One of the best things in the US is that there is no Great Firewall (GFW) here, a  censorship and surveillance project operated by China's government. Because of the GFW, we cannot visit popular social websites such as Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook.

So what if a young Chinese want to have some fun in social media? There are two ways around it. One is  we use “wall climbing” software, i.e. proxy software to log on western social media. The problems with proxy software is they won't always work. The other way is going to China's own social websites. We have Youku (www.youku.com), The Youtube of China; we have Renren (www.renren.com), The Facebook of China; and we have Sina weibo (www.weibo.com), the Twitter of China.

These are just a few standing examples. In fact, social media are extremely popular in China nowadays, and social media study has great relevance not only to people in the US, but also to people on the other side of the world.