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

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This is very shortsighted.

It's a yearly cycle.
Sometime early June the air gets better because the wind turns from northerly winds to southerly winds.
Thanks to this we get beautiful clean air, because it's coming from the sea.
In September it turns again.

However even in those 2-3 months of nice air, the wind can turn again if a typhoon is nearby, because it rotates counter clockwise and brings winds from the north as long as it's east of Shenzhen.
This is happening right now. Look out of the window tomorrow morning, you'll see it.

The average air quality in China is improving, but it takes time. I looked at the averages of the measurements from the American Embassy in Beijing before, see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5smkl7/reports_reveal_beijing_to_cut_coal_use_by_30_in/ddhcnij/

In the meantime look at this website, you can see the wind directions very nicely here. As long as the wind comes from the north, it's going to be polluted. If it's from the south, it's going to be nice:
https://www.windy.com/?22.299,114.829,7

Tomorrow after the typhoon has passed we'll have very clean air again.

ExpressVPN worked when I got here few months back. But Youtube/Facebook can be painfully slow for larger content.

Once you have your apartment and internet connection, I would suggest checking which VPS provider you get good connection to. Then setting up your own Shadowsocks server with them. Usually both cheaper and much, much faster.

It seems that you might be getting throttled. I recommend trying to side-load the apk file into Kodi. I have NordVPN so I've connected to obfuscated servers via TCP and have side-loaded the Nord apk file and it seems to not cause any issues

I'd love to know this as well. Netflix and Hulu have both cracked down which has made it virtually impossible to stream. I've tried all the VPNs that actively fight against them blocking the IPs and their speed is significantly lower and the amount of buffering is not worth it. The downside, all shadowsocks configurations I've tried are no longer working as of last month.

The reason I am saying this, if you were to use NordVPN or Astrill, you could set the VPN at your router and then get a Chromecast and you'd be fully set up.

I'm currently in this same battle towards getting a reliable way of watching tv shows. I've been successful finding most TV shows via , and YouTube is okay when I want to watch the news in the morning while I drink coffee, but I always have to connect my computer or phone directly to the TV.

I've seen some advertisements on for satellite TV that gives all the popular channels, but streaming shows have spoiled me to be able to binge watch on the weekends or watch shows when I want to watch.

The greatest option possible is to take the type of smart tv device you'd like to use and figure out a way to get it working in China. If your isp works well with the big name VPNs, then that should be your solution, if however, you're stuck with China Telecom like I am, you're probably in the same boat.

If you or anyone figures this out, I'm all ears, but in the meantime, I'll keep searching.

Astrill seems to be the most popular among my coworkers. It's been pretty reliable for me as well. I used to use Freegate (cause it's free) but it's connection isn't that stable, and I was lucky to get more than a page deep on facebook.

6ixty 8ight is all over. Here are all the locations in Shenzhen according to Baidu Maps, but actually I think there are many more not shown because they are expanding fast--I've been to one or two not shown here, not fakes. Just check all the malls around you, I wouldn't be surprised if there's one somewhere. Hong Kong also has a few--Causeway Bay, for one.

Since you're only here for 4 nights I'd say go all out and stay at the St. Regis near grand theater station. It'll definitely be comfortable and grand theater is very well connected to the rest of the city. It also borders a very large and very nice park.

This is located at the same place as the St. Regis but at a fraction of the cost. It is what I would go with.

It really depends on where you need to be for business and the types of things you want to see while here but you'll be really happy with the Grand Theater area. Plenty of shopping and plenty of connectedness while offering you a comfortable environment that is more up to western standards.

There's AirBnB for a temporary spot, obviously this is catered to foreigners, so pricing is at foreigner levels. As for dealing with realtors, my experience is that they're basically posted around the complexes. Usually downstairs from the complexes they deal with and surrounding areas. That or you go straight to the complex management and work with them that way.

I personally had a very pleasant experience with Astrill, not so much with Express VPN. Though Astrill seems to be one of the rather expensive ones out there.

