"A Research Expedition to Northern China (Update 1)!"

#PokemonGO: A couple weeks ago I posted about exploring the mysterious regions of northeast China, where Pokemon can be found despite the rest of the country (except for a few other equally mysterious freedom regions) being geoblocked. The goal of the trip was to uncover more information about these geoblocks, as well as to hunt and capture one of the rarest species of Pokes - a Chinese Farfetch'd.Well folks, the expedition has been successful on both counts.Pokemon Go, like Ingress, uses S2 cells to divide the surface area of the Earth into regions of flexible size.For reference, this is what Pokemon GO looks like when playing in a geoblocked area, compared to the same spot in Ingress. Nothing appears and nothing works. Incense is not usable and you get no egg or buddy distance credit for walking. Here's another.Thanks to information from Far-East regional expert /u/gakushan, I prepared S2 maps of the area and did notice the geoblock boundaries occurring exactly where this wise user predicted: along the level 6 cell size lines, which are pretty large. How large? Ingress' intel map (regional setting) shows you the level 6 cell you're currently in.Here is the border of the de-Pokemonized zone I observed.Now for the best part. As soon as I crossed into a region where incense was usable the hunt began, but between poor mobile data and weak GPS signal I didn't get to actually see many spawns.Starting about here I started seeing one incense spawn per minute.The first sighting. Unfortunately my wife wouldn't let me turn the taxi around because of "dinner plans" with "friends" she hadn't seen in "forever."Right as we were leaving the cell though, incense #8 saved the day. Here he is folks, my very own Chinese Farfetch'd.Boy, oh, boy.Can't wait to stuff him and put him on display at my nearest Gym back home....So besides the birds, how's the Pokemon Go scene in Liaoning China? Doesn't seem too active, but my trip isn't over yet. I'm headed back across the DPZ line first thing tomorrow. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2wDb3HR