What are /r/China's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

According to the book, "They Never Said It", p. 64, (https://www.amazon.com/They-Never-Said-Misleading-Attributions/dp/0195064690) there is no evidence Lenin(or Stalin/Putin/Mao/Xi) has ever said this. [He] was supposed to have made his observation to one of his close associates, Grigori Zinoviev, not long after a meeting of the Politburo in the early 1920s, but there is no evidence that he ever did. Experts on the Soviet Union reject the rope quote as spurious

I have heard it is a pithy summing up of this quote from Lenin:

"They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide."

The quote (which I cannot authenticate) is claimed to have been written in a private letter not published until his collective works were published in a 45 volume edition in 1961.

Copied from another thread.

But some googling shows that this repeats itself amongst rightwing groups targeting any communist leader.

Not that I dont agree with the phrase

All these comments show a fundamental misunderstanding of what they were talking about.

Whenever they send you a custom fix, they ALWAYS tell you to NEVER post it online so that their fix will not be found out for some time.

Now, people defy their request and end up posting explicitly what Astrill asked them not to, ruining it for all of you Astrill users.

So yes, if you posted the solution publicly, you're an idiot and there really is no solution for that.

When I lived in China for 5 years, I always used Astrill. They always had a solution and always said to never post it publicly. It's really not that difficult

Hadn't seen that before, thanks for the link.

This also gives me a chance to recommend a great book, Travelers in the Third Reich.

It's a collection of accounts from foreign expats, tourists, workers, and students who were living in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich. As someone who was an expat in China for 7 years, I couldn't believe how many parallels there were with my first hand experience living during the rise of Xitler, and those who lived in Germany during Hitler's rise. Even back then they had their foreign shills, on the fencers, doubters, unwitting propagandists, and even some who saw the writing on the wall and left.

Just out of curiosity...

I see a lot of talk about Chinese people spending beyond their means on luxury purchases. I know from personal experience in China that it definitely happens. However, the Chinese household saving rate is high and getting higher. Any observations on how these seemingly opposed trends can coexist? By the statistics, Chinese are much more financially responsible than people in the US.

There was a book written on the topic ages ago called Fat China. The researchers highlighted back then by analyzing a ton of data that fatness is an EXTREMELY SERIOUS ISSUE due to factors that are common sense to all of us that have lived/are living in China.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Fat-China-Expanding-Waistlines-Changing/dp/0857289659

​

You can find the pdf online to read if for free if you want to. It is a really nice read even tho it gets a bit academic (well it is an academic book) from time to time.

<u>A Touch of Sin</u> (2013)

> - A kind of Chinese Pulp Fiction with a political pulse, it adds up to a powerful portrait of desperate individuals driven to extremes by official corruption and runaway commercial development.

> - It's a movie that's bitterly violent, both physically and emotionally, and a tremendous exploration of the have-nots in a society that is mostly known for its haves.

> - This masterwork is set in contemporary China, where the gulf between those able to maneuver (or manipulate) the country's economies of change and those left behind or defeated by the seismic shifts widens.

> - In two decades of moviemaking, China's Jia Zhangke has examined the damage of his country's explosive growth with a poetic sense of outrage. With his latest effort, the implied violence bubbles over.

Youtube: Trailer

The great firewall uses machine learning and deep packet inspection to discover VPN traffic. There is no way they were unaware of Astrill. The only reason it still worked as long as it did is that the government hasn't yet decided to block it. This message is thus both factually inaccurate and extremely unprofessional, and makes me question giving Astrill another dollar.

....please dont. If you want to get this tattooed.

&#x200B;

Get it temp-tattooed instead. There are many ways.

Notably just print it out on this thing and voila. Getting something political tattooed on your body just isn't a good idea especially if all you want is to show support for something for a day or two.

Here is 10 dollars in Bitcoin (BCH) to get you started.

You will need to withdraw the BCH to a wallet ( Wallet is a good one if you use Android, but there are many other options)

/u/chaintip

Good luck getting in touch with your folks and fuck censorship.

"Tiger and flies anti corruption campaign" that purged those standing in the way of power consolidation. Nabbing a few influential generals (some killed themselves) was probably the most important as controlling the military directly allows for making coups next to impossible.

Xi was originally put into power as a compromise between factions (they thought he was going to be a status quo leader) because one side wanted someone that was brought up in the Communist Youth League , and the other faction thought it was unwise to have 2 leaders in a row with this type of pedigree.

This is a very simple explanation as I don't feel like typing the book it would take to explain everything in minute detail, but at least it will give you something to start your search off.

https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2018/07/synopsis-rise-xi-jinping-china-global-power/

This book is an ok read on this:

https://www.amazon.ca/CEO-China-Rise-Xi-Jinping/dp/178453322X

Currently Using NordVPN on Linux, working so far although my connection reconnects each 10 min.

Still trying to understand if the problem is from the China Mobile Huawei Router Wifi if the Censorship increase.

In the Library when connected the same way to the same server there are no reconnections each 10 min, so I must say that is the Router, but I can't for certain until I dig a little deeper.

CDC says circumcision reduces chances of catching an STD

Having worked in Africa on HIV prevention I can tell you this is not true. In fact, if you overlay maps of circumcision rates and HIV infection rates on the continent, the correlation is uncanny.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/06/asia/south-china-sea-missiles-satellite-intl/index.html

they could be just moving them around

"黑周一" still turns up plenty of results on Baidu for me. And the results for "股灾" also don't seem particularly censored.

