Ask HN: Traveling to China for the first time. Would love some advice | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Traveling to China for the first time. Would love some advice

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Hi Community, This is my first Ask HN here. I'm traveling to China for a business trip. I'll be mostly around Shanghai, Beijing and other nearby cities for about 10-15 days. If you've been there before, I'd love your thoughts/advice on:

1) The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.

Unfortunately, all my company stuff is on GSuite. Is there a way around this? I know VPNs aren't reliable either. Some recommendations would be appreciated. In other words, how do you get over this?

2) Are there some meetups where I can meetup fellow HNers?

3) Language barrier - how do you manage? Google translate won't work as Google is blocked. Are there some recommendations?

4) Apart from sight-seeing and tourist spots, are there anything I should not miss in China, as a startup founder/developer?

5) Anything else I should be aware of?

Thank you.

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If you have the time, watch these three youtube channels by two long-term expats to understand Chinese society from a western point of view. Perhaps you can also get in touch with them - they seem to conduct frequent meetups with their subscribers.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/user/serpentza

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/user/laowhy86

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/user/churchillcustoms

Unfortunately they both live in the far south of China and I think recently just got back from long trips so it seems unlikely that they will be in the area the submitter mentioned.

Been living in China for 4-5 years. Back home these days.

1) I used ExpressVPN while I was there and never really had a big problem. We also used the GSuite for our company. Once in a while I had to change the protocol or a different country to connect through. Just make sure you configure your laptop and phone before you arrive in China - otherwise it will be a pain to download the clients for your VPN. In emergency you should be able to connect with data services on your foreign SIM, but that will cost you of course.

2) See my answer for 4

3) Google Translate was always useless for me to communicate , so I had to learn Chinese in the end.. Back in those days nobody spoke English, but I would probably download the Pleco app and use that. It will not translate complete sentences, but you can translate single words and then show that, if you get stuck in a conversations. These days, many people will probably be able to communicate with you in simple English and especially young people will be very good in English because they grew up with American TV shows and movies. They even sound like Americans some of them because they really pay attention to the pronunciation of words due to the Chinese language being a tonal language, I guess.

4) I would go to Shenzhen, if I had the time. It is 3 hour plane trip from Shanghai, I think. Go take a look at the electronics market at HuaQiangBei and go have lunch or dinner in Shekou. In Shenzhen there are a lot of maker communities, you can go check out, if you do a bit of research before hand.

5) Dont give a green hat, 4 bottles of wine or a clock as a gift. Otherwise you should be fine :D .. Also toilet paper. And if you plan to make any Chinese acquaintances you should probably install WeChat. You can use it to pay for stuff also - its a pretty good app.

I might be in Shenzhen soon for some business in fact. If it fits, we can go have a coffee and check things out together. Let me know :)

Thank you. As for the VPN setup, I was planning to do something like this: https://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2015/how-to-setup-your-own-pr...

Worth a shot? OR should I just shut up and go with Express VPN?

> 4) I would go to Shenzhen Wow, thank you so much! That's something I definitely don't want to miss!

> I might be in Shenzhen soon for some business in fact.

Sure, I'd love to meet you too! Keep me posted (my email is in my profile) :)

If you are not planning to spend time in countries, where VPN is required, then I would just buy a VPN service. Too much hastle with setting it up and the established providers are very good and easy to setup.

I will send you an email :)

Almost all commercial VPNs are blocked, also many openVPN style services are detected and blocked too.

1) The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.

Just set up a VPN before you go.

Unfortunately, all my company stuff is on GSuite. Is there a way around this? I know VPNs aren't reliable either. Some recommendations would be appreciated. In other words, how do you get over this?

2) Are there some meetups where I can meetup fellow HNers?

Not sure, it would be cool to hear though

3) Language barrier - how do you manage? Google translate won't work as Google is blocked. Are there some recommendations?

If you download the Google Translate app before going you can add the Chinese language pack. This works in airplane mode. It has been a life saver for me there because it even does live/superimposed translations with the camera/video. Also add a VPN to your phone before leaving. Sometimes there can be connectivity issues but thats the price of accessing instagram

4) Apart from sight-seeing and tourist spots, are there anything I should not miss in China, as a startup founder/developer?

Do a food tour with a western guide. Untours is pretty cool.

5) Anything else I should be aware of?

Gross air and crowds

> Just set up a VPN before you go.

Thank you, this was something I wasn't sure of.

> This works in airplane mode.

Wow, didn't know that!

Thank you very much! :)

1)The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.

https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand installs Shadowsocks, which seems to work quite well in China, provided you find a VPS with good peering in mainland China. I hear a lot of people have good results with Vultr via Japanese data centers, other VPS providers in Hong Kong get good results too.

