True, if the conversations are of the "Honey, I'm in Beijing, the Forbidden City is great but I came down with food poisoning..." variety, then there's no issue and nobody cares. But there is some value to other readers of this thread, who may not have knowledge of the general situation in China, to be cautioned that there are keywords that may trigger monitoring. Also, many people, no matter how innocuous their private conversations may be, just on principle don't like the idea of being spied on and prefer to avoid if they can. There is a certain thrill at being able to thumb one's nose at the Chinese governmental Net Nannies--it is great sport around here. I think most serious businesspeople already are well aware that Skype is not the medium one uses to discuss the Secret Corporate Plans with HQ back home.

Thanks for the info on skype and the heads up.
Speaking in a foreign language (farsi) won't by itself trigger concerns if I were to use the chinese version (have skype installed, so prob. won't be an issue)?

tb

I was not aware of the Skype download problems, but I'm successfully using Skype-in, -out, and chat in China since 2006, which was installed on my laptop before I went there.

I have one of these orange 3-2prong adapters bought from hardware store in USA, but it says 16A ~ 125V printed on it.

has anyone tried this in the china wall outlets? It won't burn up, right?
I can't imagine why it would burn up. it looks like a simple metal/plastic thing.


http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...ckVw0jXXjPFf0=

It won't burn, but you lose ground. You can try it at home first.

The voltage rating is about insulation. You actually have quite a bit of safety margin in the voltage rating.

The amp rating is a real limit and exceeding it by too much will cause it to burn up but when you go to higher voltages you have lower amperage and thus this is a non-issue.

I also have one of those in my bag.

+1. The cords tend to be missing or junk. Shaky plugs and iffy internal conections. At one "budget" motel (think Motel 6 de Shanghai) the provided cords were made from solid wire, the cheaper stuff used to wire buildings, not stranded wire like a proper cord needs to be. Go to Best Buy and get a good quality 6 or 8 foot cord and take it with you back to the country where it was made. :D

As for censorship, I never had any trouble accessing Flyertalk. ^ The Great Firewall did uniformly block my favored news sites like the Huffington Post. :td: They don't want you reading such stuff over there.

I just plugged it into my browser; no problem today. The powers that be often put sites on temporary hiatus.