VPN
You probably heard of the importance of using a VPN when living in China as you still want to be able to use foreign search engines, APPs, medias, social medias, streaming platforms, email providers or work tools.
Free VPN exist but we recommend you to avoid this option because it is important to use a reliable VPN as much for the speed as for the stability. At the end, you pay for what you get.
According to what you can find online these days and people’s habits here in China we would recommend 2VPN only:
- Astrill: fast, very reliable on the long term, used to be the best but pricey
- Thunder VPN by Yves
- Express VPN: fastest, very reliable, lots of users in China, worth the money TBC!!!!!!!!!
- Nord VPN: very cheap but not user friendly
Also, if you prefer to use a different VPN, make sure they offer the “split tunneling” option which lets you choose which websites/APPs need virtual private network (VPN) protection and which can access the internet directly. This is very useful to choose which websites/APP require VPN (most of the foreign websites/APPs) and which ones do not require VPN (probably all the Chinese website/APPs). This option allows you not to constantly turn on/off your VPN according to what you want to have access to (foreign or Chinese websites/APPs).
Once you have chosen your VPN, it is extremely important that you install it on all your devices before going to China because once you are in China, you need to use a VPN to install your VPN on your device.
NordVPN can be ranked among the best one we suggest not to use it now because there are some issues to connect to the servers and it is not user-friendly.