Some practical advice for getting around China as a tourist… <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Buying a local SIM means you’ll be behind the Great Firewall whenever you’re on LTE. Tourists whom I met said that they tried to use ExpressVPN, but that it did not work for more than a few days. “One VPN will work for awhile and then stop,\u201d said a local. I had subscribed in advance to Express VPN, but found that it never worked on WiFi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Verizon Travel Pass: works! \u201cThey don\u2019t care what foreigners read or think,” said a local. Be aware that the included 0.5 GB per day will be consumed within an hour or two if you let photos sync over cellular data. Simply using iMessage to share photos, posting to Facebook, etc., will run up close to the 0.5 GB limit every 24 hours (Verizon will sell you another 0.5 GB for $10, but in a world of ever-increasing bandwidth consumption they really should expand this).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public WiFi is often 50+ Mbps, but, as in France, it is not legal to run a completely open network. You have to authenticate with a mobile number and it often doesn\u2019t work to type in a foreign number. The splash pages are often in Chinese only. Hotel WiFi networks are authenticated with room number and last name, but some networks are more permissive than others. The Four Seasons Shanghai ran a network that worked with all the Google services, albeit crawling at 3 Mbps. Networks in Suzhou, Hangzhou, and at the Wanda Reign hotel back in Shanghai were faster, but Google was locked out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n