Censoring this would be pointless anyway; it's the lead story in all the state-owned media and too many people have been personally impacted.

damn. sorry. posted with wrong formatting and then deleted. Here it is again. From @Astrill on Twitter: 12 hours ago: We are experiencing technical issues with our API servers. We are investigating this. 11 hours ago: At the moment everything should work as normal. We were a target of a DDoS attack. We are working on measures to prevent this in the future. We apologize to all customers for this downtime. 3 hours ago: We are experiencing performance issues with our API system. The system is no longer able to serve all customers requests in real time. 3 hours ago: We ask customers to stop trying to connect or login at this time.Please wait an hour or so. The system can't handle it. 3 hours ago: In the coming weeks we will work on total redesign of our API which will be able to handle much more request. 3 hours ago: We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding as we work to improve the reliability of our systems.

I wouldn't be surprised if Duterte is in China's pocket one way or another. He's making crazy claims left and right, but actual policy seems to be doing absolutely nothing to stop China from occupying their territory. Confusing people with crazy claims and saying one thing today and the polar opposite tomorrow seems to be a favorite tactic to distract the people these days, btw. Trump for example does the same thing. And it seems to be working well.

I've posted in the past about how ExpressVPN were caught using purposefully very weak encryption, which would allow the Chinese government to view all their traffic. Article.

The owner has had telecoms interests in China, and the ExpressVPN HQ (Chengbao Ltd.) is in Hong Kong, although they deny this.

No one in China should be using ExpressVPN...

I call bullshit.

I've tried ExpressVPN, Astrill and a few free ones. Express always works well on my phone (iPhone), astrill never does anymore (it used to like a year ago).

Astrill works ok on my computer though.

Ran this by a Chinese colleague (software engineer).

She doesn't think this will concern our personal-home-use VPNs like Astrill or ExpressVPN. This announcement mostly concerns small businesses, and people looking to start a VPN business. You can't run your company over an unauthorized VPN (though if you rented an Amazon Web Services / AWS server to act as a dedicated VPN server just for yourself, you should still be fine).

If you're using a Chinese ISP, they are already fully aware of every time you use a VPN (including self-built ones like the AWS example) to access foreign websites. The VPNs work because ISPs just mostly don't care (unless of course you're 'disrupting the harmony').

The most reliable option is as always, a corporate/company/office VPN which has been authorized by the government. I don't know which workplaces offer that, outside of my own (I work for Microsoft).

Down in Beijing; was spotty yesterday, completely down today. I suspect we will have a difficult month ahead with the National Congress now in session.

From experience, we should probably lay low and wait patiently for a fix, as I'm sure Astrill is already aware of the problem.

Sadly, this strategy has "worked" since the Great Famine 1958-62 4mb epub, this book banned in China.

When I was preparing for my trip to China I found this article it's about VPN's that actually work in China, you should read it and choose between these VPN's I personally have chosen NordVPN. It actually worked pretty good, no issues with the speed drop and I accessed all the pages I wanted.

Security/Privacy is important. Usability is also important. Two suggestions from the privacy.io website: For group chat riot/matrix that has a nice UI similar to Slack (privacy remarks); for private messaging Signal. Even when the communication is encrypted, there is always metadata leaking or the server IP can be blocked, that would be a use-case to use Ricochet over the Tor network.

I've seen people i'm staying with in China using Cyberghost as an alternative to expressvpn. Pretty much any westerner with a laptop in China probably has some good vpn recommendations

They were fucking everywhere when I visited in May.

Also fun fact the world's largest flying aquatic insect is from Chengdu

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/22/world/asia/giant-insect-china/index.html?no-st=9999999999

NordVPN seems to have all the things you already mentioned. No logs - check, accepts crypto - check, reliable servers - check as long as you use the obfuscated servers. Price is debateable but it seems alright to me. If you need more options though you can look here

VyprVPN is down too. After trying to connect I tried just going on to reddit and Chrome said 'your internet access is blocked'. Seems my ISP had blocked my internet access for even trying to use a VPN. Scary shit. I heard Astril is working?

Sharing my personal experience:

• VPN for PC and macOS: ExpressVPN and Lantern. ExpressVPN lets you choose the location and works most of the time, but sometimes disconnects. Lantern does not let you choose your location, but is fast and reliable.
• VPN for iOS: ExpressVPN - same reason as above. I'm able to use all apps on my phone using a VPN except Line.
• PS4: You would be connected through Asia servers unless you connect directly with your friends, but your ping will be through the roof. If you do bring your PS4, there is a chance you will need to pay customs on it. I brought my PC over and they charged me 200 RMB for customs. I brought other electronics such as sound bars, keyboard, mice, PC hardware, etc. and they never charged me customs on those items.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

I'm finding that rebooting the router, using Ccleaner to clear all cookies, and opening a dos box to use the old "ipconfig /renew" seems to work best. Getting some really strange behaviour with Astrill though, as some servers are now 10X as fast as they've ever been while others I've been using for the past 6 months are completely fucked.

• Utilize China's great public transportation for getting around instead of taxi. If you are leaning towards taxi, get an uber or didi dache app. (Huge shoutout to China's railway system)

• Utilize China's love affair with mobile device connectivity. WeChat is especially convenient if you're in the city. Almost everything is connected with wechat

• City people are actually polite, despite what they say on this subreddit

• It gets cold in winter (I'm Californian, so not used to cold weather :P)

• Look for nongfu water (red bottlecap), one of the only safe water sources in mainland

• You should get a VPN to access Google, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc. I reccomend Private Internet Access

• Be sure to try out China's amazing streetfood!! But be prepared to have laduzi and a majority of the streetfood is made with gutteroil.

Not a personal attack or something, but are there actually people here who don't have a VPN? When Astrill went down last week I didn't do anything all day. I forgot how terrible the internet here is without a VPN.

Yep, same problem here.

