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

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I spend equal time between Sydney, Taipei and Beijing.

Personally I would say go for it but Beijing is not for everyone. What I would suggest you do is visit for a week or so; stay near where you will be living to get a feel of the city.

The main differences naturally are the people, climate, pollution and culture.

The people I find in Beijing speak worse English but are less shy and will often start conversations with you randomly. When I don't have a driver I'll take the subway, people are usually super friendly and will start conversations far more often than observed in Taipei - particularly women (if you're white). The population of Beijing is bigger than Taiwan and you'll notice; people will push, spit and generally drive insanely. Beijing is nothing if not interesting.

The food is in my opinion better in Taiwan and usually of a higher standard; as is the service. In Beijing you do get a good mixture of other cultures particularly Mongolian, Tibetan if you look around. Price of things are cheaper and generally more convenient than Taipei given worker wage difference.

Climate - Taipei is super warm and humid; Beijing actually has more diverse seasons - a cold winter and a beautiful spring season.

Pollution. The pollution is bad, you get used to it and adapt - not much more to say. Get a gym membership (if you exercise outside usually), mask, water filter and air monitor.

In regards to culture, you can't express some views politically and business is conducted is a rather different fashion from Taipei. I'm not sure of the business you're in but the business drinking / hiring women culture is stronger in the north to close some deals. In regards to media, as expected get a VPN (Astrill or Express) and you'll have access to most content.

Any questions shoot me a PM (if you don't have wechat - get wechat as Line doesn't work here).

TL:DR Do it, Beijing is the wild west. Go for it.

I used ExpressVPN for two years with no issues until last month. Things started getting so bad that I switched to Astrill. It's faster to connect, seems reliable, and I can actually connect to more Netflix regions than with Express.

Astrill has always been the best for me and I've been here close to five years. The amount of times I've been at a friend's houses streaming stuff and them having to reconnect to Express VPN time and time again due to constant disconnections is ridiculous. But some still swear by it.

I would suggest downloading trials if you can, maybe different areas of Beijing work differently for different vpns? But I would never change from astrill.

Astrill works fine. Contact their customer support and they can help you switch over from PPTP to IPSec for your mobile devices, which works perfectly. One of the best things about Astrill is their spot on customer service; use it whenever you have a problem.

Hi. My Chinese friend uses NordVPN and it works well even after the recent crackdown of VPNs or so I heard. I think you could try contacting customer support or Nord directly for the links or just try searching for it.

Here's a nice article about VPNs that still work in China if you are interested.

Don't know about the phone though, sorry. Maybe you'll need a new one :/

My picks:

Hai di lao - chain hot pot place known for their excellent service. Runs you about $30 USD for a meal if you go lavish. Best service I've gotten anywhere. There's one in Zhongguancun. This is probably what your boss was talking about. If you order noodles, they'll spin them in front of you.

Xia diao li tang - pear-themed restaurant in Zhongguancun. I normally wouldn't suggest seafood in Beijing, but this place has a fried shrimp + pear combo which is amazing. Make sure to get their pear tea as well. Excellent experience overall. Link

Yaoji Chaogan shop - baozi place famous for having been the favorite dining location of some president, I think? Their baozi are delicious, regardless. Picture of exterior. It's right by the drum tower and is often packed, so consider getting your baozi to go.

Beijing style yogurt - In the same area as the above location is a popular hutong (S. Luogu alley) which has an array of small street eats like stinky tofu, churros, fried chicken, etc. Other than the stinky tofu, the special treat here is the beijing-style yogurt. Give that a try if you have a chance.

Fu Niu Tang - New spicy noodle restaurant located in SoHo. Great if you like beef noodles, better if you like a spicy challenge. They have a 35 kuai spicy noodle challenge - you get 10 minutes to eat a small bowl of noodles, and if you finish, you get a shirt + 10% lifetime discount. Not 100% sure how their food tastes beyond the spicy noodle bowl, to be honest, since that's all I tried (and had the stomach for) there.

The Last days of old Beijing by Michael Meyer.

Non Fiction piece about the Hutongs south of Tianamen (Dashilar) area prior to the Olympics in 2008. Goes a lot into the ominous nature of 拆 and its meaning for the future inhabitants. I was in Beijing in 2014-2015 and it was crazy to read as it mirrored my own experience in the Gulou area as they destroyed all that made the Gulou area unique into a sterile "modern" environment. Goes into discussing this balance of self-preservation of history and modernization.

Highly recommend.

EDIT: Meyer not Meyers

Only if you want to use reddit, youtube, google, facebook, etc. If you do, usually the common VPN services such as Astrill, Nord, Express, etc. are, minimally, one month subscriptions. They are simple to use, however--just install the program (download the installer for the system you're using, default installation, and use), connect to their servers, and use the internet as usual. These services have usually made the usage smooth enough and have walkthroughs for usage too.

Keep in mind, this only applies if you are looking for the online services that you might not have access to while in China. If you're looking into online security or other things such as that, then the answer is a lot more complex.

You could try out NordVPN, it's fairly cheap and definitely easy to use, although it might be a bit tricky with China. They do have special obfuscated servers which can be turned on in the settings menu, those usually work when the regular servers are blocked.

If you got a weak stomach stay away from street food! Since you’re staying short term I’d bring some common medicines (you can find western style drugstore here though)

Download Chinese apps — western social media (Facebook WhatsApp Instagram Twitter) are all blocked, same as google and its services. You’ll need a VPN to access them. Search on this subreddit people that live there right now can recommend you services with more up to date info. I used to pay for ExpressVPN. Other than that, download WeChat, Baidu apps, Pleco (must have Chinese dictionary) etc. Also there’s tons of posts here asking for app recommendations

I use NordVPN myself. I know that most VPNs are blocked in China so I'm really glad this one works well. I can't compare it to Expres or Astrill but Nord gives me good speed and they are based in Panama so thats more reassuring than VPNs from US. I read this article about what VPN work in China when I was deciding maybe it will help you

Start by reading the sidebar, as some of your questions are answered there.

