day. (It's lunar-calendar based; 7th day of 7th month). Your fiancee may know you're planning something for her birthday, but a small token on that day may win some surprise brownie-points. Perhaps it's somewhat relevant to mention that when Chinese receive gifts in person, they hold them and take them home to open in privacy... When my family brought gifts to her family for the wedding, my parents were mystified that the presents sat still-wrapped and everyone was just staring excitedly at nothing happening. I had to explain that American custom is to rip off the packaging ASAP to show enthusiasm and appreciation for receiving the gifts. My sister-in-law told me that she felt naughty/disrespectful by opening them right away--even though we told her to! Oh, how customs differ...

I think iPhone 4 is also sold to Verizon customers now. I just know that iPhone 4 has been having a hell of a time with reception problems. Something to the effect of holding it in the left hand will get calls dropped. Unofficial unlocking would require jailbreak (which the Library of Congress recently ruled is LEGAL), but I met a woman who said her son took his iPhone to AT&T and said he was going to be in China for a while. I think she said they unlocked it for him. I could be wrong. And no need to buy a whole cell phone in China, you can usually buy SIM cards individually, just have a passport or Chinese ID card ready.

Welcome to CFL! I've told you before, but congratulations! I'm glad that a recommendation found here helped out. We'll be in touch in the States

Well, my thoughts are that policy-makers in China are going to be welcomed to America regardless of CCP membership. Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, etc commonly visit China. Are we worried about Hu Jintao visiting the US? And for those that aren't big names or policy makers, for example the little people like University professors: is it necessary to do some extra processing for them? What are we worried about? Even the word "Communist" is a bad word in America, I highly doubt they'd be successful in any kind of attempt to overthrow our government. As such, I think it's a waste of time.

For birth certificate and police report, WeiLing and I paid only 600-something. That included 2 copies of each book with included translation, etc. That was from the "small" city of 1-million in Hubei. For the marriage notarization in Wuhan, it was 400rmb for 2 books. I think that since the people in the smaller public notary offices are in a position of power over you, they just say whatever price they think you'll pay. You're going to America? You must be rich; price gets jacked up a bit. You need these documents and they know that. What are your options if their quote is expensive? It reminds me of what someone told me about Customs officials in China: If they don't make over 1,000,000/year in bribes (can't remember if it was RMB or USD), they "aren't doing their jobs". I only wonder what companies are getting hit by them...

But they need to have a system to back the paranoia. Sure, it's not going to be perfect, but it's sophisticated in its efforts to be transparent. Not transparent in the sense that anyone can see its internals and how it works, but transparent in the sense that nobody knows exactly where it is or what catches it. Users know that going to www.google.com and searching for that religion will get the connection dropped, but posting it once in a while on a forum goes through. The actual triggers, in my experience, are pretty simple and don't always fire. Once they reach a certain threshold or pattern, they'll fire. I've had various sites blocked for about 15 minutes at a time when I've tried to post about certain subjects. During that time I VPNed and was fine. So I do have first-hand experience with some of the real-time content blocking and can tell you it's there. I don't have experience with any notifications from the government or knocking on the door from police, but I've heard a few stories. I wouldn't be surprised at all if certain sites get flagged for human review even without direct block. Even that first link I posted wasn't working from Chinese internet earlier today. I had to use my VPN to access it. Working fine now...

I wouldn't say so with the bottlenecks. The transparent proxies they run only cover HTML content, things like images and videos can pass through with <1ms delay even under heavy load. Then, filtering only text is pretty simple. A couple years ago, I setup a Pentium Pro 166mhz to not only share a single internet connection (IP masquerade), but to monitor traffic and bandwidth usage for a personal network. Even with 10~15 computers running over it there was no perceived latency and the processor load was near idle. Most consumer grade WiFi routers have processors with just as much power as that had. Throw together a number of business-grade servers with recent multi-core processors and put them at various ISP sites, and I don't think there'd be much bottleneck. Rerouting traffic takes minimal more computing power than standard routing. And yes, direct connections to proxy servers would get content blocked the same as regular internet-- all that direct proxies will avoid is DNS hijacks and IP blacklisting. What becomes more difficult are VPNs. The very nature of VPNs are to imitate a private network--no snooping from parties outside the network. I've setup both IPSec/L2TP and OpenVPN servers on a machine back in the states. These both work with public/private digital key pairs. Basically, data encrypted with a "private key" can only be decrypted by a matching "public key". To "break" the data, one basically needs a quantum computer with as many qubits as in the key. For my personal VPNs, I use 2048bits; the most qubits in an active working quantum computer is 4, as far as I know. Even if the Chinese government stored the encrypted data, I don't think they'd break it in my lifetime (not that I think they even care to store it). Most VPNs also set the local computer's routing policies to direct all data over the VPN, so internet will act as if you were at the site of the VPN server, plus the latency between you and that server. As stated in that article, So 2% is probably blocked. That's after the fact that Chinese search engines don't even display results for sensitive topics. When they do happen upon an inaccessible website, the average computer user doesn't know why. I'd say it's about as common as domain names and websites that expired in the states. I had a classmate that thought Facebook went down entirely--not that it was censored in China, so I expect that's the variability that the article is talking about. One of my friends here is an English teacher like you. He said that on one assignment he encouraged students to write about any topic they wanted, and not to worry about anything. He told me that one of the students came to his office to confirm that he meant "anything". Then, when the paper was submitted, the student gave a USB stick and asked the teacher to disconnect from all networks when reading the paper, and to delete it before connecting to the internet again.

