I lived in Shanghai for about two years (2001-2003). While living there, my biggest tech problem with was the horribly slow and unstable internet connections. Hopefully they've fixed that by now.
As far as non-resolving DNS, connections being blocked and so-on, that does happen on occassion. What I did was set up an SSH tunnel to a squid proxy outside of the country. If I remember correctly, they block port 3128 going out, so the tunnel was more so that they wouldn't detect the proxying. Honestly, I don't even know if they checked. All my email going in and out of the country was through SSL/TLS encrypted connections to the servers, so that was pretty much safe. Unless you're going on behalf of a religious organization (or equivalent) though, that shouldn't really matter.
If you do go, enjoy it. I miss living there, myself. The most important thing as a foreigner is not protecting yourself from the government (cuz honestly, they don't really care what kind of information you're getting, unless you're overtly attempting to brainwash the local people with it). It's going there with an open mind. Don't be quick to judge the local people by your own standards. Don't apply your preconceived notions based on things you've heard in western media. Take time to understand where people come from and why they hold the mindsets that they do. If you do, your experiences will definitely be unforgettable.
Slashdot Mirror
I lived in Shanghai for about two years (2001-2003). While living there, my biggest tech problem with was the horribly slow and unstable internet connections. Hopefully they've fixed that by now.
As far as non-resolving DNS, connections being blocked and so-on, that does happen on occassion. What I did was set up an SSH tunnel to a squid proxy outside of the country. If I remember correctly, they block port 3128 going out, so the tunnel was more so that they wouldn't detect the proxying. Honestly, I don't even know if they checked. All my email going in and out of the country was through SSL/TLS encrypted connections to the servers, so that was pretty much safe. Unless you're going on behalf of a religious organization (or equivalent) though, that shouldn't really matter.
If you do go, enjoy it. I miss living there, myself. The most important thing as a foreigner is not protecting yourself from the government (cuz honestly, they don't really care what kind of information you're getting, unless you're overtly attempting to brainwash the local people with it). It's going there with an open mind. Don't be quick to judge the local people by your own standards. Don't apply your preconceived notions based on things you've heard in western media. Take time to understand where people come from and why they hold the mindsets that they do. If you do, your experiences will definitely be unforgettable.