On a separate note, Astrill has been dogshit lately. Slow as hell and constantly getting disconnected.

EDIT: There are conflicting reports about it being a server crash or under maintenance. Could be DDOS? Last time Astrill went down, it was less than 24 hours - time well tell.

EDIT 2: There's an Astrill alternatives thread you can refer/submit to in /r/shanghai -

China doesn't treat anyone fairly. Read China's Automobile Industry for examples of foreign car manufacturers attempting to do business in China - How Mercedes Benz balked at being paid in RMB instead of Yuan, Chinese factories melting down [higher quality] metal sent from abroad for assembly, and then using Chinese metal for parts that performed terribly, some chassis being made of wood, driving a car for several thousand miles and then attempting to sell it as new.

They are a large country that just seems to have their morals and ideology completely not in line with the rest of the world - Trump talks about America First - China has been China First since the beginning.

I'm so torn with Huawei phones. On paper, they're great value for money and have great specs, but I've had such bad luck with them. The screen of my last one (a P9) literally fell off after like a year or so. I mean, sure, I dropped it a few times, but come the fuck on. Got it replaced and then the already shit battery (it would die if I tried taking a photo if the battery was below 30%) got even worse, so I just said fuck it and bought a Samsung.

I also had camera problems with the one before that, to the point where doing things like scanning QR codes was impossible because the camera would just constantly try to focus.

I also couldn't use a VPN (well, at least Astrill) on either of the phones, which I've been told is specifically because it is a Huawei. It has been fine on my Samsung so far, and everything else has been fine too, so I'm probably just never gonna buy one again, and I'm definitely not gonna buy one while I'm living in China (what with VPNs being so unreliable with them).

Why aren't you using QQ international then? Also, do you really need mainland China server cuz it's not really efficient as you probably know VPN bans there. I would advise connecting to areas around such as Hong Kong. Most China limited content (never tried qq) I can access while using NordVPN when connected to servers in Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong or Japan.

But we shouldn't talk about DUMB CLUB!!! Because nobody in the Chinese censorship apparatus will ever have thought about getting an Astrill subscription to see how it works.... Oh no, they have too much moral probity and integrity to ever sully their hands by downloading foreign technology onto their iPhone.

But seriously, it's probably not their fault that Xi Jinping has developed full on megalomania.

"Sorry we called you dumb and blamed you for our failure to deliver the product you paid for but it was your fault so be smarter next time. Thanks and happy holidays!"

Best non-apology ever. Sorry Astrill but I'm still switching VPNs.

Sometimes I'm not so sure the government people involved with this stuff have any vision at all. According to Wikileaks cables Google was blocked after a Politburo politician Googled himself and found unfavourable commentaries. This mobile VPN blockade could be one step in a well-thought out plan (however misguided), but at the same time it could be they caught some or other undesirable who had Astrill installed on his mobile phone so they decided to block all of it.

The above commenter is not quite getting what it is they are trying to argue. They are comparing the US law concerning secret FISA warrants with what China does. The US law says that if a company is given a secret warrant that requests data the company must comply and may not reveal that they were given such a warrant. China's law is much broader, less transparent and coercive for many reasons.

On the US side this sort of warrant requires a number of checks and balances be passed before it can be issued. The agency requesting it must prove to a FISA court that the need for such data is sufficient to warrant just a serious request. Judges can and do refuse these all the time and without any fear of consequence (something that would not happen in China). Example, in 2017 1,372 requests were made and 948 of them were approved. Note that this data is publicly available to an extent (something China would not do) Some US companies have also developed the concept of a "warrant canary" (here is an example of one, scroll to the bottom) which is a public statement that says the company has not had any warrants issued to it. They will remove this statement if they have received such a warrant (legality of this is still under debate).

in a nutshell, the US can require a company to reveal information about users if a set of checks and balances are met to the satisfaction of the courts. Such requests have to meet a number of criteria and also offer some transparency in the process. In general, the US is a country that follows the rule of law relatively closely. China offers none of this (and is most definitely not a country that follows any real rule of law... the CCP can and will do whatever it likes and laws, while they exist, will be subverted for political needs all the way down to the lowest levels of government).

I highly recommend Astrill. I’ve used Express, PIA, and Nord, and they both frequently have issues. When they work, they work well, but occasionally there are issues and sometimes it has gone for a month or more at a time. I’ve had no such issues with Astrill.

Yeah, ExpressVPN is actually operating in SZ and I heard their office in HK is just a placeholder

Edit: I’m wrong, their HK office is genuine but the Pinyin name makes me consider...

further reading

I don't agree at all that you don't need to worry about encryption (e.g. sharing your passwords with the Chinese government), but I understand the point you are trying to make.

Isn't it just common sense to use a non-shady VPN company?

Note I would put Astrill in the shady list too. They're basically a carbon copy of Express VPN.

If used Astrill for years and last month when it was up for renewal I thought I’d try Nord as it was cheaper and claimed great support.

iPhone app won’t work in China. Need to download OpenVPN app & add in server connections. Even after that the connection wasn’t great. I gave up after 3 weeks, cancelled subscription & went back to Astrill as it just works.

