Trapped in the Chinese Internet

I am currently in Hong Kong and will be traveling through parts of mainland China over the next two weeks. So far I survived a 15-hour flight from Newark, have had some good food, and am blown away by the incredible building spree that has taken place in this city.

At first glance everything seems new, tall, sheathed in glass, and spotlessly clean. The subway system is also new, spotless, very efficient, and will take you just about anywhere for a few dollars; cabs are on par with NYC. Also on par with NYC, the economy is beginning to show some effects of the decline, with fewer room bookings and empty restaurants.

My trip, a last-minute plan, is a bit of a whirl-wind. I'm trying to fit in as much art viewing as I can, along with taking lots of pictures and posting them here and on Flickr.

Well, I would love to post them on Flickr, but I can't, because the photo sharing site is blocked. Even in Hong Kong I am unable to upload pictures to my account. At this time maybe one or two images out of a dozen will slip through and load up. Amazingly two images loaded into Blogger.

I'm trying a few applications to get around censors, Vidalia (a non-profit group making the valiant try) and a few Firefox add-ons, but so far nothing has worked. If anyone has a suggestion I would be happy to be a guinea pig for open Internet access.