One of the maintainers of the project does live in China; if you have a question open up an issue in the discussions repo (https://github.com/StreisandEffect/discussions), I'm sure you'll get answers to whatever question you may have.

I used Streisand for a while and I can confirm, that it works very well in China. VPN galore.

1. Depending on your cellphone provider, you can get free roaming without extra charge (i.e. Rogers) . That way you can still use google products. If not, use Baidu. They have search, maps, translate.

4. For beijing, checkout Tsinghua x-lab. Last time, I just walked in. Talked to a founder randomly, and got introduced to interesting tech spots i should checkout, as well as getting pitched on his startup :) They also organize different events from time to time.

Checkout Garage Cafe (not sure if its still open)

Meetup.com has some tech meetups or checkout http://www.huodongxing.com/events?type=0&show=list&tag=%E5%8... which lists startup events in beijing

5. Try out their dating apps (tantan) or even tinder to meet people even just as friends.

Stay at hostels and make some new friends.

Go to internet cafe - they call it (网吧 ). You get see how different it is when it comes to chinese gaming (you need qq or wechat), although some games require a national ID to play. In this case, may be better to bring along local friend.

> For beijing, checkout Tsinghua x-lab. > Try out their dating apps (tantan)

Thanks, those are great suggestions! I'll check them out :)

I went to Shanghai a decade ago, so not sure about 1/2.

3, get your hotel to write down where you want to go in Chinese for the day. Most restaurants had at least one English menu even back then.

4, In Shanghai they used to have these districts where you could buy knock-off gear. You go to an area, pick up a 'guide' and they take you to all these hidden shops. Then price quoted is 10 times higher than what they'll accept, haggling was half the point/fun. You can also smirk at the Americans who fail to do so. It was pretty cool seeing these backroom entrepreneurs there doing their thing.

Also on the island there was all this building work and massive buildings with seemingly no-one working in them. Seemed very odd at the time, but it's definitely worth checking out that area to see if it's still all paper tigers or if they actually do anything with them. The underwater tunnel ride to get there was pretty good too.

5, While I was in Shanghai we ended up in an expat bar and got to know some people in there that took us to Chinese nightclubs. Was a much better way of going out than trying to figure it out ourselves. This was like 10 years ago and I can't remember the name, but I really would recommend it as a way of seeing the night life outside of circuses, etc. It was on the river near the south end of where all the old colonial buildings are, all I can remember. We had a lot more fun after we did that. Basically finding some English speaking friends asap makes it a lot more fun, you can do tourism during the day, then have fun out at night

1) The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.

When I'm in Beijing, I usually use my company vpn.

3) Language barrier - how do you manage? Google translate won't work as Google is blocked. Are there some recommendations?

Young people speak good English there, try to communicate with them.

5) Anything else I should be aware of?

no toilet paper in public restrooms. carry a roll of toilet paper all the time.

Some additions:

1) Use the bowls when you eat, not the plates. The plate is for putting your garbage (bones, etc)

2) Wash the plates/cups with the tea they give you first.

3) Expect to squat when using the restroom for some places. No seats.

4) Do not be offended if people stare at you, or if you see people spitting on the street.

1) Setup and test your VPN before you go. If you decide to use an IPSec VPN expect it to fail around-half the time (even if properly configured). YMMV

3) Microsoft Translator works well in China and has 2-way text to speech, offline language packs (Traditional and Simplified), and photo analysis / text overlay.

5) Taking a bismuth tablet with every meal to avoid getting sick. Enjoy the street food.

> Microsoft Translator works well in China

Thank you, I wasn't aware they had an app. Definitely helpful. Thank you!

Some random tips for PRC:

-download wechat. You can pretty much do everything from that app (chat, pay for things, order cars etc). -most young people in tier 1 cities speak decent English. The biggest challenge for me is taxi drivers, who often have limited proficiency. Solution is to either use Didi (ride hailing app) or carry a copy of your hotel’s address in Chinese to show the driver. -if you’re not staying in a major hotel, make sure you register with the local police department (major hotels do this for you when you check in). Failure to do so can result in your getting denied entry to PRC in the future.

-VPNs are now illegal in most of PRC so keep that in mind, but the laws may be different for foreigners. The last time I was there I found that if I roamed on my US cell phone service in a major city, I bypassed the firewall without needing a VPN. YMMV.

1) Grab a VPN, you can find ones that work in China quite reliably (I was there 1.5 years ago, that may have changed but I doubt it)

2) Hopefully!

3) Google Translate WILL work, just download the language for offline. And it does work well enough to say you're lost to someone or something similar.

> Google Translate WILL work, just download the language for offline

I wasn't aware of that, thank you very much!