I’ve been fiddling with VPNs recently (check my post history for details), and I have a colleague with some insight into the GFW, so here’s a few quick things I’ve learned to assuage your fears:

• The GFW is capable of detecting VPN usage. That’s it however, ~~anything further like Deep Packet Inspection requires specific targets and cannot be done on a massive scale.~~ unless you're using PPTP, it doesn't crack your VPN encryption to selectively block YouTube / Facebook / Google / etc.
• It is still not feasible to block all VPN usage outside of a whitelist for long periods of time (it can still be done on special occasions). It hurts businesses way too much.
• The VPN news lately should only concern VPN servers located in China; external access to a Chinese server. I have not seen any significant disruption in my VyprVPN subscription lately.
• If your VPN service is disrupted however, I speculate it’s mostly caused by IP address whack-a-mole between these services and the GFW (they download a list of IPs from the public service and ban them), or random interference to make it seem like the GFW is all powerful and watching.
• Knowing all this, I find it strange that these international organizations with custom VPNs have been disrupted. Perhaps their offline activities have drawn government attention, or they’re using Chinese servers, or they’re actually using a third party public VPN service maybe FT decided to make a story based on literally just 5 complaints? Either way, a custom built / personal VPN should be exempt from the IP address whack-a-mole.

Feel free to make corrections, as VPNs/Networking is still a relatively new area for me.

After years of intermittent performance with ExpressVPN and Lantern, I finally rented a Unix web server in Hong Kong, set up SSR it and use the ShadowsocksR windows client to connect in a direct proxy. The server runs on port 443, of course.

It's been absolutely magical until now.

Does this news mean I'm SOL?

I found the author's linkedin account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lan-yang-07b68414?trk=seokp-title_posts_secondary_cluster_res_author_name For someone who seems reasonably well educated, it's shocking that she produced an article so devoid of 逻辑.

I've been to Lijiang a couple of times but barely recognize it in your video. It's beautifully shot, but I don't think the foreigners in China interviews add that much to it. But the main issue I have with it is that it shows a barely visited, scenic version of old China which I feel couldn't be further from the reality observed by most visitors. It's insanely crowded, very touristy in all aspects, it can be loud, boisterous, people go there to drink and party with friends. It's one of, if not the top tourist hot spot in China (apart from the cities I assume), the video should better reflect that I think.

https://www.shutterstock.com/es/video/clip-11258204-yunnan-china---june-21-2015-

Like the buildings are described in the book, The World Without Us but with people still living in the buildings. The moisture and the roots will get into the cracks in the concrete and tear the building's apart. This will be a shitshow.

This Tucker fellow - whoever he is - periodically pops up and makes these claims about ExpressVPN, but he's never been able to document it or prove it. These claims are entirely on the say-so of a random person on Reddit. I've tried to check his claims, and do his work for him, but the closest I've come is that I was able to verify that ExpressVPN has some kind of presence in HK. Which, given the convenience of having a server farm for Mainland-based traffic, would sort of make sense. But there doesn't seem to be any evidence that this is their actual corporate HQ, or that they are owned by a HK or Chinese firm. According to the legal documents and filings I could see, they are officially owned and HQ'ed as a British Virgin Islands firm, subject ultimately to their law.

That being said, I was underwhelmed with ExpressVPN's service during the time I was customer. This was five years ago, so I don't know if they're better now. The closest I could come to an endorsement is to say that I thought they were just okay, so-so, horse-horse-tiger-tiger. But you can do better. I've been more satisfied with NordVPN, but I don't know the marketplace well enough to know if there aren't better alternatives.

"I think I should apply for ExpressVPN again anyway, just in case, following my gut feeling."

Not to be rude or anything, but you've clearly given this some thought and come to the correct conclusion. So,, what do you need us for?

I'm Shenzhen based, but I'd assume it'd be province-wide.

I dunno, I've lived here for nine years, and like other long timers on this sub been through a mountain of VPN crackdowns. None of them stick, we'll see if this one does.

I'm out of the province right now and can't say either way whether there's been any disruption of service. Everything's fine here in Yunnan. It seems like that letter is focused on cracking down on local VPN providers, but I dunno.

One thing I will say is that I've been a loyal Astrill customer for years. They're expensive, but their StealthVPN protocol is brilliant. Whenever the GFW cracks down on PTPP or OpenVPN protocols, Astrill keeps on trucking.

I lived in China 5 years, using Astrill and Witopia. They all get blocked because the government gets good at blocking it.

Don't complaining about Astrill, do you think they purposely let their VPN go down?

Hey, Tim:

1) My experience at Shanghai airport customs is that no1curr. I just went in under "nothing to declare" and didn't see another human being. Likewise, during the "ban", buying consoles here was still pretty normal. There's a lot of experienced folks who are also very good at cracking your console so it can play "backup copies", if you know what I mean.

2) Your console's power brick, it may have voltage converter built in. Check it out. The sockets I've seen mostly have two types of plugs. The Chinese three prong and the North American two-prong. Might need an adapter for the prongs for some electronics.

3) I use Astrill and it works 99% of the time. When it doesn't, I switch to a different server. Was pretty affordable.

4) Cost of living varies by city. Don't know how much Zhengzhou costs, but a good way to avoid spending too much money is to eat at cheaper Chinese places (not KFC/McD's) as often as you can; a lot of places will have picture menus. Get stuffed full of meaty food for 12 RMB. Get more cultural experience, too. You'll find lots of people who are more than willing to educate you on the finer points of using chopsticks and wanting to take pictures with you.

A vpn is a service that allows you to tap into their servers before browsing the web. It makes things anonymous for you by scrambling data. Everything related to Google is blocked here. Also any major news organization and in general, good shit.

Have her get Astrill. That's the go-to service. It cost $70 for a year but less for smaller amounts.

If the Internet on campus sucks then she can always go to a cafe like Starbucks. Either way the Internet is not free (in terms of browsing) like at home. You hit roadblocks all the time.

The same goes for her phone. Using an android phone without a vpn means no google play or maps.

Depending on where you are going/ if you are a good defensive driver, I wouldn't recommend renting a car when you come. My boyfriend's parents did when they came to Beijing last year and they realized they weren't very good at defensive driving/ didn't want to be stuck in traffic. The major cities in China all have great subway systems, as well as buses and taxis.

