Google/Apple Maps and VPN
 

Someone once told me the best site for the metro and I forgot. Does anyone know? It seems like that even all knowing google maps is lost on the Beijing metro.
The Exhibition Urcove seems to be on the airport line.

Metro info on Google Maps aren’t updated since 2015 and with the usual Chinese GPS drift you won’t get anywhere with Google Maps. Apple Maps works the best in China with all languages with adequate translation but you’d have to be there. Try Bing Maps or amap.com and map.baidu.com with your translator on?

What do you mean by you have to be there?

Does Apple Maps suffer from GPS drift?

The full Chinese Apple Maps database (from Amap, a leading local provider) is geo-IP restricted outside of China. If you look up China on Apple Maps right now, there’s lackluster info and no public transit at all derived from decade-old map data from TomTom.

No, Apple Maps doesn’t suffer from drifts or any issue and displays full information (including turn-by-turn transit, timetables, etc) from Amap under a Chinese IP.

Did the search for this very property on Google Maps and the location is indeed off. Try these coordinates on Google Maps: (39.9645917, 116.4360056)

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chin...it-urgent.html
https://explorebj.com/subway/

So you're telling me that as soon as my iPhone detects a Chinese IP, I'll see the full database with all the details in Apple Maps? I wonder if using a VPN with a Chinese IP will trigger that? So even outside of China, there is no GPS drift with Apple Maps, just no details? If so, Google has really fallen behind and is unreliable in the Mainland now.

No kidding... https://www.thatsmags.com/china/post...m-china-market

Technically yes, but it’s pretty difficult to score a VPN for CN mainland. Even if you do, your VPN provider is very unlikely to route all your traffic via VPN.

More often than not, Chinese VPNs operate a whitelist for certain traffic to “expedite” or unlock Chinese social media and streaming apps for expats. Renting servers these days in China require identity authentication, and if it’s found out that you use them as VPN servers … well let’s just say you’d better give up your China travel plans!

There doesn’t seem to be drastic drifts on Apple Maps outside CN, all the roads and attractions line up, just very few details and no public transport. Satellite imagery also lines up pretty well with main roads.

Long story short, foreign enterprises aren’t allowed to do any type of surveying or mapping for China at all (that explains Tesla FSD’s unavailability in China). Google, like Apple, bought Amap’s database when they were still around, but they stopped doing so some time in 2015 following their eventual blocking the previous year, and the GPS drifting persisted when they terminated maps.google.cn a few years ago.

Given the region’s immense infrastructure growth I’d say Google Maps have completely lost its relevance at around 2017 to 2018, and COVID only made the internet of China more detached. Use Apple Maps while in the country instead, it has updated information, adequate translation, great transit and driving directions including in-door plans for malls, detailed points of interest info, and visibility of international locations (though HK, MO and TW used Amap databases instead of data from Apple’s default TomTom), in line of what your experience would be in the US or Europe.

Not to go too off topic but 1) I would definitely get a VPN before coming here. Many work just fine. Witopia, strongvpn. Astrill. You won't get in trouble for using one

2) gaode is the best mapping system here following by perhaps Baidu. I wouldn't use bing.

GH is a conference hotel right in center. They regularly do international events and are used to dealing with foreigners. It's a good place to be in the middle of main walking, shopping street but gets too crowded for my taste. But it's a good option.

JdV was run by a foreign GM and has people with extremely good English. Best location in my mind but not luxury. I have a home in BJ too but actually stay here sometimes because the location is good near Sanlitun.

hR wang Jing is in the middle of nowhere. Hardware is better than the others but the location is bad. And they are not as used to dealing with foreigners - they basically opened and then covid hit. I dont like staying at this hotel.

Park Hyatt is run extremely well. But I just don't love the location. But it is ok.

Anyway, not to be off Urcove topic.

Great info!
how would an english speaker use Gaode or Baidu? there doses not seem to be an english option on iphone store.

I bought shadow rocket vpn on recommendation of mainliner but it does not seem to work too well so far outside of china

Since you have an iPhone, you'll be fine with Apple Maps.

Shadow rocket is the best and is what I use actually. I didn't recommend it because I thought one needed Chinese payment systems. If it's android, you need to update on the 1st and 16th of every month. iOS just shut and it automatically updates. It's faster and more stable than other VPNs in my experience.

You can type English names into gaode (or didi for taxi) and most times it is correct. For example, type in Park Hyatt Beijing in English and the Chinese name should pop up. Check street number to see if you most likely have the right address. You can also copy the pinyin (ie romanized) spelling from Hyatt app for the address and put into gaode or didi - that usually works very well too.

I frankly would not be too worried about staying at a UR Cove if they allow foreigners if you don't speak Mandarin. Chinese are super helpful and someone somewhere will help out. You won't always be able to get international language service level but you will get good help.

Use Apple Maps. It uses data from Gaode (Amap).
ExpressVPN probably still works, but yeah the VPN rabbit hole certainly is deep.

Gaodeditu is the best for mapping. The people that created it are geniuses 🙏

I have Express and I just checked. They don't have any servers in China!

