As an Android phone user, basically most of the native apps do not function. No Gmail, Lens, and even the YT music (default music player) struggles with offline music playing cuz even though the items are stored on the phone, for whatever reason, it wants to run something online between every title so I have to toggle airplane mode for it to advance, slightly annoying when it's - 15°. Localisation actually hasn't a gripe of mine at all, as signalisation is bi-lingual, as are the automatic ticket distributer at metros. But stuff at train stations..... Isn't. Kinda of important there.

I knew about the Google services restrictions beforehand so all my important mails were reserved to Hotmail, but was surprised how I couldn't get my VPN to function at most hotels. But I don't want to turn this into a VPN discussion as there is a separate thread for that.

On the plus side, finding food to eat is not hard even if we Europeans eat later than the locals, and the food is generally quite cheap, if not necessarily healthy in the north. I told my relatives I couldn't afford a holiday in Taiwan anymore given how expensive things are there, but on the mainland, prices for basic commodités have remained acceptable for us Europeans, who have lost a lot of purchasing power the last couple years.....

The only Google app I really care about is Google, and I've never been unable to access it in China. There are good Chinese apps for everything else.

Tim Apple would tell you to get an iPhone

That's a tough one; pretty much get kicked out of most places at ~ 9pm.

In France, most non-chain restaurants open for dinner at 19h00, and most show up closer to 20h. That's because there's the apéro beforehand. So for me to eat lunch 13-14h and 20-21h is standard. l'Espagne, Portugal, Italie, and even la Belgique are not too far off.

When I'm hungry late at night, I can always find something to eat, even in Nanning, but the later it gets, the fewer choices there are (e.g. a lot of mall restaurants stop taking orders at 930). Anyone who likes street food, random Chinese delivery (e.g. kungpao chicken type stuff that can be okayish), bars that serve food, pizza, KFC, DQ, McD, or convenience stores can get by just fine. Also, most of the grocery stores and import shops I order from are open until 11 or 12.

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Lucky!

I have a new KFC close nearby where I live in Beijing that just opened. That closes at 10pm, and is the last thing to serve food in a ~15 mile radius.

When you peruse eleme at 2300 or 2330, what sorts of options do you see?

Just get a foreign roaming SIM card or eSIM and that's no problem anymore. Or try to connect to your home network abroad by IPsec and not by one of the major commercial VPN companies.

No idea. Never tried. Doubt anyone would deliver at that time. Will check next week, and report back.

There's already another thread which I also posted about mobile phone strategies.

My phone does not support eSIM, it's not one of the major brands (Samsung, Apple, Huawei, etc....). I also wanted a local phone number (+86) because as predicted, I have made use of it making phone calls within the mainland.

If I wanted an "easy" tourism experience, there's two places called Hong Kong and Taiwan that have all of the western conveniences while retaining chinese characteristics.

I visited the snow sculptures today on Sun Island near Harbin......again with the QR code => chinese only Weixin website to buy tickets. :mad: There are definitely international visitors coming here for these world renowned events, but at least make it accessible !

I think it's safe to say that 99% of us have no issues accessing Google services (Huawei devices sort of excepted); the main issue is the utility of the services themselves in China. For example, the following thread is coming up on its 5th birthday and maps has continued to become less and less useful since 2019:

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

How would you access Gmail, voice, and Drive without a VPN then ?

Been a rough couple days for me, so I thought I'd share this to lighten the mood :

They've come a long way in improving the subtitles, but some things still make me chuckle : and highlights what I've been saying about English only going halfway ; note none of the instructions are in English.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...0fa401a8d9.jpg
Electrifying invention.

I wouldn't.

Get a 3HK eSim. Cheap and dependable.

The ubiquitous malatang is just getting started at 10pm in Sichuan ;)

Gmail -> forward to Hotmail
Voice -> I don't really see a need to use it. Text messages sent to email, which gets forwarded to Hotmail. For Google Voice calling, yes need VPN. I have a local China number which I use for everything in China. You can just call out on FaceTime Audio to anyone with an iPhone (or iCloud account set up with email) and this is not blocked. Except if you buy an iPhone in China, you can't use FaceTime Audio. Sad
Drive -> VPN

The VPN software works well nowadays, I had no interruptions, this isn't really an issue. I didn't even bother forwarding my Gmail to Hotmail this trip

for this one, I've found that I can say that I don't have WeChat and they'll dig out a paper menu from somewhere
not disagreeing with your overall point (for short-term visitors, at least), though

I used to insist on paper menus because I disliked the shear idea of using my phone as a menu, but I've now almost completely succumbed to this trend (marginally better than being forced to order from a tablet, I suppose).

The paper menu at the Korean restaurant I go to most often is now about 8 months out of date and it really is just a piece of paper (i.e. not book style with pictures). Meanwhile, the WeChat version contains all information and condiment options you could possibly imagine. Plus, it's synched up with whatever dianping promotion they happen to be offering and their loyalty program, so I can do everything at once.

On a slightly related note, my biggest beef with Chinese apps in general is that they try to incorporate tons of features (e.g. you can book plane tickets on baidu maps) that render them hopelessly confusing (our UI guy tells me the market demands this style btw). The menu miniprograms aren't really an exception, but once you get used to the lay of the land (they are more or less the same), it's pretty easy to focus on the core mission.

