I’m going to China in May and would like a VPN for my Android phone, my personal Windows PC, and (hopefully) my work PC.
After browsing this subreddit it seems Astrill is the best choice. I will be in China for only 1 month so it seems their one month service fee of $30 is the best choice for me after which I can cancel.
Got some basic questions:
Is this something I better setup before leaving?
Can one account be used for multiple devices?
Do I have to install their app on my phone and their Windows application on my PC in order to use the VPN?
I’d just do Mullvad. They charge the same per month whether you sign on for one, two, twelve months. 5 euros for the thirty days, so works out that you will save $25 for that month that you would otherwise spend on overpriced and conparable quality Astrill. Use the savings to buy steaks and/or beer.
Astrill isn’t the best choice. It’s just the most widely recognized and marketed VPN toward foreigners in China. In fact, it’s kind of shitty. They just have good marketing around these subreddits. It works and that’s about it. A friend of mine used Mullvad and had a better download and upload speed than my Astrill connection. This was in Shenzhen though. The day before arriving, I’d recommend installing an eSIM with a cellular data plan. 5-10 GB is enough for a week. Just make sure it’s marketed for Mainland China. You’ll stay connected immediately as you land in Shanghai or wherever you’re heading. From there, you can figure out the rest.
I haven’t personally used astril, but before going to china I explicitly researched “VPNs that work in china” and set them up and checked they worked before going. Got to China and bam, didn’t work. Any VPN can be shut down if China tries hard enough.
I would buy a raspberry pi zero w for $15 and an Ethernet adapter for $5. Plug it in at your home and set it up as an exit node for your other devices (a really, really easy and free way to do this is a service called Tailscale). Basically you are routing all internet traffic on your devices through your Internet connection at home, which obviously has unrestricted access to the Internet outside china.
Again, I haven’t used Astril and I trust the people on this sub to recommend services that work. But large VPNs are a lot easier to shut down than a single connection. This is a solution that costs less and lasts forever.
I wouldn’t bother paying for the VIP. I did and seriously, none of the VIP servers are ever faster or more reliable.
Stealth VPN seems to be the only setting that reliably works. I use TCP because it says it’s more reliable but in practice I can’t tell the difference.
I bought a travel router before I left and it’s been next to useless as it only has OVPN and Wireguard. They don’t work here.
What I ended up doing was downloading the Astrill windows app, setting up Share VPN, including astrills DHCP setting and then using the hotspot feature of my laptop to share it to my other devices. It’s working flawlessly and means I only need to turn it on there and I’m good.
Not sure how it works where you are, but my home phone provider has reasonable roaming for 4G/5G so I just use that when out and about like normal. Just have photo uploads and another data hungry stuff set to wifi only and then use the above laptop method to do my major transfers when back in a hotel.
VPN is almost useless in China caz GWF can identify the data using vpn and stop your connection.
Now the best and cheapest way to access internet in China is V2ray or Shadowsock, but most of the service providers are only accept like WeChat or Alipay, which is unfriendly to foreigners.
Another way to access internet in China is using CMLink international service.
They can ship a sim or provide an eSIM to USA and the price is cheap(comparing to USA carrier, but still super expensive compared to UK…)
I live in the UK and have been to China a couple of times now. The first time I deployed my own OpenVPN to AWS along with nord VPN as a backup. Turns out China blocks NordVPN and has really cracked down on VPN detection. They were able to detect my OpenVPN within a few minutes of first use from within China and block it. I deployed around 5 while I was out there (AWS console is surprisingly unblocked) and it was the same story. Everytime. Fine for a few minutes, blocked thereafter once they detected it.
The second time I went I used tailscale along with an exitnode which I routed all my outbound traffic to. The instance was in Ireland. It’s very cheap and easier to use than my first approach. I had great success with this and was able to browse the Internet for my entire trip very cheap. Would recommend it to anyone going to China and in need of a vpn
I am an international students in China and I have been using the fastest and value for money VPN that allows me stream videos on HD. There isn’t been a day where I had a connection problem with my VPN. DM and I will send you the link to the VPN and some coupon codes.
Can confirm about VPN. I’ve used Express, PIA, Surfshark to various levels of success in China. Astrill may be better but the other VPNs mostly work too. During crackdowns though, even Astrill struggles.
Can you please explain how the Raspberry pi setup works? How is it possible to route my internet traffic while in China to my internet connection at home? Is this kinda like setting up my own private VPN? It still has to go through the Chinese network right?
So I need to have a phone that takes eSim, get Nomad, and then I’ll not only have cellular service in China, but also the ability to go across the Firewall?