The Day the Internet Stood Still

The day she arrived in China, Nora and I decided we basically can’t live without internet in our apartment. This might make us sound a little overly-dependent on the web, but you have to realize: the internet for you all in the USA isn’t of the same importance as it is for us ex-pats in Shanghai. I don’t “need” the internet to check my email everyday and read up on the newest celebrity gossip, even though I know I’ll do that anyways. I need the internet because it is the only affordable form of contact with the outside world, outside of postal mail. Overseas phone calls are ludicrously expensive and my only other option would be to visit an internet bar every time I hoped to catch my family on Skype. That and having AIM keeps me in touch with my US buddies while MSN does the same for my Chinese and ex-pat friends. So now that you understand why it was necessary to have internet in our apartment, let me tell you about the hell involved in getting internet in my apartment.
If some function is run by the government in China, you can expect any interaction with it to involve waiting in line for a very lengthy amount of time before being yelled at by an angry, state-employed worker. And also, there will be security guards who consistently yell at you while policing the lines. And everyone in the line will be yelling into their phones or having loud conversations. The China Telecomm office handles all of the internet, mobiles, and land lines for all of China, so you can imagine how crowded their offices might be. Nora and I were lucky enough to have our English-speaking Chinese boss, Benson, accompany us to work out all of the kinks, so we figured that would save us a good deal of time. We arrive and the place is packed to capacity due to the fact that we came on the last business day before the Golden Week, a national holiday when about 70% of the whole nation gets a whole week off from work. We bite the bullet, grab a ticket, and sit down to wait our turn. When we got there they were up to number 16 and it was about 15 minutes before they got to number 20. We had ticket number 76. Realizing we had at least an hour and a half of wait time, we just walked across the street to a Papa John’s Pizza, and Nora and I got our first Shanghai-American Pizza since we arrived. Although it was an embarrassment to real NY Pizza, it still was scrumptious considering how hungry we were. That foray took us about an hour total, so we headed back into China Telecomm. They were now at number 50 or so. In total, it took about 2, maybe 2 and a half hours before our number came up. I just read a book most of the time, so I wasn’t really that annoyed. This is China, here. But then we got to talk to the teller.
Dealing with the teller was a supreme pain-in-the-ass even with a near-perfect Chinese translator, our boss, there with us. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if Nora and I were to try it alone. It would probably have ended up with me in a Chinese prison somewhere, as I imagine the police don’t take kindly to foreigners trying to kill every last worker in a very crowded Telecomm office. But back to the internet. We had to figure out which type of internet we wanted, which speed we were willing to pay for, and whether we wanted a month-to-month or year-long contract. Working out all the kinks via Benson took around a full hour, maybe an hour and a half. We finally have all of the papers printed out, I sign my name about 15 times, and we are all ready to pay up. The Telecomm worker then asks us when we would be available to have the service installed, and we tell her as soon as they can send someone over. She says, “OK,” and starts to type away at the computer. We assume she is trying to figure out when they have a field-worker free to come and put in our modem. We are kind-of right about this. She starts to say something in Chinese to Benson, but I catch enough to find out that there is something wrong. Even if I spoke no Chinese, after living here for even this long I could have assumed that something had gone wrong. Something always goes wrong. Benson tells us that she says there is a problem with congestion in our area, and there is already a wait-list for people who want internet. They can’t install anyone’s until they add new servers, or ground wires, or something. That part was lost in translation. We find this out only AFTER we spend 2 and half hours in line and 1 and a half hours working out the details about the internet we can’t get. Two weeks ago I might have flipped my lid over this, but getting an apartment in China has taught me a kind of serenity I have never known before. So I calmly start asking some questions in Chinese, trying to gauge the situation.
“So how many people are on the list before us?”
“Around 100.”
“And how long will it take for them to be taken care of and for us to get internet?”
“The shortest time could be about 3 days.”
“And the longest time?”
“Around 3 months.”
“Wait, when will you be able to tell me if it’s three days or three months?”
“I can’t know for sure. Give us your phone number and we’ll call you sometime in the next 3 days to next three months.”
Needless to say, Nora and I are heartbroken. At the time we had no idea if there was even an alternative to the China Telecomm DSL, so we figure we’ll just use the internet bars for a few months. We thank Benson for spending so much time with us and helping us out, but he just says, “No problem, it’s in my nature to help you guys out.” I’ve mentioned in a few posts how awesome Benson is. Nora and I say goodbye to him and head out to an Internet bar to try and forget about what just happened. I felt so hollow and disillusioned about wasting nearly 5 hours that everything just seemed surreal. China has been frustrating in the past, but things tended to work out OK in the end. This situation just sucked. Instead of drowning her sorrows in Counter-strike, like I did, Nora decided to be proactive and look up alternatives to China Telecomm DSL. She found a cool Shanghai blog that outlined how to buy a satellite modem card for your laptop and subscribe to a private internet provider. The writer for the website sounded like he had the same problems we did, so my hope for 3 days instead of 3 months faded pretty quickly. Nora wrote down all of the specs and found out where she could get all this stuff in Shanghai, but it turned out the whole shebang would cost more than double the Telecomm DSL deal. She asked if I wanted to come with her to pick up the stuff, but I had really decided against the satellite deal. I figured that even 3 months visiting internet bars once or twice a week was better than paying double for satellite. On top of that, after more than 5 hours dealing with Chinese Telecomm, I had to call it quits for the day. This all happened on Friday and when I spoke to Nora Saturday morning I found out the satellite modem card she looked at was incompatible with her laptop. We just couldn’t get any luck to come our way. Or so we thought.
The next day, Sunday, just two days after the internet incident, we got a phone call from China Telecomm telling us the internet was ready and we could have a guy in to install it by Thursday. I have no idea what changed from Friday until then, but I didn’t really care at the time. Nora and I decided to run out and buy a wireless router at the PC shop down the street right away, so that we could get the service guy to help us install it. The days pass and he shows up, ready to set it all up. Everything goes smoothly, for once, and I ask him to help me with the wireless router. He then tells me that it isn’t wireless at all, but just a regular router. I say thanks and send him on his way, and then Nora and I head back to the PC shop to get a real wireless router. We throw down an extra 25 bucks to get a decent wireless router, and head home to set it up. This turns out to be no easy task. The Chinese DSL uses a user name and password to connect to a central server every time you want to use the internet. It isn’t like American Cable, where you are given an automatic IP address and are always on. So this means that if you want to use a wireless router, you need to go into the routers home page and enter in all of the network connection settings and user name and password. On top of that, I needed to set a password on the router, so that people wouldn’t steal our internet. None of this would really be too much trouble, except that the router settings were 100% in Chinese. Regardless, I sat down and worked it out after about an hour or so, and had it all perfect. It took a good deal of trial and error, but it all worked out. I was very proud of myself. Yay.
OK, so thus ends the great ordeal that was getting internet in my apartment. Like all tasks in China, it was immensely difficult to accomplish and barely even worth it. But TIC (watch Blood Diamond to catch that reference. Since we got the internet, I’ve downloaded about 10 movies and all 3 seasons of arrested development. Score).