I would normally recommend taking trains or flying to other cities in China while you're here, but since it's nearly Spring Festival (you're talking about Spring Festival New Years, not New Years 2015 right?) train tickets and flights are extremely limited and expensive. Also keep in mind the highways are going to also have a lot of traffic as well. If you do decide the to rent a car, really read up on this! http://wikitravel.org/en/Driving_in_China

Also if you're looking for WIFI definitely get a China Mobile Sim card like mrmdc said, a lot of places require you to put in your China Mobile number.

Where are you headed while you're here?!

We're now at the point where this has nothing to do with China. Fucking search on the internet for it, it's an STD question.

Here, let me save you the literal 10 seconds in took for me to type "mycoplasma uu" into a search engine and click the first result. https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/mycoplasma-infections#2

Who the fuck uses ExpressVPN? They're reputation is more than questionable but still marketing the shit out of it.

And Xiaomi... I used one around 5 years ago. The OS was incomprehensible from a UX perspective. Then I tried one a year ago and the OS had gotten worse (the hardware was better, really good at a super price, the days of [whatever the phone brand was] are over) so went back to Huawei.

Airgap yourself. One international phone for international ecosystem, one domestic for domestic ecosystem, and one from your company coz personal and company communications should always be separated.

And screw Apple. Apple Tax. Apple Privacy.

Just send an email to a VPN providers customer support, they will be happy to help you.

Another poster supplied download links, I think it's save to download from there as well, you will probably not get the best price. But if you're only here for 2 weeks you can go with NordVPN or ExpressVPN, they offer 30 days free trial / money back guarantee and both should work fine. Basically you can get back your money if you cancel the service within 30 days.

If you write an email, also ask for the best offer, some offer big discounts on 2 or 3 year plans.

I've been having a lot of trouble with ExpressVPN as well. Their servers are slow, except for HK3 in the morning (don't even bother in the evening). One of the Taiwan servers sometimes works with reasonable speeds, but you're still not going to watch YouTube videos comfortably. I asked them about it and they only said "change the protocol" but we all know that TCP is even slower.

I switched to ExpressVPN to get around having to use the shitstorm that is Astrill but it seems that no VPN is willing to invest in their infrastructure when their customer base grows.

The thing I find stupid about don't talk about Dumb Club is that it is predicated on the belief that not one person in China's 3 million strong censorship apparatus doesn't have an Astrill account, for research purposes. They're probably reverse engineered the entire thing.

Been a loyal Astrill customer since 2011, recommended them countless times on this sub and offline.

I'll be finding a new VPN after my current year expires, suck a G8 Astrill, this is not the way to treat your customers.

Buy a cheap VPN like Astrill. No, you won't get in trouble for using it. Reddit is not blocked but imgur can be buggy. You can fix that by replacing "" in the link with "".

You won't have any problem torrenting. Sometimes you need to turn your VPN on to access torrenting sites but once you've got the download started, you can turn it back off again.

You should avoid drinking tap water. But there's no reason to avoid salads to my knowledge. A little salad washed in tap water isn't going to kill you.

They've actually been really good thus far. Never had a serious issue with connectivity until today. However, because it seems Astrill is acting up for a crapload of people in China today, their service staff is probably spread super thin.

Any country other than Germany apologize for their mistakes?

Take Winston Churchill, lots of Indians hate him and point the finger at him about the Bengali Famine where millions died.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Winston-Churchill-hated-in-India

But you won't see the UK apologize over it either. No country likes to admit mistakes.

The article starts off with a little more hyperbole than I generally like, but the later analysis is very informative. Charles de Trenck has a very respectable amount of knowledge and experience in Chinese business.

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/charles-de-trenck/8/491/673

China's "waste" has boosted growth in recent decades, making it in effect systemic debt. This debt is built into implied asset valuations, but it doesn't show up in published statistics. If a bridge is "booked" at $1b and only supports $500mm of use value, the other $500mm manifests itself as systemic debt that must be written off via a financial crisis or amortized over a long time period.

The amortization of systemic debt will serve as a multi-decade drag on China's growth rates that few analysts, even now, feel comfortable predicting.

Environmental damage acts similar to the bridge example above. When a firm pollutes, the cleanup costs of effectively pushed forward in time becoming a liability and long-term drag on growth. Failure to recognize cleanup costs in the current year boosts growth figures, but lowers them in the future. This is in toto a net loss for the economy.

So while I expect China to be around for another 8,888 years of history, the next several decades will prove a challenge.

> Has anyone tried Bitcoin?

I used to work for China's largest bitcoin exchange, OKcoin and can help you if you have any questions. I know quite a few people who use bitcoin to transfer money back home, it's almost certainly going to be the cheapest method (depending on where you are).

What you would want to do is transfer the CNY to okcoin.cn or btcchina.com, the deposits are generally credited in 30 minutes or less and are free. From there you'll buy the bitcoin, also free. Then you'll want to send the bitcoin to an exchange that you can sell the bitcoin on and wire it to your bank account. The largest exchange is Bitfinex, who I currently work for. You can sell the bitcoin there for 0.1% fee, and then wire the money to your bank (we are a USD exchange, but your bank will more than likely convert the USD to AUD) for a 0.1% fee. So in total it would cost you 0.2%, plus whatever the spread is for the exchange rate your bank uses.

If you have any questions let me know, I can help you with anything you need.

Except instead everyone gets mild PTSD.

