½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

Hello Kim,

Welcome to ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

Note that you can check the China expat network, you will find the singaporeans who are actually in China.

I also hope that some members will respond to your post very soon.

Thanks,

Priscilla
½ûÂþÌìÌà Team

Hi there:
               Im from Singapore and welcome to China, u can email me at ***

As for VPn....panda, still, local Chinese ones are all not bad..just don't go for the branded ones like PURE,EXPRESS..doesn't work most times and when they are down..it takes forever to keep it back up running.


Talk to u soon

Bear in mind that not all paid VPNs could work in China however, when I was in China I used ExpressVPN and it worked perfectly fine. I heard that NordVPN works okay too. Just another tip, it is best to sign up for VPN before you go to China as signing up when you are already in China might not be able to. If you want to learn more . It has all the information you would need about VPNs in China

I don't think Panda is a local Chinese company. It's just a company trying to get the Chinese traffic.  In the end VPNs are illegal in China so you are not going to have any local start-ups.  As for the other VPNs well they all seem to suffer the same issues.  The powers that be know about them and will allow them to float for a while until some big gov conference comes up and then they will block them for a while until the conference is over.  Happens over and over again and is probably the best anyone can hope for.  A Cat and mouse game where the cat is semi tolerant of the mouse.

FWIW, I get very mixed results from ExpressVPN. I had Astrill recommended to me, but I've not tried it.

TBH, I think I might not bother renewing ExpressVPN - it's just too frustrating. Having said that, there are reasonably long periods of time when it does work, and bandwidth is often pretty good, but lately it seems really slow and I just end up not bothering.

I have another solution, but it's bandwidth limited per month, and quite expensive compared to VPN, so I might just stick with that.
However, if you have the skills, you might do better to rent a virtual private server, making sure it is on an obscure network that isn't already blocked, and set up your own VPN. This presumes you can stay 'unnoticed' since if you are noticed then it is easy enough for that one server to be blocked.

Doesn't matter Express or Astril I've used both. In fact I have both on my phone all the time.  If I'm using Express and it starts dropping out I switch over to Astril and vice versa. They are both great when the government is feeling tolerant.  When they are not then they are both crap. Same goes for the others I've tried in the past.  In the end it is not the VPN's fault. The Gov does what they want when they want.
From what I understand they have algorithyms that look for connections to websites that are stable for longer periods, seems it's a hallmark of a connection to a VPN so chances are whatever anyone tries it's eventually going to get blocked.

Well, that useful information...I'll not bother with any other one then, and probably just give up on ExpressVPN. Yeah, I agree that it does work some of the time, and some of that time it works really well (ie fast), but it the number of servers is limited to about 4 or 5 and their locations aren't so useful (to me), so I think I might as well just use a more reliable connection that isn't blocked at all...it's pricey (compared to the VPN subscription), and not so fast, but it's much more reliable and fast enough for youtube etc, so it's worth the reduction in stress level.