1. Best way to improve quickly is (one-to-one) lessons with a decent tutor.

2. Search here and /r/china for numerous food posts. There's a list of restaurants in the wiki.

3. Most new people seem to enjoy those around Gongti. Get a subways card/taxi and you won't have to limit yourself to Chaoyang.

4. Everything except PureVPN seems to be working at the moment. Plenty will do monthly subscriptions for <$10.

5. Sidebar

6. Talk to people here - maybe edit in some details about yourself. Also, get a wechat account to keep in touch.

7. Baiju?

8. Tinder is available.

9. Sidebar

Have fun.

Guys, I got this one.

Use Astrill.

I've used Cisco, Freegate, and private VPN's from home. Cisco: no support, I had trouble installing on my Windows 7, crappy user interface, can't chose proxy location. Freegate and private VPN's, it's free and unreliable.

Astrill is great because it has live support with people who actually answer questions, easy to use interface, low price ($30 for 3months or $40 for 6months), and you can chose proxies. I torrent, watch a shit ton of porn (stuff which should be illegal - think old school motherless), and play LoL on the TW server with no issues. Astrill doesn't care and I've been using for 2 years. Astill also has a convenient speed test for ping and dl speed so you can chose which proxy you want to use. I use Hong Kong 5, Los Angles 4, and TW5. My connection speed is 24Mb/s and I am able to torrent at 3MB/s. I heard VPN's are supposed to cap at 1.5 or 2.5MB/s but I have not had that issue.

The only downside is Tor does not run. At least not when I tried about 2 months ago.

It's late, i'm rambling. Let me know if you decide to get Astrill so I can send you an invite. There's no benefit for you, but I get 1 month extra. And i'll answer and questions you have b/c you get me 1 month extra - we straight.

Yes, Suning are an official Amazon partner for selling these (source). The other reason I know is because I bought mine in the Suning branch that's on the junction of XiDaWang Lu and GuangQu Lu. ;-)

Astrill has been great for years, it has many different countries to choose from and a stealth mode. You can also use it on i believe around 4-6 devices at the same time depending on the package you purchase.

I have express at the moment, but I have used Astrill before. I 100% advise you to get Astrill, this is mainly because the servers rarely get blocked, whereas with Express its almost all the time. Or alternatively you could download a free vpn on your phone something like: Turbo VPN or Master VPN, it will be slower but the servers never get blocked.

I'm glad you had success with VyprVPN! We have teams dedicated to getting us back up if China attempts to block. (Should you encounter an error while utilizing in China, try logging out and back in to make sure all the updates apply.)

Been with StrongVPN for a couple of years using Tunnelblick on Mac. Killer speeds (on a 30 meg line, getting 17 meg/min with the VPN) with the right amount of tweaking (UDP over port 443) and a free "scramble" mode. Very good tech support, and all UK TV services work no problem.

8 Bit is a great place to start. After that there's loads of stuff to do In Gulou. Syndicate are doing their party at Dada, always goes off. It's drum and bass and gets pretty wild.

This is their podcast for tonight's party:
https://www.mixcloud.com/Kay_C/syndicate-podcast-feb-15/?fb_ref=promote_banner

If you do want, there are some "Ice Parks" in Beijing. Houhai is frozen over as well, you can do ice skating on there, that's roughly same area as 8bit.

I've used StrongVPN, NordVPN, Astrill and ExpressVPN, Over the long term, one is just as good or a bad as they other - depending on the ISP, the current mood of the government, and what time of year it is. The VPN provider will never be able to help you get around more aggressive blocking by the GFW, and few give refunds after more than a month.

Astrill have a StealthVPN option that appears to be more reliable in making connections, ExpressVPN had many connection issues with their official client (I was with them up to July this year) but worked perfectly when I used their OpenVPN certificates and Tunnelblick. Both providers had pretty comparable speeds on my fibre connection from China Unicom. I got much better performance from both on my Android phone than on my iPhone.

Bear in mind that streaming services are actively blacklisting IP addresses from VPNs, so you might get patchy Netflix/Hulu/BBC access. Youtube, Dailymotion, et al, which are blocked in the mainland aren't affected.

The choice of ISP will have a bigger effect on your VPN experience than the VPN itself. If you install from a smaller (crappier) ISP like Great Wall or Broad Netcom, you'll have more issues than if you get a fibre optic connection from China Telecom or Unicom. Obviously you won't have a choice if you're living on campus or your company is providing accommodation.

Technical support in my experience on both Express and Astrill has been limited to "try a different protocol, try a different server, clear your DNS cache". There's not much they can do if the govt decide to block access, in other words. As others have pointed out, avoid free VPNs like the proverbial.

I've been in Beijing for 6 months now and Astrill VPN is what I've come to use. Express VPN hasn't seemed as reliable.

Taobao or Xianyu (second hand platform) for bikes or anything for that matter. Depends how much you want to spend and if you want/need gears. If your into sport riding, touring/cross riding, lots of people in our WeChat riders group vouch for Boskey bikes. I also liked the look of Blacksnow bikes (similar to Surly).

If it’s your first time in China I strongly suggest you to use a VPN service. Even if you don’t care about social media like Instagram Facebook or even messaging apps like WhatsApp, you probably will need to use Gmail or even Google to look for things to do while you’re there etc. Shit even if you want to Reddit.

