1. Sign for a yahoo ID... you can do this in my.yahoo.com. DO NOT check the automatically create an Email address
2. Clear ALL cookies
3. Activate mail account at cn.mail.yahoo.com
(you get 100Mb storage first *don't worry*), then sign-out
NOTE: FYI, the two boxes in the activation page is lastname and firstname

Upgrading to 1Gb Yahoo China Account
1. Sign-in to Yahoo Messenger, add a contact, sign-out
2. Go back to cn.mail.yahoo.com (all pages would be in Chinese)
3. Click the 1G orange label (graphic) *look at the lower right of the page*
4. Type-in your Yahoo ID and Password *look at the bottom of the page*
5. You'll go to two more Chinese pages (Just click the bottom centered label in the page)
6. Tadah!! Your upgraded to 1Gig and your default is English with Free POP3

There's no pesky graphic or flash ads at the moment... but your email add would be username[at]yahoo.com.cn

I think that's good enough for people without Gmail