That’s all true, kluelos, except he stated that he doesn’t use a SOHO router, so, his connection is directly to the ISP through the ADSL modem. Besides both his IP addresses are public routable IP addresses, not from any of the private ranges which all home routers use for DHCP. This would be possible only if his ISP would be using Overlapping (Twice) NAT. But as you can see below, the addresses do not seem to belong to the same company.
So, Hoo, to answer more directly your question: Yes, I believe that you might be subject to the interference of the Golden Shield (a.k.a. The Great Firewall of China).
In fact if I’ve run a whois command for both your address ranges and as you can see below, they belong to two different owners, namely the 221.x.x.x address belongs to CHINA RAILWAY TELECOMMUNICATIONS CENTER in *Beijing *and the 124.x.x.x ones belong to the CNC Group, China Unicom Zhejiang province network which as you can verify here, is located in the city of *Hangzhou *(quite away from Beijing).
Whois for 221.x.x.x:
% [whois.apnic.net node-1]
% Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html
inetnum: 221.172.0.0 - 221.175.255.255
netname: CRTC
country: CN
descr: CHINA RAILWAY TELECOMMUNICATIONS CENTER.
descr: 22F Yuetan Mansion,Xicheng District,
descr: Beijing,P.R.China
admin-c: LQ112-AP
tech-c: LM273-AP
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20030902
mnt-by: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
source: APNIC
route: 221.172.0.0/14
descr: CHINA RAILWAY TELECOMMUNICATIONS
country: CN
origin: AS9394
mnt-by: MAINT-CN-CRTC
changed: wangpei@crc.net.cn 20040402
source: APNIC
person: LV QIANG
nic-hdl: LQ112-AP
e-mail: crnet_mgr@chinatietong.com
address: 22F Yuetan Mansion,Xicheng District,Beijing,P.R.China
phone: +86-10-51892111
fax-no: +86-10-51847845
country: CN
changed: ipas@cnnic.net.cn 20060911
mnt-by: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
source: APNIC
person: liu min
nic-hdl: LM273-AP
e-mail: abuse@chinatietong.com
address: 22F Yuetan Mansion,Xicheng District,Beijing,P.R.China
phone: +86-10-51848796 fax-no: +86-10-51842426
country: CN
changed: ipas@cnnic.net.cn 20041208
mnt-by: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
source: APNIC
inetnum: 221.172.0.0 - 221.175.255.255
netname: CRTC
descr: CHINA RAILWAY TELECOMMUNICATIONS CENTER
descr: 22F Yuetan Mansion,Xicheng District,Beijing
country: CN
admin-c: LQ112-CN
tech-c: LM273-CN
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20030902
mnt-by: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
mnt-lower: MAINT-CN-CRTC
mnt-routes: MAINT-CN-CRTC
source: CNNIC
person: LV QIANG
nic-hdl: LQ112-CN
e-mail: crnet_mgr@chinatietong.com
address: 22F Yuetan Mansion,Xicheng District,Beijing
phone: +86-10-51892111
fax-no: +86-10-51847845
country: CN
changed: ipas@cnnic.cn 20060419
mnt-by: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
source: CNNIC
person: liu min
nic-hdl: LM273-CN
e-mail: crnet_tec@chinatietong.com
address: 22F Yuetan Mansion,Xicheng District,Beijing,P.R.Chinaphone: +86-10-51848796
fax-no: +86-10-51842426
country: CN
changed: ipas@cnnic.net.cn 20041208
mnt-by: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
source: CNNIC
Whois for 124.x.x.x:
% APNIC found the following authoritative answer from: whois.apnic.net
% [whois.apnic.net node-2]
% Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html
inetnum: 124.160.0.0 - 124.160.255.255
netname: UNICOM-ZJ
descr: China Unicom Zhejiang province network
descr: China Unicom
country: CN
admin-c: CH1302-AP
tech-c: JQ16-AP
remarks: service provider
mnt-by: APNIC-HM
mnt-lower: MAINT-CNCGROUP-ZJ
mnt-routes: MAINT-CNCGROUP-RR
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
remarks: -±±±±±±±±±±±+±±±±±±±±±±±±±±+
remarks: This object can only be updated by APNIC hostmasters.
remarks: To update this object, please contact APNIC
remarks: hostmasters and include your organisation’s account
remarks: name in the subject line.
remarks: -±±±±±±±±±±±+±±±±±±±±±±±±±±+
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20060314
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20090507
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20090508
source: APNIC
route: 124.160.0.0/16
descr: CNC Group CHINA169 Zhejiang Province Network
country: CN
origin: AS4837
mnt-by: MAINT-CNCGROUP-RR
changed: abuse@cnc-noc.net 20060314
source: APNIC
person: ChinaUnicom Hostmaster
nic-hdl: CH1302-AP
e-mail: abuse@chinaunicom.cn
address: No.21,Jin-Rong Street
address: Beijing,100140
address: P.R.China
phone: +86-10-66259940
fax-no: +86-10-66259764
country: CN
changed: abuse@chinaunicom.cn 20090408
mnt-by: MAINT-CNCGROUP
source: APNIC
person: Jianhuaq Qian
nic-hdl: JQ16-AP
e-mail: chenrenhai@china-netcom.com
address: No 1,Hangzhou University Road,Hangzhou, Zhejiang,China
phone: +86-571-28868063
fax-no: +86-571-28868069
country: CN
changed: wuhong@china-netcom.com 20050421
mnt-by: MAINT-CNCGROUP-ZJ
source: APNIC
Furthermore as you can see in this article, the last range of addresses are part of the Autonomous System AS4837, which is one of those handling traffic crossing from international networks into China, so, most likely a part of the Golden Shield project.
To further verify this, check an internal (Chinese) site which can return your IP address, just like **whatismyip **does. If you get in return your actual IP (221.x.x.x), there you have your confirmation that you were firewalled.
You could also run a traceroute command to an international site which you are sure it is accessible from mainland China (i.e. something that has no sensitive material which would make the object of censorship) and see if your route passes through the 124.x.x.x range. If it does, there you have another proof that the TCP replies for BC coming to you from outside are being firewalled at that address, as well.
For the sake of curiosity, have you tried forcing encryption on your BC connections? Unless you’re downloading something that could get you in trouble there, probably you’re being blocked automatically, so it might be worth a try.