This drives me CRAZY!
Totally a cultural thing of course. We/I prefer a clean, clutter-free UI, whereas in China it needs as many bells and whistles and bright, flashing pop-ups as possible.

I am always fascinated when traveling with someone else (friend, taxi, etc.) and they use Baidu for guidance....with the 6-year old girl voice, and they never shut up. It's yapping constantly, never a brake...yap, yap, yap for the whole drive. My Sygic 'talks' maybe 10% of the Baidu amount.

It indeed is cultural. I was born and grew up in the west, but my parents are used to having apps with lots of icons and whistles (which I don't understand). They're not aware of what Baidu is (they're from Taiwan), but whenever I visit my relatives in the Taiwan region, their apps and sat navs are constantly also talking, flashing items, they've ripped out the stuff on their vehicles for something aftermarket that alerts them of pedestrian crossings, etc.....

Is there a thread about these cultural differences?

Congratulations, you have unlocked pet peeve #2!

This one probably isn't China specific (i.e. all countries have clueless people), but it's something I've yet to encounter outside of China. Basically, a lot of Didi (and similar) drivers have become so completely reliant on map apps that the "common sense" area of their brains has seemingly been vacated. It's frustrating because most Chinese cities (especially the newer ones) feature idiot proof layouts. I occasionally find myself pointing out my destination to drivers and advising them to avail of obvious shortcuts or streets that don't have a lot of traffic. They typically respond by simply saying “导航”, sometimes twice for emphasis. This is often an unwinnable battle.

My pet peeve with those apps is that the characters are usually so tiny as to be unreadable. This is actually true across the board for Chinese websites.

+1

VPN works well and is fast. I use VEEE+ for several years now.

I still need Gmail. My company uses it.

I suspect native speakers read Chinese by mentally running a 2D Fourier transform on an entire phrase at a time (looking at the contours and density distributions of the characters along with context), so they know what tiny text says without having to recognize and decode each individual character.

My theory has always been that the sites are designed by those in their 20s who still have perfect eyesight.

Slightly OT, but is it only me or Flyertalk is blocked in China as well? Never managed to open it from wifi/mobile data.

Flyertalk is an odd one. I have some ISPs where it's blocked, and others not. Also, with my VPN, Flyertalk works with some locations, but not with others. It's usually just a matter of trial and error to find one that works.

This is the dreaded BLOCKED message:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...fd5b4310e0.png

That's part of the Cloudflare security service that Internet Brands subscribe to. There's a list of individual IP addresses, blocks of IP addresses and networks (ASNs) curated by Clouldflare that is in their opinion and based upon telemetry across all their customers and source of potential excessive malicious traffic. Internet Brands use this list as a block list and first stage of defence to defend the forums they host which includes FT.

There have been examples over in the Support Forum where significant ISPs in counties like Poland have ended up on the block list for several months.

I never had issues accesssing Flyertalk while in China from their internet or mobile network. Even WhatsApp works (no photos/media).

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I have never been blocked from FT by Cloudflare while using a Chinese IP address. Are you sure you weren't using a VPN when you grabbed that screenshot?

I've also never not been able to access FT from Chinese IP addresses except when FT itself is down (and we're talking 20+ years now).

That screenshot was taken with a VPN to show what it looks like. (I am not in China at the moment.)
I mainly use two ISPs in China, and FT doesn't work with one of them (it's blocked).

yep, at times, seems the blocks are by device, and or by city for me. Beidaihe was the worst blocks. ( At my favorite new marriott resort). Sanya depended on the bay, near the military/naval base a hard block, but in the Sanya city not blocked at the business JW hotel. probably different sencors..
Glad I'm back in US after 100 days in the mainland in 2023. I can watch football 24/7 on NFL network !.

👋

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...cfd3e86a0f.jpg

Looks like with the visa-free policy implemented in December, a good start to inbound tourists from Europe : https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-01-0...DgKfAfC/p.html

214k citizens from the 6 visa-free countries entered in December 2023, more than half of which took advantage of the visa-free scheme. Let's hope the spring time brings even better results !

China is really doing an about face on visas and foreigners entering the country. Even pre-pandemic they were starting to be much more strict in regards to visas starting around 2017 it became much more of a process to get a visa, biometrics were implemented, etc. At that time people were willing to go through the process for business or tourism but there were complaints/grumblings.

Of course the pandemic came and China decided to completely shut itself off from the world for 3 years. Upon reopening they re-implemented the old policies and waited for the foreigners to come back. I guess it took about 11 months of waiting for them to realize very few people planned to visit China anymore. This, coupled with the poor economic situation here has led to the quickest about face in visa policy I’ve seen in my 20 plus years in China. It’s great for people who want to visit China, but I fear the damage may have been done already and these policies won’t have the impact the officials hope.

Yeah, it's quite amazing to see how they're suddenly so keen to get them foreigners back now.
Not so sure I agree with your conclusion though. Pretty sure tourism will rebound, and business people are also coming back from what I can tell.
Still need more flights though.

I predict the rebound (for both tourism and business) won't be nearly as strong as they're hoping for...news of us being locked in our houses for two months seemed to spread to other countries and had a profound impact on perceptions (e.g. China is no longer on my sister's family vacation list).