You might have to tweak the settings a little. Usually the StealthVPN setting was the only one working for me but yet very reliable. Also you might have to change ports etc. They have a competent support that will walk you through that stuff if something doesn't work. Anyway, make sure to set it up BEFORE you get there. It can be really hard to download the VPN client or reach the support without a VPN. Especially if you have an Android phone, since the play store is not available in China.

I heard of SheKou international school is decent, you may also explore the options of sending your kids to HK schools but traveling back and forward could be a lot of hassles.

For VPN, I recommend NordVPN

Metroman is an incredibly useful app as Shenzhen's metro system is fast, clean, cheap, efficient, and has great coverage of the city.

Seems like Fuyong is in Bao'an district near the airport, so you probably want to stay anywhere along Line 11's western arm, or one of the offshoots from Qianhaiwan station - Shekou is chock full of expats (highest expat density anywhere in Shenzhen afaik), but more expensive than Bao'an.

Houhai seems like a fine spot to start looking, but I'd include many stops west of there in my search parameters.

I'm not sure that Winscribe works in China, maybe you should do more research on it. I heard that Astrill, ExpressVPN, and NordVPN works there, so maybe better look into them. I used Nord myself when I was there, all I just needed to do is to connect to obfuscated servers and it worked fine.

I want to know this too. I finally got Pokemon Go working on my Samsung S3 (4.4), using Astrill connected to Sydney. I had to sideload the APK (aka download it outside of Google Play)

I caught my starter pokemon but I'm assuming there isn't much else in SZ because the game loads points of interest from player added sites in another game, Ingress. And I assume Ingress players don't live in SZ. Anyone have any luck beyond catching the starter pokemon?

Edit: Pokemon Go does not really work in HK. This is because they want to slowly roll it out and already have enough server issues with the amount of players they have. I have a friend in HK who sometimes gets a pokestop or pokemon showing, but really it's not worth the server issues.

I have had no problems on android. It seems to stay connected with no problems at all.

Most of the time though I'm connected to my wifi and I have my router set up to run the VPN so all of my devices that connect to wifi have a VPN connection automatically without having to run a client.

I've been getting amazing speeds on 12vpn for the past 2 days or so. They must have reset something on their end that helped evade the great firewall again. I've had both Astrill and 12VPN. Astrill never fails to get slow after you've been connected a while. 12VPN I can leave connected for days and I have no issue. I also don't have to pay for additional devices or services on 12vpn which is a major thing for me. Astrill has too much add on services that they should just include. They charge you extra for devices, router pro, stealth vpn, etc.

Real quick, what does cbd stand for or what area is it near? I'm looking on hotels . com and i dont see it? Also is the area your talking about closer to the city center or the airport?

Thanks again.

Try Shadowsocks - https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html Else, V2ray - https://github.com/v2ray/v2ray-core

I think their are some free Shadowsocks servers but frankly I never got it to work well (somewhat flaky, not sure if too many people or what) so I just paid for my own VPS running V2Ray

In Beijing this is the process:

1. Get a health check at one of the designated hospitals. You'll need to bring cash plus passport photos, your passport, a copy of your driver's license, passport, visa, and latest entry stamp.

2. Go to the 车管所 to register for the written exam. In Shenzhen a quick search shows that it's here 深圳市-南山区-龙井路128号. You'll have to bring your driver's license original and copy, a few passport photos, your passport original and copy, and your health exam certificate. You can't take the exam the same day. In Beijing they do the exams on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You'll have to translate the drivers license into Chinese and provide your Chinese name. I can't write in Chinese so I was able to ask another test taker to help out, lots of Chinese people there converting their foreign licenses to a Chinese license.

3. Study for the exam. There's no real way to learn the answers to the test without just memorizing the answers. I used the app Laowai Drive. I'd say 50% of the questions are common sense, 25% are memorizing signs and speed limits, 25% are weird esoteric questions about laws and regulations that make no sense.

4. Take the exam on your scheduled day. You can take it up to twice on the same day.

5. Once you pass, pay another 20 kuai or so to get the license shipped back to your home. Or you could go back a week later and pick it up yourself.

The worst part of the whole process was cramming for the exam. The license will only have your Chinese name, which confused cops when going through a checkpoint but they let me through. Overall it was fairly painless. Good luck!