Negative changes in thinking and mood

Symptoms of negative changes in thinking and mood may include:

Negative thoughts about yourself, other people or the world

Hopelessness about the future

Memory problems, including not remembering important aspects of the traumatic event

Difficulty maintaining close relationships

Feeling detached from family and friends

Lack of interest in activities you once enjoyed

Difficulty experiencing positive emotions

Feeling emotionally numb

Changes in physical and emotional reactions

Symptoms of changes in physical and emotional reactions (also called arousal symptoms) may include:

Being easily startled or frightened

Always being on guard for danger

Self-destructive behavior, such as drinking too much or driving too fast

Trouble sleeping

Trouble concentrating

Irritability, angry outbursts or aggressive behavior

Overwhelming guilt or shame

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967

We've known this for quite a while. They've been in Hong Kong all along.

There are a lot of shady VPNs out there, but what really soured me about ExpressVPN in particular is how they used to use their employees or paid shills to attempt viral marketing on Reddit. Of course, they've officially denied this.

They're just a dishonest company through and through. Their VPN service really sucks for China users, too, according to everyone I know who's used it.

I heard that China is blocking all the VPNs very successfully right now. I use NordVPN myself, it also stopped working a few days ago so I contacted their customer support. The solution was to connect to the newest servers which are not blocked yet and now it works well for me. Not sure about Express because I never tried them, but at least Nord works at the moment.

I'm also not a networking person, but I believe that at least for the disruptions on individual VPNs, it was from blocking foreign UDP traffic.

"It is still not feasible to block all VPN usage outside of a whitelist for long periods of time (it can still be done on special occasions). It hurts businesses way too much."

I do not think this is a safe thing to assume. The CCP has shown that it is willing to do things that, to foreign eyes, will hurt businesses... we shall see.

Funnily enough when I saw this thread ExpressVPN wasn't working, and I was afraid the final crackdown had happened... sigh.

Shouldn't be a problem. Have taken my computer in and out of China. Put motherboard, graphics card, harddisks etc in carry-on. Didn't have a problem. They took the graphics card out to check but other than that it was fine. When I first went to China I put everything in check-in - nothing stolen or damaged but carry-on better. Didn't take a power supply or monitor. Power supply should be fine, may as well buy a monitor in China. Pack everything well.

Shouldn't have a problem with downloading Steam games although occasionally mine went from downloading pretty fast to awfully slow. Maybe download games you are most likely to play before going.

Adaptors for plugs easily bought in China.

Astrill only VPN that worked well enough for me. Shadowsocks also worked well but speeds can be slow. Get VPN before going to China.

Enjoy your time there.

> Prepared and paid for ExpressVPN beforehand. Came here and got a 30M connection. Fast foward a month, it turned into absolute shit. No matter how to configure it, the speed is slow af. I basically have 0 productivity in front of the computer.

Yeah, Express worked really well last year, but has been targeted recently. Get a smaller no-name VPN and/or configure your own Shadowsocks server.

> Got pretty bad food poisoning a few weeks ago. FML

Been there. :(

> My next door neighbor is literally a creeper. Dug through my garbage and told me not to throw these nice vege away and just give them to her last time.

There will probably be at least five people that have dug through your trash by the time it reaches the landfill. Give her the veggies. She might help you out sometime, who knows.

> They washed the apartment building water tank once and for 3 days straight the water is yellow and rusty. Now I don't even dare to drink boiled water from tap.

Boiling water doesn't remove heavy metals, so I wouldn't suggest drinking boiled water (at home anyway) even if it looks clean. If you really want to be able to drink tap, you'll need to invest in a reverse osmosis filter. Otherwise, the 8 kuai 4L bottles of water will do. (Or a watercooler and jug deliveries from some dude on a scooter.)

>Everywhere I go people look at me funny. Everyone I talk to only wanted to speak to me to practise their english. >Will I ever make it through?

Yes, if you make some good friends. Say hello to the random laowai on the sidewalk if need be. Find the Facebook or WeChat group. Meet good people. Plan dinner parties and movie nights or whatever you would do back home. You're in control of the setting, so no Chinconveniences are necessary.

Because Astrill is a highly unprofessional organisation that never invested much in their server infrastructure nor did the encrypt their data well. This was one of the main reasons their speeds were always great because they had limited encryption.

This has now caught them out and like a child they are blaming others for their mistakes. Other companies OTHER than Astrill are completely fine......because rhe actually have OK encryption.

I recently experimented with 6 different VPN's over the past 4 months - mostly because I don't trust VPN review sites and was having the same questions you were. It's not a comprehensive list by any means (there are too many VPN companies to count), but it was a start.

These are all my personal opinions here, but they're all based on using each VPN for many months:

• Astril: I would avoid them. Customer service was terrible for me and people here on Reddit have often shared problems with their service.
• 12VPN: My personal favorite. They've been very reliable, they communicate well, and they have a good server list. They don't allow P2P downloading, FYI.
• Witopia: They've been around the longest and I've heard good & bad things. My experience was great, though, and their pricing was good. They've been around for a decade, so they're pretty reliable.
• SunVPN: Not my favorite. Pricing was high and the service was mediocre at best.
• ExpressVPN: They allow P2P downloading and they have some great apps designed for every device. Pricing is average.
• VPN4All: I'm ho-hum about this company. Not bad, not great. They do allow P2P but their different plans were confusing.

Almost every VPN provider you find will offer 6-month, discounted packages. Also, if you're interested, I've negotiated 10% discount codes with 12VPN and Witopia. I'm not trying to hawk any affiliate links here, just hoping to be helpful.

I use Astrill. It doesn't appear on your list, but I've never had a problem with it in China or any other country. And if the govt ever blocks a particular IP, it's very easy to switch which location the application routes through. the only downside is it doesn't work well on my tablet (samsung galaxy 2).

This is the first time I ever had a problem with Astrill. Been with them for over a year now, and usually runs very smoothly. At least Openweb still functions normally, so on the laptop it still works perfectly, but my Android tablet is out of luck right now.