I just got back from there and tried both Astrill and Express VPN and worked pretty ok, had to connect to Japan servers. Astrill in general seemed to connect and browse faster and would stay on until you manually turned off (uses lot of battery though). Express would drop the connection from time to time.

They both can offer you a trial so since you’re going for just a week then there’s no harm in trying them. Astrill gives you 7-days from when you register so your best bet would be to try to set it up on your last day before flying out). ExpressVPN has a 30day trial but you have to put your CC info etc. but you can just cancel the subscription before the trial is over. I did this an hour ago

Installing them is pretty straightforward after you sign up on their website. They’ll ask you to download their app and instructions will be there. When you want to access google etc on China just open the app and turn VPN on. Easy

Astrill and ExpressVPN should both have trials. You can try them out before you settle on one or both. Express worked fairly well for me on mobile and most wifi/wifi hotspots I used, but that was a couple of months ago now.

I had ExpressVPN for the first year and a half here. It was relatively reliable the first year, but the last 6 months it was basically useless. I switched to Astrill recently, and I couldn't be happier. Astrill is far-and-away the better product.

It actually takes some pretty sophisticated tech to be able to "sniff out" a VPN signal from the receiving end. My guess is that they just keep a running tally of suspicious IPs (say a whole bunch of different users with the same IP or something), and block you if you log in from one.

I use Astrill, and have had very little trouble with Netflix or Hulu. Sometimes Netflix will throw up an error message telling me to turn off my proxy, but I just switch to a different server and reload. Astrill support has always been quick to respond with whatever servers are working at the moment, as well as any settings that might help. I've gotten nothing yet from Hulu.

You're absolutely overthinking it.

Maybe get Pleco, but def. install a VPN like ExpressVPN or NordVPN and use a free trial while there. A VPN is always nice to have but in China it's your only chance to access Gmail for example. Airport has got free WiFi, but you might need WeChat for it to work.

Otherwise, airport staff can speak English and transfers shouldn't be reason to worry about a lack of Chinese.

Make sure you fill out your transfer card correctly and tell everyone you meet: Transfer, Osaka. You'll be fine :)

ExpressVPN/NordVPN work in China and have good rates, not sure about other providers. ExpressVPN App is even downloadable over there.

Since Google and everything related to it is blocked in China, there's no Gmail etc. without it. You won't need it, though. At least not for transferring. And it's useless if you can't access airport WiFi, anyway.

Also, some kind advice for your first flight:

• Get a window seat.
• If you don't care about the view, sit above the wing (helps with turbulence in my opinion).
• Plan sleeping time so you don't suffer much from jetlag. Good luck, ha.
• Get earplugs and a neck pillow.
• Have your own earphones with a 3,5mm jack for better movie audio.
• Plan your in-flight meals. A fruit platter is better than a 3rd meal... trust me.
• Tomato juice is great.
• Remember that lavatories close around 30-45 min. before landing, same goes for Taxi and lift-off.
• Be polite.

The best depends on your needs, every VPN is usually good for different reasons. You need to look at those which are working in China. I think those are Surfshark VPN, Express VPN, Astrill, NordVPN, and Vypr. I use Surfshark myself because I connect to many devices with all my family and they let me do this. So you should google all of these and just see which fits your needs.

With Express there are a few things to consider.

1. The servers you use matter. It will always depend firstly on this.

2. Clear your cache, repair the VPN, and restart everything. Once you connect to a server, wait about 30 seconds or so to connect to Netflix again.

3. Try using a different browser just to make sure that's not the issue. I had to switch from Firefox to Chrome for a little while, and I never figured out why. It corrected after about 2 weeks.

4. When these options fail, reinstall the VPN completely. This is a little annoying, so just make sure you have your registration code saved to easily reenter it.

I have used ExpressVPN in Beijing for 2 years, and I watch Netflix all the time for US, Tokyo, Hong Kong (great for mandarin subs for the gf), Australia, and Canada.

If you're still having issues after all that, contact them and make sure it's not an issue in their end. It's working for me just fine, though.

Been using Astrill for 8 years. Other than a few minor bumps in the road during Congress, it's been consistent. Also have expressVPN but it's been shit here in BJ for past 2 weeks. Don't worry about ban. No enforcement of policy if it even exists. Download app and one month service BEFORE you arrive. Wouldn't trust most free ones to perform a good trip

Currently no VPN ban but it has been less reliable compared to a few months ago. I recommend VyprVPN or ExpressVPN as both are quick and have great support for China

You can see speed tests and reviews here.

For cellular plan I recommend China Unicom as the plans are good in terms of reliability and price.

I suppose you could sign up for one of the paid VPNs like ExpressVPN or something and just cancel it as soon as you leave. Some of those VPNs are being targeted as well, so again, no promise that you'd have a 100 percent stable connection. You'd probably still end up paying for the first full month of service but that would be less than $10, maybe around 6 or 7 bucks I guess. Depends on how much its worth to you.

Rent in Beijing is very expensive. For locals, if you want to share an apartment which is not far away from city center with others (normally 2-3 people), it costs AT LEAST 3500 yuan per month. If you want to live okay or better, that will cost more. Sharing an apartment with locals is not a good choice for foreigners (language, living habits, contract problems), but living in an apartment dedicated to foreigners cost much more. Local food does not cost much. You have many choices from 20 to 200 yuan per person. But if you eat only organic food, that'll be more expensive than any place of the world. VPN is very important. Google, Twitter, the services you can image is blocked in China. I use FlyVPN. You can check this: Whether you should do English teaching jobs depends on whether you need more money. 12000 yuan is okay for people with local living habits, but I don't know whether it's okay for you. Pay for non-native speaker is not very high, 'cause in Beijing there are many foreigners from English speaking countries. I once met an English teacher from India. Although she's not an English native speaker but she holds a degree in English teaching as a foreign language.

