Tricia Bellasario

What are some thing I should look for? What websites are blocked there? Will my Facebook and Twitter work?

obscure2k

Welcome to Flyertalk, Tricia Bellasario I am moving your thread to the FT China Forum. I am sure you will receive some good advice.
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

moondog

You can find a reasonably complete list with a simple Google search, but FB, Twitter, and most Google sites are blocked. Google worked out a deal to get unblocked late last year; it is still blocked as of now. Just use a VPN (that works in China), and all is good.

travelinmanS

Travelers using their home country phones on data roaming can access all the banned sites because the traffic is routed through their own country. For this same reason when I go to Europe and the States and use data roaming I still can't access google, NYT, ect. on my Chinese phone.

Scott in LA

This is implied in the previous posts, but I know I didn't really think about it in this way until I was there: when I roamed, as mentioned, I didn't need a VPN. When I used a local wifi, though (at my hotels and such), that's when I needed the VPN.

TOMFORD

No. But yes through VPN. And yes through the WiFi at major hotels. Same goes for any Google products.

STS-134

What do you consider a "major" hotel? Google sure didn't work at the Sheraton in Shanghai, or the Four Points in Beijing, unless I used my VPN, my HK SIM, or my AT&T SIM.

TOMFORD

No need for the quotations or the "sure didn't work". I wouldn't be surprised if Google worked at one SPG property but not another. It has always worked for me at the Four Seasons. I haven't stayed at IHGs in a few months but those worked when I stayed there. I have stayed at the PH and it worked there as well.

moondog

IME, approximately 1 in 3 chained Western hotels offer uncensored internet. Someone started a thread on this topic last year, but interest died before it gained sufficient traction.

STS-134

One hotel I stayed at in Shanghai (not even a Western chain) about 4 years ago had the entire place VPNed through Taiwan. Then their VPN failed, and I couldn't access anything through the wifi for about 3-4 hours. That was extremely annoying. As long as their VPN is reliable, it's nice, but if it's going to be unreliable, I'd prefer to use my own.

Quokka

The behavior of some western chain hotels internet access hasn't been consistent anyway. For example, we've had people staying at the Shanghai Hilton regularly over the last couple of years and sometimes sites have been blocked, sometimes not.

It's best to be prepared with a VPN reported to work in China if accessing FB or Google sites is important to you.

moondog

I agree with you wrt using your own VPN, but better hotels tend to avail of dedicated lines (as opposed to VPN routers). This can result in very good performance if they pay for decent bandwidth.

packy

What VPN do you guys recommend we use/purchase before heading to China?

STS-134

Both ExpressVPN and VPN.ac worked well for me last week. If you run your own server, setup Shadowsocks on it and download the Shadowsocks client for all of your devices. That works really well (I think it might even work better than the paid VPNs, simply because it connects quickly and reconnects very quickly after you switch networks or there's a data outage).

NOTE: VPN.ac allows you to select specific apps to bypass (as in not use) the VPN, at least on Android. This is a nifty feature, as Android has trouble determining if a wifi network or cellular network has internet access in China (Android connects to Google to determine if a connection has net access, and China blocks Google). So by using a second browser (like Firefox) and telling VPN.ac to allow Firefox traffic to bypass the VPN, I could direct Firefox to whatismyip.com or a similar site, and figure out whether the VPN was using the wifi connection (typically this will show your location as the city you're in) or the cellular network (it would show Chengdu with my Unicom card, HK with my HK dual number SIM, or some US location with my AT&T SIM).

I've submitted an issue to Google for this Android problem but it's not going to be fixed overnight and will continue to affect visitors to China until it is fixed. The issue is that, if the wifi connection is determined to have no "internet access", the phone will sometimes route data over cellular even though it is connected to wifi, meaning that if you are doing international roaming, you have to be very careful, or you could burn through your entire data plan in a hurry.

747FC

Smog. Lots of it. Bring N95 masks.