What kind of info are you looking for specifically?

I've never been there but it is safe to guess that it will differ from the cities you mentioned in that it will be smaller, less scenic, less developed, dirtier, more chaotic, and noisier. But it will also be cheaper, and you will be more of a novelty as a foreigner. There will be a smaller foreign community there, but there should still be a couple of places where the expats hang out.

Looking at the Wikipedia page it looks like an interesting city though, and I'm sure you'll have a great year there. Once you arrive your coworkers will probably have better info on life in the city that can be found on the internet anyway, and you'll be a expert on the place yourself in no time.

Here's the Wikitravel page on it in case it didn't come up in your searches:

http://wikitravel.org/en/Xiangfan

>Oh god now I realize I have no idea why “a Chinese” is wrong but “an American” is OK

The sibilant final ending is the reason why you think it is incorrect.

However it is perfectly fine to say "a Chinese" or "a Japanese" or even "a Swiss." Here's a list of demonyms as taught by Cambridge if you need a source.

Use Firefox Portable off a USB drive and enable DNS over HTTPS (scroll to the how-to section) which should prevent DNS poisoning by your local ISP.

I run a private VPN server out of my home in California for when I travel. I'm currently in China and can confirm that since Thursday/Friday, I've been having intermittent issues across all devices. TGF is most likely doing deep packet inspection and dropping anything attempting to do VPN handshakes. It's unclear to me if they actually inspect everything or simply sample given that VPN comes back up at times. Anyways I don't think the fix is as simple as changing your DNS hostname to a static IP since that's what I already do and they flagged it. For me, current fix involves enabling obfsproxy on both server and client side (desktop only).

ps: Anyone looked into Wireguard? Pre 1.0 release but might be a decent option based on symptoms https://www.wireguard.com/

Wtf it is 4 week quarantine now? Two weeks sucked. A month sounds terrible.

You’ll probably have fun when you get out though. Internet restrictions are horrible though. I had success with Astrill.

Your VPN is only as good as your telecom provider. Every telecom in every city treats VPNs slightly differently, and your experience may be different to what others say.

That's why the VPN topic is always the same, never-ending thread about A who can use Astrill but B can't, and C is confused that Express doesn't work for them because it works for him.

Astrill, ExpressVPN and NordVPN are arguably the big three, and the place to start.

Try all three of them - make use of their free trials to see if your telecom plays nicely with them. Express and Nord seem to offer free trials. I don't remember if Astrill does or not. My info could be outdated.

Pick the one that works best for you. Different people rave about all three. For me? Astrill works best. Neither Express nor Nord work well on China Unicom 4G in my city, nor do they work well on China Telecom home internet in my city.

Astrill is pretty expensive compared to Express and Nord. Not much you can do about it however if it's the only one that works for you.

I would add a few visits to your stay in Beijing - or at least recommend some places : - the Temple of Heaven - the 789 Art District - pretty far from the inner center but it is quite nice to explore - Jinshan Park (it is a must) climb at the top of the hill and you will have a breathtaking view of the Forbidden City - You can also visit Beihai park which is next to the Forbidden City - Wangfujing - huge pedestrian street where there is the night market and street food (insects etc.) - Explore Hutongs (traditional homes) around the Drum Tower

Nightlife in Beijing is all around Nanlouguxiang and Salitun.

For VPN, Astrill and NordVPN should work. But there’s no guarantee in China!

Have fun there ! I have been to most of the places you’ll visit, China is just amazing.

The Great Firewall was updated sometime late December. See if Astrill has any announcements about fixes.

I'm using VyprVPN and had the same issues before the app was updated by the developers. Now it's slower but working most of the time.

Some gems in this one:

• "90% of the Internet is blocked"
• Mostly upset because they bought Express instead of Astrill
• Think a law ensuring native speakers are getting English teaching jobs is unfair.
• Less than a year in China for most of them and ~3 for the American, still didn't know what Chinese food isn't drenched in oil.
• Rented apartments with small kitchens, the fault of China somehow.
• Hyperbole about CCTV and facial recognition, as if they've actually done the research on the technology to be genuinely afraid of it.
• Lived in tier 3 city, but when they have a new business venture elsewhere, it's the fault of all of China and not their initial poor choices.

Quality boilerplate FYIL post.

I haven't had any problems at all with Astrill lately.

Everybody talks up Express as the better one, but the long-term limitation of servers you can connect to from within China really annoyed me.

Your 2010 screen issues sound pretty whack. But as far as the recent high cpu usage and dead kaspersky, this isn't really surprising and isn't really exclusive to Kaspersky. I'm wondering specifically if the fact that you're using Kaspersky and Express together may have caused this issue. I've used a ton of VPNs and found that quite often, AV programs can really fuck with them. Since modern AVs intercept and analyze internet traffic as a matter of course, they can interfere with VPN programs and in those cases, ridiculously high CPU usage is what I've observed as well, both from Torguard and Windscribe amongst others when paired with Bitdefender, Kaspersky, etc. The most infuriating part is that it's not consistent. Sometimes you'll be running smooth for a few weeks and then somehow your AV, VPN, and OS are having a fight to the death. Sometimes it's constant. I haven't done the research to know why, but I've seen it happen.

Thinking a little further to your earlier issue, I'm thinking... two people in the same area (right?) , both with dead screens and one with data loss... might be explained by a power surge? China's power can fluctuate like crazy.

Not trying to discredit your whole post, just saying both issues might be more easily explained other ways.

Eh I used ExpressVPN for looking at facebook, porn, youtube and playing videogames and it served it's purpose pretty well. Obviously it shouldn't be seen as a 'security tool'; if you actually want security get TOR.