Have been using Astrill for about 3 years and never had a problem with it. I do a lot of gaming and torrent downloads and even though sometimes it has issues but they get fixed very fast. I think the longest it was off was 2 days during the Communist Party Congress couple of years ago. It was a major crackdown on VPN providers though and it took other companies weeks to recover. Also, their Android app freezes occasionally. Not sure about the iOS one.

I also heard good feedbacks about VyprVpn but it is a bit out of my price range.

If you're only going to be using a VPN for browsing webpages, which it sounds like you are, I recommend Astrill. If you need a VPN to filter all of your traffic (like programs, games, etc.), I recommed VyperVPN. Astrill is more well-known though, so expect more problems when the government cracks down on it.

Astrill works fine on PC and Macs. Also works fine on Android phones. Some people (not all) have trouble making it work on iPhone. Still probably your best option though.

You can get a free iPhone one as a backup.

I've used GoAgent, StrongVPN, and Astrill. So far Astrill is my favorite, you can even pay more so you can connect up to 5 devices at a time. StrongVPN was reliable, but just extremely slow. GoAgent was the least reliable but that's what happens when you work with a free VPN.

1. Wudaokou. Check out Lush, Helen's, etc there's a ton. Relax, you'll figure it out.
2. Easy. Cheap. Don't bother with a biweekly service.
3. I'd go out to Sanlitun, it's around 400-500 kuai I suppose. (My friends got some, I had a dress made for that price.)
4. Haha no idea.
5. Qinghua baby.
6. Oh man. Find the Yunnan place near the 13 club. It's delicious. Also hot pot is the best. There are so many places and it's really a beijing thing.
7. Astrill is probably the best. I used another one and it was just slow as fuck, switched over to Astrill and it was better. Keep in mind the internet is shit in China sometimes. It goes in and out.
8. Look for a language partner. ;)
9. Air is awful. Running outside was compared to smoking 100 cigarettes or what not. And Chinese gyms are a whole new experience. T_T
10. China is a blast. You'll figure it out. Take a train somewhere new. Experience a Chinese tour once, then never do it again.

My wife and I went to Li Qun for duck while in Beijing in January. Definitely has a hole in the wall feel, but not a hole in the wall price. Delicious meal though. One of our favorite meals in China. Try to call ahead or go for lunch to avoid a long wait.

PS: Make sure you have them cook the rest of the duck for you after they carve it. Lots of delicious meat left. Yum!!

I haven't checked it out myself, but I have read and heard really good things about OMESCAPE. It's essentially a real-life escape game :)

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g294212-d6884943-Reviews-OMESCAPE_Taiyanggong-Beijing.html

I know nothing beats playing on an actual Gameboy but if you have a mac I'd highly recommend OpenEmu. You can also easily download roms for most of the Pokemon games at coolrom.

Chaoyang is a huge area on the east side, covering roughly a third of Beijing's inner districts. It's often more expensive than the areas on the west side, where the university campuses tend to be.

I'd suggest looking at the map of Beijing districts, to get an understanding of the areas involved, then trawl through the ads in The Beijinger classifieds. Be wary though - a quick search on /r/China will bring up numerous tales of difficult rental agents.

Places in renovated Hutongs or overlooking parks tend to sell for tens of millions of RMB so are somewhat out of your price range.

Do yourself a favor and Don't go to Badaling. Go to Mutianyu instead.

At the Dongzhimen bus station take a bus to Huairou (916 if I recall correctly). From there you can get a taxi to the great wall. together with another friend we paid 150 for the taxi, but it should be cheaper if you bargain better than us. There is another bus that works from April-October that gets you directly to Mutianyu for less that 20 RMB on the outer part of the Dongzhimen station.

Here and here you can find more info.

Links in Amazon:

Spicy Omelet

https://www.amazon.cn/dp/B002JPQUV2/ref=cngwdyfloorv2_recs_0?pf_rd_p=7149a3bb-2ee6-4f99-92eb-d87852365f8c&amp;pf_rd_s=desktop-2&amp;pf_rd_t=36701&amp;pf_rd_i=desktop&amp;pf_rd_m=A1AJ19PSB66TGU&amp;pf_rd_r=68W77610KGD0GS6PYPCN&amp;pf_rd_r=68W77610K...

Lasagna

https://www.amazon.cn/gp/product/B01MXO8YTO/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_cp_5?ie=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=B01MXO8YTO&amp;pd_rd_r=0DPY7K2CEQ60ZES9R7SW&amp;pd_rd_w=MXsKG&amp;pd_rd_wg=5bPDa&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=0DPY7K2CEQ60ZES9R7SW

I am looking for items like these , but the prices in Amazon are very high as they are shipped from United States nd I am not sure if it can reach me in time

Any info can help me a lot..Thanks

Currently at Beida and will be there next year as well (say hi when you arrive). Here's my take:

- Canteen food is between 5- 25 kuai per meal depending on where you go and what you eat. It's super cheap. I pay about a minimum of 300 kuai just on my campus card every month.

- wifi costs about 10 kuai a month. If that's something you want to factor in.

- Check c-trip for costs of travel. It's very very useful.

- Buy Astrill. I bought it and it's been the best investment. Nord and Express have been up and down over the last year but Astrill has never let me down.

- China may change its laws about foreign graduates being able to get a work visa after graduating from a Chinese uni. From what I see, you getting a job depends on your skills, Chinese language levels, your field of expertise etc. But there is a lot of opportunity depending on how you want to take advantage of it.

- Get an air purifier. Get a humidifier. Don't skimp on them. Buy masks.

