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From a 10-day trip back home to a Netflix documentary about Instagram.
There is a phrase between a good friend of mine, Mel, and me — after she returned to China after four years in the US that seemed like a lifetime we shared — “Instagram freedom.” Whether she has Instagram freedom or not at the moment completely depends on whether she is physically in China or not. Taking a vacation traveling to Europe, yes, she is back to “having Instagram freedom”; having dinner at home in Beijing, no, she does not have Instagram freedom.
A little bit of unnecessary quick background info:
Do you know that Instagram is blocked under the great firewall of China? Maybe you do. Maybe you also know that all Google products (of course, it includes Gmail, YouTube, or the Google search engine), Netflix, Facebook, and most academic websites (e.g., my Alma Mater, UCSD), are blocked too?
It doesn’t mean that one like Mel has no access to Instagram 100% of their time in China. Based on my experience, there are a few ways around it: (1) As a traveler to China who is using a US phone sim card (I don’t know about sim cards from other countries) with international data-roaming service, there would be no “wall” for them to access any websites like mentioned above. Or (2), install a paid or free VPN service on a phone/computer…