Only gonna be a problem for people using commercial VPN services like Express or Astrill. Unapproved solutions like SSR or obfuscated openVPN that work now will likely be unaffected. Can't block what you can't detect, unless you block the whole internet.

• Plan to arrive 1 to 1.5 hours ahead of time at the train station. The ticket lines can be VERY long even in tier 2 & tier 3 cities. And even if you buy your ticket online with Alipay (see below), you still need to wait in line to show your passport to an agent to get your ticket printed.

• The censorship is bad, but Reddit is accessible. If you don't have a VPN, get one ASAP (ExpressVPN is the rated the best, but not cheap), or try this method I recently posted.

If you plan to stay for a while:

• Install Alipay on your phone, then get a Chinese friend or family member to send you some digital cash or fund it with your newly opened Chinese bank account. This simplifies your life in China by 90%. With it, you can buy train tickets online and get the best departure times, shop for the cheapest hotels, pay for your food at nearly any restaurant, buy subway tickets in tier 1 & 2 cities, use the rental bikes along the streets in some cities, and call for DiDi taxis anywhere you happen to be. You can also get takeout food delivered to your apartment or hotel 24hrs/day

I've bought a yearly sub for ExpressVPN... and boy was it a mistake. the connection kept dropping, very slow and takes ages to load up...
To be fair - tech support is awesome. But it really depends on a lot of factors.
Then again I used ExpressVPN back home and it worked great... as did PrivateInternetAccess (another VPN services).

Netflix acquires licenses for media based on the region. For example, a show might be available in the US but not the UK. Since Netflix doesn't operate in China, they don't have the license to distribute media over there. As u/Meganstefanie said, use a VPN and connect to a server from your country to watch "your" shows. We use Astrill and it works just fine 85% of the time.

> What's the best thing to do to make sure she has reliable internet that isn't dial up speed?

Not come to China.

But seriously, get a VPN. I used StrongVPN and it was good, with excellent customer support. As you've noticed from the comments, speeds in China are all over the place. Mine varies depending on the time of day, and friends with the same service I have have different speeds. It's fucking stupid.

I've been testing multiple VPNs over the past few months so I have about 5 of them installed on my computer right now. This past month I have seen a noticeable difference in how difficult it has been to connect on all of them.

As often is the case with China, there is a cyclical tightening and releasing of VPNs. For some odd reason, right now it seems to be very tight. In other words, I wouldn't blame VyprVPN, Pandapow or whatever.

Great Firewall is China-wide. Beijing is no exception. Not sure where you heard that Facebook isn't blocked there.

Not sure which is the best VPN for Mac, but I use Astrill on PC and it works well for me. Apparently not everybody is /r/china is satisfied with it but I haven't had any problems.

WTF sensationalist title! Nowhere in the article itself does it state that they literally teach Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Yeah driving in China is messed up, and yeah they are teaching people to "fight back" while driving. But that has nothing to do with The Art of War. I hate misinformation.

Astrill is notoriously more expensive than most VPNs and their customer service can seem arsey at times (like not being able to download the app without a sub or no free trials etc), but in my experience, they earned that arrogance. They have been the most reliable easily-accessible VPN in my 4 years in China.

You do have to claim it, but I think that there is a lower limit (not sure on that). Anyways, here it is on eHow. A lot of people who live here long-term don't bother filing anymore, but it will hurt you with social security, applying for citizenship for a spouse, as well as in other areas. For citizenship, correct me if I'm remembering this incorrectly guys, but I believe that you need tax records from the previous five years. I have known guys who hadn't done their taxes, and then had to backfile when they tried to get citizenship for their wives. I'm not filing anymore because I'm too lazy and have absolutely no plans for going back. I know it's not the most prudent move, but like I said, I'm lazy about it. I suggest that you still file.

I've just recently finished reading up Master Bitcoin. The designed of the currency is meant to be a payment system that is not answerable to any central authority. When you use it as that, even this 20% crash would only wipe out your daily earnings as you are meant to transfer out of bitcoin instead of hoarding it. People who "invest" in Bitcoin should have their head checked out. The base unit of Bitcoin is a Santoshi, and 1 bitcoin == 100 million Santoshis. Basically 1 bitcoin is infinitely divisible as far as the software is concerned. So no matter how high bitcoin becomes, people can always trade a fraction of that.

FYI, to anybody intersted in the original paper. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Abstract

Prior research on international education suggests that host country students’ lack of interest in talking to international students is a major cause of international student segregation. Some Chinese international students, however, complain that although host students want to talk with them about China, they often exhibit misinformed, prejudiced and offensive views of Chinese current events. This has occasionally led to tensions between Chinese international students and host communities. Drawing on interviews and open-ended surveys of Chinese students at an American university, this study shows a variety of positive and negative cross-national interactions and uses social identity theory to explain why tensions may arise. Negative reactions to hearing criticism of one’s home country are often motivated by concerns for status, loyalty, harmony, or utilitarian politics. However, fostering a common group identity and the perception of mutual benevolence among students from different countries can promote positive cross-national interaction. Furthermore, international students may learn more about democracy and human rights through observing the host society rather than directly discussing these topics with host country members.

tl;dr Chinese guy grows up patriotic, goes to America, gets butthurt, becomes even more patriotic.

Take it or leave it but the humanities majors Chinese ladies I've had the pleasure of talking to were the most enlightened people I've met, being able to see the pros and cons of both political systems and they have a really nice attitude towards everything.

Hey, if you trust me, and if it's paywalled, download here instead:

https://mega.nz/#!N4oECKhQ!vAS3MjxVMGMXbPkyLzVZv3wxguKgzrUf_rvnTH1gDR8