Join a club at Beida. It'll help you meet people and go do things. The Western Students Union is one but the hiking club, the calligraphy club, etc are all great. Check out events by embassies. There's so much that's happening in Beijing every single day. Follow WeChat accounts of the Beijinger and other events based places.

Happy to answer particular questions.

I personally have no experience with them, but am totally satisfied with Astrill, been using it for 2 years so far, a hundred bucks a year for 5 devices is not a bad price. Also consider sharing it with someone if you live alone, why not split the price and save a little money.

Just buy the iPhone in US, it’s not gonna be any cheaper here

No, chinese SIM will not prevent you from using VPN (ExpressVPN and Astrill are paid vpns that usually work w streaming, connecting might be slow but is fast after that) but make sure you have US Apple ID to download them (Side note, if your US SIM has a unlimited roaming plan, it’s like a built in vpn)

I’m not sure if you can add a VPN to Apple TV, but you could always set the vpn onto your wifi

ExpressVPN, StrongVPN, Nord and Astrill are all reliable names to subscribe to. In my 10 years of living in Beijing, I've come to realise that there is no "best VPN for China", the level of service that you get from the VPN will be dependent on your choice of ISP. If you go with Great Wall or Broad Netcom, then expect crappy speeds outside the China Intranet and a crappy VPN experience.

I found express to be the most highly recommended. It's alright when it works. But it's been down during political shit or shotty on the reg. Customer service is good though.

Astrill was up and working pretty well during this week when my express was out.

Pandapow seemed to me to be about the same as express. It's really hard to say though.

China just sucks.

Express VPN user here.

It's been pretty shit for the past few months, and seems to be the first to get taken down in crackdowns.

Lots of failed connections, taking forever to connect, trying different servers... argh. Sometimes it can be annoyingly slow.

I hear Astrill is better, but my subscription has quite a while left.

You mean do I use a secondary VPN in case ExpressVPN doesn’t work?

Yes. However, none of the free VPN’s work very well so I pay for two. Make sure in selecting your second VPN that it can be used in China, some cannot, also make sure there’s a mobile version of it too, that’s very important.

Create an account before you go. Astrill and EXPRESSvpn works fine in China. Not all VPNs are working. Install the app from app store / play store and login with your username and password. Connect / disconnect in the app. It's not difficult if you set it up before coming here.

I just came back from China and I realised Google Maps is not up to date and the GPS doesnt quite get my location right. It was a huge pain for me as well cause I bookmarked all my locations on Google maps.

I ended up downloading 高德地圖. From my experience, it’s best to check with a local about the locations first before heading over. Alot of the places I wanted to go were demolished and Google maps didnt reflect that. Not talking about the main attractions, more like small eateries and spots.

Also, I used SuperVPN. I would say it worked 70% of the time. Sometimes it’s quite slow. If you’re still planning to use Google maps, it would be best if you get a phone card that allows for that from your home country.

Netflix? Ehh... good luck, mate.

It's easiest to set up Netflix on a PC through ExpressVPN or NordVPN (maybe Astrill as well), as the Xbox needs VPN on the router level afaik. Mind you, Netflix is incredibly difficult to get to work because of their stupid region-blocking. Best get in touch with the providers and see which one works best for you.

If you should need a referral code, tell me. With a bit of luck you might still be able to get a good black Friday deal, too.

You have been amazing Thank you so much! * I went with NordVPN over PIA it seemed a bit better from what you said and what others have reviewed * I was able to snag some good seats that put me and my wife together in those weird 2 seaters - we are prepared for the noise and smells from the lavatories lol (pray for me) * I bought a 3.5m Y splitter * likewise for the power * Tomato juice and extra vitamin C are on the menu * I plan on staying up during most of the flight (taking CA818 4pm Dulles to 6pm Bejing) and crashing once we get to the airport Again dude thank you!!!!

The stability of VPNs does shift especially when the blocks get more intense but these are pretty stable - Surfshark, Lantern, NordVPN, Astrill and Vypr. Express is also often used. You can read about these more here I suggest getting 2, to have one as a back up. Not sure how long will you be in China but most offer 30 day refunds.

• Get a reliable VPN that works but before going there (Surfshark, Astrill, Nord, Vypr, there are a few others that you can check out)
• Street food. But be mindful, check how it's prepared, you don't want food poisoning
• Jing A for beer
• If you like Korean food, there are tons of good Korean restaurants

I misread Changping as Changying (where I'm located) and I had kinda related issues in the past. It may be the same situation. I was lucky enough to be in a new building which had decent optic fiber cabling. The two main ISPs here are China Telecom and also that Broad Netcom. Broad Netcom seem to advertise 200M speeds but this is clearly distributed among everybody in the complex as it's slow as shit when we got their tech guys to run a speed test in front of me. In the end we went with China Telecom on a 100M and when I run a test at . This is probably not any help to you as it's not Changping related but definitely avoid any ISP that shares the bandwidth around. Get them to come over and plug in their modems and do a speed test in front of you for sure.

I had a similar issue recently when I got my US phone stolen—I acquired an Oppo one out of desperation, but just resold it because it was essentially unusable for me to Google-navigate anywhere as a traveller. I ended up shelling out some cash for a new iPhone (and a new SIM card plan, which is fortunately pretty cheap) so I could access the App Store and ExpressVPN again.

However, you should be able to download Wechat on mobile without a VPN. Are you using an Apple computer?

Just google whatever app you need and add "apk" to the end of it and download it (apkPure is a good website for finding them). Then transfer that file onto your phone using a USB cable and you can install any android app this way (you may need to enable "installation from unknown sources" in developer options.

I've used Astrill VPN here for 8 years and never skipped a beat on all devices with good speed.