They’re saying for use in China lol (using HK servers). For a long time ExpressVPN was the defacto VPN for China. Today all off the shelf options will have some level of reliability issues. The ones that work best are usually a little sketchy so you need to feel comfortable trusting them with all of your internet data. Best option is to set up your own bespoke VPN server. This is cheaper in the long run, more reliable, more private, and more secure.

Oh I thought you meant VPNs to use whilst in China
I can’t really think of an option for VPNs with servers in China right now. Try Bing Maps for route plannings whilst outside? It’s not the most up-to-date but mostly works.

If you’re looking for VPN that’s relatively cheap and fast enough for short-term use in China, there’s a term called “airport” that I can’t get further into here on FT. Ask a Chinese friend on a non-Chinese social media.

On another note, none of the Hyatts that I know of in Beijing has enterprise network infrastructures that “isn’t affected by the Great Firewall”. The only Hyatt property where you can use Google and Netflix (HK) just fine is the Hyatt Place in Dongmen, Shenzhen; but it’s been a few years since my last visit.

Yeah … with all due respect, I’d say it’s a laughable suggestion for OP as a short-term tourist, not to mention the “more reliable” part.

Without getting to the nitty-gritty, they’ve really enhanced the Great Firewall probably since your last visit. It’s a joke these days to just install V2Ray or Shadowsocks, or any other traditional VPN protocol that GFW bans within ten seconds on a server you see fit (for which its IP is probably banned already by the GFW if you’re on a major IDC) and call it a day.

If you’ve currently got a VPN server on a legacy protocol, great. But I’m pretty sure it’s unusable in CN without some heavy modifications that involve purchasing domain names, building web servers, and setting up an unfamiliar protocol for non-Chinese users.

It is not a recommendation for a short-term tourist. Of course they would be better off using an off the shelf VPN lol.

My bespoke VPN, set up and maintained by my IT team for my employees in China, works as of March 2023, when I was last in the mainland. The Chinese gov will actually sanction many bespoke VPNs for many reasonably sized businesses.

Best option for who then? The OP you replied to is clearly a short-term tourist. They might’ve looked into building VPN servers, wasting a bunch of time and getting nowhere.

All I can say is they went the cheap route.

If you read the post you’re quoting, you may be able to discern your answer within the text itself.

It only makes sense in the long run. If you are a short term tourist, it should be common sense that setting up anything bespoke is excessive.

Whatever works, works! I asked an employee to come up with a solution and they have come up with one that has worked reliably and quickly for years and years. I don’t need to follow what changes happen with the great firewall because my IT people are paid to figure it out. I would be very annoyed having to constantly track this stuff. Easier for me to stick with my single bespoke option and spend my time elsewhere. I also have a friend with a company VPN sanctioned by the Chinese government but I have almost never used it because I prefer not unnecessarily sharing my internet history with third parties.

Your discernment is far from obvious, especially the narrative of “the best option is” sentence without a context. Should the OP have little experiences with VPNs and IT overall, they may forgo your later description of “in the long-run” or not connect “long-run” with “dedicated IT teams” and a lot of hassle.

Again, based on our previous engagements, it’s suffice to say we’re differently opinionated on many subjective topics, and I’m not interested in playing the “who’s right” game any further. The objective here is to assist the OP.

Just stick to whatever works, less you know the nitty-gritty on these stuff the better.

Can’t provide any more insights into this topic on FT unfortunately, and all I can say was my last reply — companies who got their VPN banned probably went the cheap way.

Yes, it seems you are very fixated on semantics. It only makes sense in the long run as stated clearly in the post you quoted. I cannot help it if someone chooses to ignore text in my post that qualifies my statement. It is also pointless to argue semantics about qualifying a statement, especially when the qualifier is in the text you quoted yourself.

I have no idea who you are.

Thankful my VPN has worked since 2017 without being banned! No idea what methodology they used but it seems like they did not go the budget way based on your heuristic.

I use Amap and Baidu Maps because I have an Android. I also use a V (a$$.) most of the time. Many Chinese apps (e.g. in addition to map stuff, alipay, eleme, taobao, etc) work best when I exclude them (split tunneling). A also has a feature called smart mode that effectively does the same thing, but I prefer the exclusion method myself because it gives me more control.

Split tunneling is definitely a huge benefit in China

Yes using a VPN works. It's not just the IP though, you need to make sure that your DNS is Chinese too.

Almost every smaller VPN service now prefer Clash as Client instead. and my experience with many of them is quite good. But I would recommend not purchasing an annual plan but instead paying monthly. Most of them are around 1RMB per day.

This makes me miss 2019, when Taiwan Mobile first started offering roaming on prepaid and mainland China was only 600NTD for unlimited data for a week. I just started doing that for reliability reasons. Then they probably had too many people like me and they now throttle after 5GB. EDIT: They did cut the price to 350NTD, though, so it's not as egregious as if they were trying to sell 5GB for 600NTD.

300GB for 25-35RMB per month is currently the average price for Chinese VPN services, and all of them use Clash as client which have a Traffic Mode.

A is better.

I disagree, Lets (posted my impression above) worked better than A.

I'd rather pay for roaming than use a Chinese VPN service. If my preferred services aren't working (vpn.ac or a SSH tunnel I'm hosting on an Amazon EC2 instance) then my dtac (higher usage) or Taiwan Mobile (lower usage) SIM is my next choice.