Here's another from CNet News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20001212-245.html

Here's an interesting blog post that is somewhat related: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/02/22/internet-freedom-beyond-circumvention/

Pornography is censored and arrests have been made for publishing, distributing, buying, and viewing. The other day, my brother-in-law told me a story of a man who was watching porn on the computer. He was alone and curtains drawn, etc. A short while, he got a knock on his door from the police. My brother-in-law said that after this, all the local people know that the police watch what they do online. Porn is censored and illegal, I don't see why other censored topics or websites wouldn't also be illegal. It'd seem pretty inconsistent. As for allowing Chinese to interpret their own laws--I agree with you, as long as I'm not obliged to abide by said laws. Being that I am in China, I don't pretend that US Constitutional rights still apply to me. I also avoid anything that can be potentially be misinterpreted as an attempt to undermine the government here. Sure, I occasionally VPN through my US home to access Facebook. I don't, however, setup pages that are blocked by censors and ask people in China to view them. Then again, the US State Department does back certain censorship circumvention projects. Anyway, we can argue this forever. You won't change my mind, and I won't change yours. I'll be back in America in a month, and you can do as you please in China. One mention of a religion won't trigger any block, of course, but I also won't mention it needlessly. Start talking in depth about the religion, and some of the projects that it sponsors and you might start to see some active censors...

Good luck there... Make sure you check out the World Expo. The US pavilion is okay, and the line stretches forever but moves fairly fast comparatively. Wait until about 8pm and then wait for 30minutes to see the 10 minute show in Australia's pavilion--that's worth a good watch. I heard a guy in the line for England talking about the 6 hour line for Japan. He said it was well worth the wait, but I never had a chance to go myself.

Usually censorship comes with clauses that make it illegal to circumvent the censors. Circumvention of censorship is what I believe to be illegal, especially as certain sites have been specifically selected. So access may not be illegal directly, but by requiring an illegal circumvention to access, the access itself can be considered illegal. Again, I'm not a lawyer (and especially not a Chinese lawyer) so I can't state definitively that anything in China is illegal or legal. It's different from CNN International in that CNN is not censored. It doesn't require censor-circumvention to watch. Censored sites are unavailable, but unavailable doesn't necessarily mean censored... China uses "DNS hijacking" to redirect traffic from certain specifically censored domain names. Of course, they also employ other methods in the event users don't use Chinese-controlled DNS servers (for example http://opendns.org)... As for CFL, it's clumped in with the rest of the internet. Everything you browse on the web is filtered through what's called a "transparent proxy". Certain patterns cause the connection to be broken. Repeated attempts will cause subsequent connections to the site to be blocked for a short time. I could drop a message here to trigger this. Each time you try to read it, the page will get cut off. Depending on what internet browser you use, this could result anywhere from a partially rendered page to an error message. Of course, refreshing a few times would cause your Chinese ISP to block connections to CFL for a short while, preventing you from reading anything here. However, in the interest of not bringing unwanted censor attention here (however insignificant it may be), I'll simply state that triggers include things such as the name of a politically sensitive religion. This includes English, Chinese, and probably the name as transliterated to other languages as well. I'm sure you know which religion I'm talking about... Anyway, the Great Firewall is pretty sophisticated and employs a multitude of methods. It's not documented, and the triggers and blocked sites change subtlely almost daily. It is also implemented to be as invisible as possible, in effort to not expose exactly what is censored. Sometimes the triggers require a certain threshold of occurrence before they'll fire the censor.

I think a spell checker got the best of you up there... The section (D)(iv) in your quote is an interesting read. I don't suppose the Attorney General has time to review each case, but perhaps that explains part of the extra wait for CCP members? I'd agree that the processing for CCP members is stupid and unnecessary, but I'm not sure it's wise to advise people to intentionally misrepresent themselves. In the chance that GUZ investigates and finds that a spouse is in-fact a member of the CCP, they're risking a factual misrepresentation that will bar them from ever obtaining a visa (supposedly). I'd think the white is more troublesome than the blue...

I agree that China is mostly concerned about content, but I have to disagree with most of the rest. Without getting too technical, I can say that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc are not blocked on content, but blocked entirely. Neither of us is part of the CCP, so we can only speculate as to the reasons--but I'd say that these sites are not blocked on the content already there; instead to prevent Chinese from posting to widely popular social websites not under Chinese control. Websites not blocked entirely are filtered (including CFL). WikiPedia, for example, mostly works. Try accessing pages on certain events at Tian'anmen square, and you'll run into a block on specific content. Further, the great firewall is not actually run by the government, but is required of all ISPs in China. A website that is blocked in one region is not necessarily blocked nationwide. That said, the above listed websites are blocked in all parts of mainland China. (I don't know why Google was brought up; the main search engine has never been blocked. They pulled out of China originally due to hackings. You can read their carefully worded "f-you" message to China at http://www.google.com/press/new-approach-to-china/update.html, though it's Chinese only. They're only recently looking to renew their content license in China because of the large loss in China's search engine market-share. All of Google's social oriented websites have been blocked for quite a while. Note that the search engine is not a social website.) So while access to Facebook specifically may not be illegal, I would find it very strange if they didn't take issue with intentionally circumventing a government-mandated censor to access specifically-selected blocked sites.