My grandpa is sick with covid so I will fly tomorrow to see him asap, I wonder which VPN work the best in Beijing? It used to be express VPN but I heard it’s not as good as before. I only need it for a few weeks
Also is American credit card widely accepted in Beijing? Especially fast food and fine dining restaurants
Express sucks, as do most big name ones you’ve probably heard of. Astrill is the one most people recommend and works best, but there’s others you can find and set up yourself using v2ray, not so user-friendly though
I don’t think most will accept it, using Wechat/Alipay is basically a necessity for getting around
Your credit card won’t work in many places but the vast majority of atms especially icbc, bank of china anc ccb accept visa and Mastercard for cash withdrawal. Cash isn’t as widely used in China now but ask and places will accommodate you.
For having a digital payment method without a Chinese bank card, get yourself set up on Alipay tourpass. It’s designed for tourists. Download and set up before you leave as it doesn’t work if you set up your tourpass within China. You can also directly add a foreigner bank card to alipay but not all merchants accept foreign payments through alipay. Visa and mastercard aren’t widely accepted only Unionpay.
I use my foreign Visa credit card all the time to purchase plane tickets, pay for hotels, and some other online purchases in China but rarely use it for other purposes.
My Canadian bank card allows me to withdraw money from most ATMs in China with a $5 withdrawal fee.
Do not bring US dollars - they are a hassle to change into RMB.
I have used Astrill for 10 years and have tried other cheaper ones but they usually are not comparable in terms of reliability or speed.
Express has never been good. They’re honestly all bad, except the one that rhymes with ass drill (devs ask that it shouldn’t be named).
Set up Alipay/WeChat before coming here, bring bank cards (for ATMs and big purchases) and cash (RMB). Haven’t got cash? Go to an ATM and pay the fees or cash in Traveller’s Cheques.
Cash should get accepted everywhere, but it helps to have someone send you money through Alipay or WeChat -whatever works nowadays- in exchange for some cash. Some shady guys might even exchange dollars/euros for RMB directly, but the exchange rate won’t be good and I honestly haven’t seen one of these guys in over 5 years.
China isn’t very tourist friendly as they don’t want you to be able to move and live independently. You’re supposed to stick to tour guides and expensive hotels. At least you might be able to get a Didi account again… maybe, if you’re lucky.
Prepare as much as possible before you come and expect to have at least one situation where you’ll be royally fucked.
Do u have a raspi or other Linux machine? Set up your own! Fairly quick and easy instructions doable in a couple of hours. And of course free forever.
i use windscribe, it has 15gb/month for free
I’m leaving for Beijing in a few days so can only repeat what I’ve heard. Astrill is usually the default answer. I have seen reviews that TunnelBear works well though.
If you can’t use WeChat and don’t have a Chinese credit card, I’m pretty sure you can upload a non-Chinese credit card into AliPay and use that, just requires you upload some passport info. Might be some extra transaction fee somewhere there but good for an emergency like this
Hope your grandfather pulls through
Besides Astrill and Tunnelbear, any other recommendations? I find myself in a similar situation, and want to use Gmail, hotmail, Google photos etc. while in Beijing
The best I’m aware of is: https://glados.rocks
using vpn 360, better than express
you’ll need cash or cash equivalents in your wechat/alipay wallet if you are buying a bottle of water or a quick meal.
Yes forget about your credit card or even cash.
If you have a chinese ID then use Alipay/Wepay… if you dont, get a chinese phone number and tegister with Alipay, send yourself some money there and you re good to go.
Can I withdraw RMB from ATM with Visa debit card? Coming from Europe?
Teach me how, I use Ubuntu, and I am so disappointed that i tried several vpns but could not install them as they had to download some packages over the net
Depends on your DC/CC provider. Call them.
With my Amazon Visa and Barclays Visa Credit Cards it’s no issue.
? We definitely have to download packages over internet, and also i mean if the person has a linux machine at home outside of China, or a reserved instance through a hosting platform like AWS. OpenVPN should be simple on ubuntu, make sure your home router has port forwarding and you get a dynamic dns registered such as duckdns (free). Can start here: How to install and setup the OpenVPN server on Ubuntu/Debian? - GeeksforGeeks
Thank you. I will check.
In this case I am out of luck, coz I’m in China already