If you head to the App Store on your phone, there are some great free vpn apps that are working in china right now. TunnelBear, Betternet, Hexatech and VPNmaster all work and can be downloaded while in China.

He should get a VPN. He'd be able to open emails from a g-mail address that sent to him, but he wouldn't be able to log into his gmail to get his e-mail if he doesn't have a VPN. I suggest ExpressVPN but you'll find as many suggestions as you do people.

What kind of things would you want to include in care packages? There isn't much you can't get here, depending on how much effort you want to put into it. Clothing and hobby accessories/paraphernalia are the big things that could be tricky. He's going to be able to get spices and seasonings, peanut butter and sriracha, English language books and music, and loads of other things. Now - if you live in an area with distinct regional cuisines or snacks, or he can't live without XYZ toothpaste or deodorant, he may want to bring those/have you send them.

The only things we have sent from abroad are hobbyist stuff (I knit, and prefer nicer yarn than I can buy here) and maple syrup (USPS flat rate packages, $89 US for up to 20lbs of stuff that can fit into the biggest box) and whatever the in-laws/my mother want to send. It usually ends up being a bunch of stuff for our kids that we could have purchased here anyway.

Can you get the .ovpn files from ExpressVPN? There's OpenVPN Connect that you can get from the iTunes Store that works better than most branded clients. The protocols that are supported natively on iPhone don't work on my gf's phone, but that's a Chinese handset, which dosen't seem to support IKE2 or L2TP/IPSec.

You'd really need something that has a lot of encryption and something that lets you change ports other than using 1194 for UDP.

I like ExpressVPN a lot; worked quite reliably the past 10 months I’ve been here. Yes it is paid, but haven’t had much issue and they actually do have live chat support which can be nice.

If you go with that, I wouldn’t always trust the Smart Location feature to pick the best server location though. I’d keep a few in your favorites to try: Seattle, LA, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are all frequent choices for me depending on how quickly they connect at the particular moment.

Don't stay in wangfujing. The area kinda sucks.

Buy a VPN before you go if you want internet access!!! Then install all the apps on the phone and computer before entering the Mainland! I recommend Astrill.

If I were you, I'd stay in the Sanlitun or Gulou area (hutongs). Gulou is where the drum tower is, and near line 5 and 6. Sanlitun is the foreigner area, with lots of restaurants and modern shopping area. Some hotels around there. Basically to get anywhere in BJ, budget 50-70 min, unless it's a short distance in a taxi. Have everywhere you want written down on a sheet of paper in Chinese. Get a sim card at the airport. Google maps won't work in China. But you can use Apple maps or Baidu.

You'll want to see the Forbidden city. When you exit the forbidden city from the north, go into Jingshang park and climb to the top. It give a great view, especially during sunset.

Great Wall and Summer Palace are the other must sees. If you want to avoid the bus tourist trip (with usual shopping stop), you can hire a driver using the classified ads in to take you to the great wall.

798 Art District is cool to walk around in, but only during business hours as the galleries close after 6 or so.

If you want somewhere that doesn't get a lot of tourists and is pretty awesome - goto the Chinese Aviation Musuem north of the city. You basically goto the end of line 5, then take a bus. You can climb all over the planes and do whatever you want. It's huge and in the side of a mountain.

1. the Global Village School in Wudaokou is good and cheaper than other options I've found, just down the road from Tsinghua.

3- A paid (not free) VPN service is a must. Astrill is popular but often has problems. I'll send you a couple others by PM. I wouldn't worry about movies on your personal computer.

If you need help feel free to pm me. Good luck and enjoy your time!

American_Yangguizi is right here. Astrill sent me a notice saying that due to an increase in cracking down on VPN service, their response might be a bit slower than usual. I haven't noticed a difference and I can still stream Netflix.

I'm also in Beijing.

Internet in Beijing is fucking awful, which is obviously difficult for Astrill. That said, there has been a noticeable drop in speed and infuriating unreliability with Astrill in the last few months.

If you want a laugh, or a nervous breakdown, try talking to their phenomenally bad "customer service" department. Seriously, it's like satire...

As long as the S4 isn't locked to Verizon you'll be fine to change the simcards...i'd go for China Unicom when you come here.

Yes you can use a vpn on your phone, most of us out here use Astrill although there are other services. You can set it up when you get here, although sometimes the website is extremely slow so you might want to buy it and set it up before you arrive.

Chinese plugs are set up to work with Euro style plugs as well as US/Can and Chinese fittings so coming from the US you should be fine."

Pollution is a bit of a mixed bag, some days good, some bad. You'll find it gets worse as we move into winter

Yeah there are avocados

Not sure about money transfers, hopefully someone else can pitch in.

Hope that helps!

So far Vypr VPN is okay, but is only slightly more reliable than Astrill, it seems. It does provide me with faster/more stable gaming though. With websites, it's about the same as Astrill. They are both relatively reliable and quick.

if you wish to surf regular internet websites, such as faceb0ok and y0utube, in china its blocked. if you get yourself a 'VPN' connection, you can bypass the censor and access to the regular internet. to get one, you go on a VPN provider website (such as StrongVPN, vyprVPN, etc), and you buy a month or year access for ~5-15$ per month. they give you a username and password, and usually a software. et voila. when you log-in, you can now go on the regular internet

To be honest, if you're happy to pay $8/mo or something for a service like Astrill, it's probably much easier and will work on your mobile devices too. You can't (easily) SSH proxy all your traffic on a mobile device. In fact, a VPS will probably cost you almost the same amount (or the saving is so small).

But if you do want to do it that way, it's literally as easy as:

1) Get a VPS in a non-restricted area (eg a server in the USA, HK, etc)

2) Open a terminal on Mac Os X

3) sudo ssh -p 22 -D 99 -f -C -q -N

These are your settings to log in to the VPS server via SSH.