Yeah, no matter which VPN you use all of them will not work well for the few days each year around the many party conference. That's just unavoidable. But I did find that Astrill got theirs back to normal working order far faster than Express or the other big ones.

I'm using Mozilla VPN but never used Express or Astrill to compare. It's fine watching Youtube 1080p, getting my location to Los Angeles and a handful of major cities, and getting around region block in games, but multiplayer is unplayable if there is lag compensation.

FWIW, Astrill is a good start, better than others like express VPN or the other well known ones as far as China goes. It is a little spottier on speed and connectivity than others that are built by and for Chinese folks, but for a foreigner it's easy to get and install.

Don't forget to put Astrill on your mobile phone as well (you might be away from your apartment and want to check your e-mail or something), and make sure you have the chameleon protocol upgrade (or whatever it's called).

As far as being tone deaf, you don't need to worry terribly about that, as long as you get the general pronunciation right, most people will understand what you're asking for. Reading Chinese, however, requires no tones and will come in very handy if you want to order in a restaurant. The goal for you would likely be just getting around; you aren't looking to hold forth on daily events in Chinese, I don't imagine :)

Finally, I am, unfortunately, not a great person to ask on the app front. Despite working in tech, I could not be bothered to install and work with many things beyond WeChat (download this while you are still outside of the Mainland so your data is at least stored on foreign servers). Most people will probably say you should get a ride-share app (Didi Chuxing seems to be the main one nowadays). For online shopping, many people love Taobao, but when I was there it was a hassle and a half as a foreigner to get set up with an account (it might have even been impossible until recently, as they used to require a Chinese National ID card for registration, but now I think they allow foreigners to use their passport numbers for this purpose), so I always either went to a local store or had a local friend help me by ordering online and then paying them back in cash.

Ouch, yes, commuting Shekou to central Futian is already going to be close to an hour door-to-door, but if you're working in the Huawei HQ, that appears to be further outside of Futian in Longgang (but should be close to a subway stop, though Huawei might also have company-sponsored buses, so those will be worth asking HR about).

Unfortunately I do not know the names of particular schools, but let me ask around and I'll see if I can get any recommendations.

And finally, with respect to living outside of Shekou, I definitely think it is doable, but like I said originally, you will have a bit more need to learn at least some Chinese to get around in your daily life. How willing/interested are you in doing that?

My final bit of advice for now: Get a solid VPN subscription up and running on all the devices you hope to maintain connectivity with. There are some times of year where even a VPN won't do you any good, but generally speaking they work fine and are necessary. I personally carry ExpressVPN, but Astrill also seems to get solid marks.

I'm moving to Shenzhen soon and am keen to get a router with VPN built-in before we arrive. I see lots of people recommending Astrill, do they do a router that I can buy before I arrive, or is it easy to configure a router once there?

I hear lots of people outside of China recommending Express VPN, but not so many people here, does it not work as well as Astrill?

If you want a decent VPN service you'll have to pay. Astrill is a pretty solid option. If you're moving for the long term, paying VPN is the way to go. If you get a job in Shenzhen you can probably afford 10$ a month to get a decent internet.

I do not know about Shenzhen, but I did find out where to buy refurbs in Guangzhou thanks to this guidebook.

A Businessman's Guide to the Wholesale Markets of Guangzhou

It saved me searching through all the markets by myself and instead I went straight to the Apple refurb shops on Shipai Road in Ganding.

Yes, I also chose 12vpn over Astrill. 12vpn also accepts PayPal with Chinese debit card, so there's no need to use a credit card. Moreover, with 12vpn you can get extension for Chrome, so that you can use Chrome for browsing blocked sites and IE for Chinese sites without connecting/disconnecting all the time.

>12vpn is faster than Astrill.

Would be interested in a speed test, always looking for a faster, or even a decent backup option.

Astrill from Shenzhen to LA:

Shenzhen, no VPN

As far as the basic Chinese vocabulary is concerned, you could easily learn some basic Chinese words and phrases on your own from scratch with Beginner Chinese app or StartFromZero_Chinese app

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shex.beginnerchinese

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shex.startfromzero_chinese