Well I'm used to the internet being annoyingly selective in what I can and can't go to (without the use of a VPN), but recently I've noticed some changes and was wondering if anyone else noticed as well.

Rather than my pages just timing out like normal now they are being redirected to a Beijing IP:

http://61.156.8.189/404.html

This page just says "404 Not Found" and on the bottom "nginx/0.7.59". This page has only started popping up within about the last week or two, I forget the exact date. Is anyone else getting this?

I've also noticed that the pictures also started displaying on Wikipedia, finally. These things all happened around the same time so I was just guessing they changed something or I have some virus on my computer.

Any thoughts, comments or light on this matter?

I live in Beijing and haven't noticed anything different about my Internet connection recently. I think the problem you're having is probably related to your specific connection in China and not China in general.

For the record I've never had an issue with pictures on Wikipedia either.

What internet provider are you using? I did some Baidu searching and saw some complaints about it using China Unicom, haha and lucky me I also have Unicom.

My provider is CERNET (campus internet). Yeah could be something to do with China Unicom, or even just China Unicom connections in your area. Anyway, chances are there's nothing wrong with your computer at least!

Thanks, nice to know it's just here or the provider. I was pretty sure it wasn't a computer problem too. I've used two other Unicom connections here in other buildings with nearly identical results. Funky!

This page (61...) sucks ... destroys my surfing

Anybody who can help to avoid that this page pops up?Its urgent because i run firefox with 30(!) tabs ... and i always have to restart 20 :-))

Greets from a laowai in qingdao

There are 2 pages always destroying my surfing

http://61.156.8.189/404.html

and

http://221.3.13.58/404.html

Who can help ???

I have the exact same problem. My net security is pretty tight and I've seen the same problem on most of my school's computers too although we're not on a network together or anything. It only happens when I try to go on certain websites such as ebaum's world or news, chinasmack etc. Fairly normal everyday websites. I literally can't stay on the page for more than 5 seconds. Chinese websites - no problem. some other websites like skritter.cn, financial info pages - no problem. I'm pretty darn sure the problem's not on my end but I'm no expert.

Anyone have a clue with this?

Actually this afternoon it redirected www.skritter.cn to that 404 website for about an hour, but let me go to www.skritter.com. I find it humorous that it blocked the dot CN domain and not the dot COM.

They must be seriously messing around with the Shandong Province Unicom connection somewhere. It now even redirects www.dictionary.com about 4 seconds after the page loads.

The only sure fire way I've found around it is a VPN or decent proxy.

Also, as I explained to Mr. maotoujam this afternoon. There is a way around it redirecting the page after 4-5 seconds.

After the main text of the page loads quickly click the X to stop loading the page. If you time it right the page text will still be there and it won't redirect.

This leads me to believe that it's some late loading ads or images on certain sites that prompt the redirect.

So what to do?Ask my internet provider in Qingdao to do what??? Im helpless(which seldom happened in 15 years China :-)

I don't think asking the internet provider will get you anywhere or solve the problem. In most cases the people in the customer service office wouldn't know too much about it.

Zhang Bo, are you using a VPN? That might be one step you could take.