4) Set your SOCKS proxy on your computer to use localhost:99 as the proxy server.

What this is doing is saying that all traffic from your computer will go to the VPS first, then the VPS fetches the website for you, and sends the data back to your computer. The traffic will be encrypted.

I guess some benefits are that your SSH tunnel is highly unliked to be blocked, whereas a VPN service can much more easily be blocked by the Chinese govt.

hi, China's startup scene is pretty vibrate. I'm not sure if you have a city in mind, but within each, you should be able to find a pretty active community. For beijing, there is The Lean Startup Group, which holds regular activities. Check out other Meetup groups, including ones for coders. Influence Matters publishes a list of events for the week. There are a ton of wechat groups as well. For news, techinasia and technode are nice to get a sense of what's happening here. This should be a good start for you.

I love this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xinlukou.metroman&amp;hl=en

It also has other major cities too (Shanghai, Xian, etc) if you're planning on traveling.

EDIT: Also, just FYI Google Maps actually works pretty well in Beijing using GPS. I found it helpful when I was walking around a neighborhood I didn't know that well.

I'm going there for work, transferring from my US company to their Chinese subsidiary.

Your neighborhood is in the northwest part of the city near the big universities. My office is kinda close in Haidian, Zhongguancun. You're not really near the middle of the city but you will be sitting right on subway line 13, surrounded by college students.

Doesn't sound like the same place since it's certainly not in a posh looking mall, but if you're ever in the Wudaokou area in Haidian district, around Tsinghua, there's a place called... SOHU Tiger? I forget what the name is in Chinese, but it looks like this is what I'm remembering:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g294212-d4366582-Reviews-SUHU_Vegetarian_Tiger-Beijing.html

Good vegetarian food, and yes, lots of awesome fake meat.

You won't have any problems with affording food at a Chinese university, I've been lecturing at CUFE and Renmin since 2010, they've had cheap restaurants, the student cafeterias are especially cheap. You'll get a student ID card and use that like a prepaid card, 100rmb should last a good couple of weeks, maybe even three. You could eat pretty well for less than in most convenience stores, be prepared to sharpen your elbows and do battle with the other million students trying to get breakfast or lunch all at the same time tho, it can get pretty Darwinian at times. Restaurants around the university will cater to the student demographic too.

If you have allergies, espeically to peanut oil or MSG, then you might want to consider cooking or getting sushi or something like that. Wudaokou is pretty close on the subway and you can get Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Pizza, whatever there.

I think there's some issue with Beijing universties websites right now, we get a WebVPN login when we try to access the RUC portal, they haven't been able to take appointments for the writing center yet and we're a month into the semester.

VPN sure if that's allowed here, but I've used StrongVPN, ExpressVPN and Astrill. Express and Astrill seems the best of the bunch, I paid extra for a private IP to get around the BBC's geoblocking, but VPN performance largley depends on your ISP, some smaller (crappier) companies will lease bandwidth from the telco but they will cap the bandwidth and the service will be significantly poorer (see _folks_optical_cable_isp_options/, you dont' have much choice if you're living in student accomodation.

Temple is great for any meal (menus here), but I think their brunch is the best value; ~$65 USD per person for a delicious 8-course meal. Definitely make a reservation in advance and ask for a window seat for an incredible dining experience.

I'm fairly confident Temple takes international credit cards. More and more places in Beijing accept international cards than 4 years ago.

I really liked Peking Yard. It's a bit more in the flashpacker/slightly overpriced realm but the wifi is consistent, the breakfast is good, and the bathrooms are clean. Plus there's a metro station right next to it.

The beiing backpacker hostel has a tour that leaves every morning at around 7 or 8 am that will take you on a 6km hike through a section of the wild wall, they also have a tour that camps out on a section of the wild wall.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g294212-d674488-Reviews-Beijing_Downtown_Backpacker_Hostel-Beijing.html

You can use Uber in China. The "People's Uber" option doesn't typically speak English, but the other categories do. It's not much different in price than a taxi.

I know someone at Double Happiness Courtyard Hotel which is #5 on TripAdvisor now, so here's my contractual plug. It's traditional and very friendly. Mostly foreign families stay there. The location is a hutong (traditional alleyway) in the middle of the city, a few minutes from a subway station. It's similar in location and style to Red Wall Garden Hotel, which is also excellent.

My take on BJ New World Hotel is that it's an awesome hotel, but it's modern and not in the most interesting area. Chongwenmen is relatively centrally located, but it's full of modern malls. If you're looking for a luxury hotel, it's a good choice, but Red Wall and the hotel I mentioned above are in hutongs and older buildings, so they are more traditional and will give you more of a feeling of staying somewhere unique.

I wouldn't worry about transportation from any of these places. They are central enough, and you can always take the subway to places like the Summer Palace that are further away. Houhai is easy to get to as well (now that there's a subway there, Shichahai on Line 8).

If you are heading into the general Houhai area, I'd suggest walking to Nanluoguxiang too.

Kayak WAS good, Until few month when they don't show the cheapest flights (why?). Google Flight show good results, they're not affiiliate to anyone (yet). And their website is fucking amazing and fast

Try couchsurfing.com for free places to stay. Also check out my Airbnb listing and stay in our guest bedroom in Shuangjing, Chaoyang (seven subway stops from Sanyuanqiao). We'd be happy to host you! When are you coming?

