Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Welcome to my lonely Chinese visitor

I've subscribed to Google Analytics for some time now, and until yesterday, the visitors map for Oyonale looked like this.
Where have the chinese gone?
133 countries (light and dark green on the map) have sent visitors so far. In one month, there were 20 people from Saudi Arabia, 1 from Iraq, 1 from Afghanistan, 134 from Hungary and 9267 from the USA (hello to all of you, dear visitors). So who's missing? Turkmenistan, Burman, Yemen, Oman, Mali, Niger, Chad, Nigeria (which is strange, with all the dead billionaires' wives hailing from Lagos) and a few other African countries. And China. 1.3 billion chinese people can't see my images or read my silly stories. Only people from Hong Kong are free to do so, thanks perhaps to the "one country, two systems" policy. You can verify this using Websitepulse, a site that tests an URL from Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong.
Not that the Chinese government really objects to Oyonale. The Great Firewall of China actually blocks my host's entire IP range. I have other sites hosted by the same ISP that are also invisible to Chinese internet users. It's impossible to know the cause for the ban, of course. Perhaps the Chinese government will relax the Firewall for the Olympics, I don't know.

And yesterday, someone from Beijing broke through the Firewall, my first Chinese visitor. That person visited one page and spent 0 second reading it, so I fear this wasn't a real person. In fact it was probably a bot. Websitepulse still reports that Oyonale is blocked in Beijing and Shanghai. But, whoever you are, Chinese visitor, I salute you.

Labels:

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Gilles, I'm chinese, i browser your website in Australia though, i just want to say that i love your stunning works, stories and ideas, and so great to be the first chinese to leave comment;) oh, have i ever mentioned that i've been watching you since around 1998:D, see ya!

June 2, 2008 7:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It seems to be unblocked in China now. I am accessing Oyonale from Chengdu, China.

September 3, 2008 11:12 AM  

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home