朝阳实验小学:http://58.116.149.14/cyxx_cms/jsp/index.jsp name in Chinese i think if u mean this one and here is the map https://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%E6%9C%9D%E9%98%B3%E5%AE%9E%E9%AA%8C%E5%B0%8F%E5%AD%A6&amp;rsv_spt=1&amp;issp=1&amp;f=8&amp;rsv_bp=0&amp;rsv_idx=2&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;tn=baiduhome_pg&amp;rsv_enter=1&amp;rsv_n=2&amp;rsv_sug3=1.

i think there is only one chaoyan experimental primary school in Beijing so im 80% sure is this one.(:

I get the best speeds with NordVPN

I'm also an EVPN user in BJ, last year it was a nightmare. At the end of my subscription they offered me 6 extra months for free as a compensation and I accepted. In 2021 the service was working pretty well and I decided to renew it because *why not* *I was lazy to decide which one*. Right now it's been unstable for 4-5 days already. I have friends using Astrill, Nord and some other VPNs. Nobody is 100% happy with it (but 100% of us were mad at Express last year, even when this year was OK). I suggest you to try locations that are not recommended for Users in China but still available in the recommended options (right now UK Wembley and SG Jurong are working in my devices).

No clue about the massage, but welcome to the city!

It all comes down to the compound you're living in. Our current one (built in 2000, Chaoyang district) only has China Unicom, and you get max. 50Mbps.

Online gaming on foreign servers (at least on my Xbox, haven't tried anything else) is terrible, even with the Chinese "gaming boost" services. They do help reduce (not eliminate) packet loss, but ping is still not good enough.

However, our current connection is a huge improvement over the one from our last two apartments. Open NAT, Astrill and torrents work fine.

I can't remember, I've been stuck in the UK since January! I think it's Unicom. I've been with them in two apartments - one in Haidian and one in Changping and had zero problems using StrongVPN, Nord and Astrill.

The first time I moved to Changping my gf just signed us up with the local reseller, Broad Netcom, and we got crappy connections and a 5MB/sec limit, ok if you're only interested in the China intranet, but useless for everything outside. The whole city has been on fibre for years, so it shouldn't be problem. If you don't already have it, get that fibre connection, and go from there. We just use the standard supplied router and have awesome broadband.

Using 1Gbps Up/Down China mobile link, so get fiber, for VPN get some nice router DD-WRT capable with (minimum dual core@1+Ghz CPU) ea LinkSys WRT1200A (avoid WRT 1900/3200), install Astrill on it use UDP protocol & you are free to go. Hitting 200-300 Mbps over VPN.

Hope you got a good contract. I use surfshark on my phone a laptop. But I've also used Astrill which worked most of the time. Get the VPNs before you arrive.

Get a good housing agent, they will usually show you the shit places first.

I'm stuck in the US waiting. Good luck, this sucks.

Download a VPN. Everyone has one, even tons of (usually English speaking) Chinese. You will use it every single. I use it every day on multiple devices and never once have I had a hiccup.

Nord and Express are most popular, but Astrill VPN is best. It has never failed me, and I know that both Nord and Express have gone down multiple times (less than 3) causing friends to be without it for days.

And to put into perspective how reliant those friends are, they all bought other VPNs to pad the few days... Every foreigner uses it daily, idk what half the people in this thread are talking about not using for weeks! Preposterous

There is also no law can not be found on the app store.

I'm still able to connect with both express and Nord. They've been under more pressure in the last month and slowed down some, but they're working for me 90% of the time.
Astrill is what all the chinese people I know use.

In years past, I used Astrill and it worked.

When I visited last year, I used my existing Nord subscription and had no problems at all using it. I also purchased a 1-month Express subscription to use as a backup. Tested it and it worked here in the US, but I couldn't get it working well when in China.

Used to vouch for expressvpn but I’ve returned to China yearly in the recent past and Express has been very unstable. Sometimes takes a long time to connect to something. Did not have problems with Astrill on the other hand, however I think it’s more expensive? Dont remember tbh

I used ExpressVPN for a year and I dislike the fact that you have to update it every week or so, otherwise it becomes obsolete. This sucks if you, for whatever reason, stop using for a while like going abroad.

I returned to using Astrill for the past 5 months and I’m very happy with it, even if it’s a little bit more expensive than others. I’m using the basic plan as well, while connecting to their Asian servers.

If you have a desktop or laptop enabled the Astrill VPN Sharing option and change the settings on the Apple TV. Works perfectly on my Apple TV 3 back in BJ, streams YouTube and Sky News with no problems. Obviously you need Astrill VPN and their app installed on your laptop/desktop.

I don't have an apple TV, so I can't speak to the specifics of that, but I have a Chromecast. Changing the DNS didn't work, I ended up having to install Astrill onto my router to get the Chromecast to connect. Astrill sells routers for this purpose for around $100 USD IIRC but if you're comfortable messing finding DD-WRT compatible routers on Taobao and installing the Astrill applet yourself you can get it set up for super cheap.

Good luck!

Buy it through amazon, dont send it yourself unless it is n95

The surgical mask are made in china

https://www.amazon.com/Face-Mask-Pack-of-50/dp/B086KMYNSS/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&amp;keywords=mask&amp;qid=1592807231&amp;s=industrial&amp;sr=1-3

Are you trying to connect to the US? I have Astrill and I’ve had a hell of a time trying to connect to US servers lately. I think they’re intentionally making it hard for Westerners to connect to those. Don’t know where Nord has servers exactly but maybe try connecting to Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, or somewhere in Asia without Internet restrictions.

I had express for 1, switched to Astrill, on my 3rd year now. So much better +1

Recently the Astrill is affected just like a lot of other VPNs, because of the 70th national celebration events. I have limited server options for a few weeks now but mostly it is still great, while a lot other VPNs are completed off. IT'S THE BEST. I can still enjoy my 1080p Youtube or other video streams on all my desktops, laptops and mobile devices.

I would suggest to try out Astrill for a month or two, and make your final decision on November when the turbulence is settled.