Hi, I'm in Beijing, I have been here for ten years. We can meet in person if you want. I could be your local guide for free because I want to improve my English. My email is me at cpp dot io .

For your first question, you can setup an openvpn on Azure or AWS before you leave. Are you using iphone or Android? From what I know, it only works on Android and PC.

1) VPNs are also generally blocked since June 2017. Even a privately run OpenVPN without the obfuscate module will not work either. One reliable way is to use psiphon [1], also available for Android. Make sure to download it _before_ you enter China.

[1] https://psiphon.ca/

I can't say if this works in China, but Astrill VPN have a number of ip addresses that they label "China Optimized." I use them to access Netflix in the US from Ireland, but don't know if they work in China or not.

Re #1, get a vps on a platform that isn't blocked (probably aws), and set up openvpn and ssh so you can have openvpn or socks5 proxies. Also as others have said baidu is comparable to google.

Use your home mobile if there's a good deal.

In the UK Vodafone does £5 a day to use your tarrif in China. No speed restrictions, Google works and you have a UK IP address.

5) Carry toilet paper. Be prepared to squat.

Google translate has limited functionality in China. Download the Chinese translation module for offline translation. As you type it will offer you a translation--this happens offline. The arrow that finishes the job doesn't work, though, as it sends it off to Google's server.

Note that this does not work the other way around as the handwriting recognition engine isn't on the phone--you can't enter the Chinese at all without a connection.

The last time I was there I got a local sim, so long as I had a decent connection I had no problem with the VPN, but note that if your connection is marginal the VPN will be pretty close to unusable. This is also useful for using WiFi as almost all public WiFi requires you to enter your phone number and they respond with a text that either enables the connection or provides a password to use to log in. (Your username is your phone number.) This is the government trying to prevent anonymous internet use. (And note that internet cafes likewise do not permit anonymous use--you'll need your passport.)

I was using ExpressVPN on my last visit, it worked fine so long as the stuff involved wasn't too big. It would bog down into uselessness somewhere between 500k and 1mb. (And, of course, they released an update for my phone when I arrived. VPN off, blocked. VPN on, it would get stuck at about 4%. Practically every time I unlocked my phone it was nagging me about that update!)

Note that all the major cloud file hosts (dropbox etc.) are blocked over there also.

Language is mixed--the young educated people generally have enough English to communicate. The uneducated, though (the clerks, the taxi drivers etc) are another matter, their English is generally quite limited. Note that their written English might very well be better than their speaking--the most extreme case of this I encountered was a clerk in an internet cafe who as far as I could tell had zero English. Turns out she could spell all numbers perfectly but her pronunciation was so bad that even when I knew what she was saying it was hard to find the resemblance between what she said and English. Unless you're in a very tourist area I figure all communications with such people will be by gesture etc, or my phone. (Unless I'm alone I leave such matters to my wife, though--she's a native speaker.)

Note: Your hotel will almost certainly have business cards. Show them to the taxi driver. Some even have English/Chinese for "please take me to <hotel> <address>".

The situation is getting better--plenty of junior high/high school kids have at least some English, if I'm alone and standing still I'm often approached by groups that want to try their English out on me. (Strangely, schoolkids never approach us when we are together. The only time we have ever been approached was by a few graduate students and that was in a city with virtually zero foreigners--I didn't see a white face until we were leaving and some showed up for some sort of athletic competition.)

Note that lower end hotels (decent but nothing fancy) are likely not able to take foreigners, although some look the other way for foreigners accompanied by locals--they register the room to the local's ID (Even if the foreigners and locals are in different rooms) and ignore the registration requirements. (The government insists on knowing where every foreigner spends the night. The hotel does this registration for you, if you're staying in a private place you need to go down to the police station yourself within 24 hours. Requirements vary, supposedly you need the owner with you but we have done it entirely on our own in some places.)

Since this is a business trip, beware of industrial espionage. Don't bring any sensitive data you don't have to. The most security-conscious have separate devices used only for China.

Thank you so much for the detailed advice, that was very helpful! :)

Went for 3 weeks as tourist and after typing this up it looks like I need to make a blog post.

For #1, unless something changed they allow chain hotels and some other big chain spots to get through it. I had no problem using any services, google, yahoo, etc at those locations. There was a couple of hotspots we went to where it would block you but I just connected to my work's VPN that runs in the States. Hopefully you are not going to China to use the Internet, you can survive without it for 2 weeks.

You can download google translate for offline translations. Have used this for Mandarin, Spanish and Italian and works great. One thing to know though is China has lots of different dialects, some of them are similar (like Mexican Spanish vs Puerto Rican Spanish) but others are quite different, to the point of someone that speaks mainland may not be able to communicate with someone from this other village or coastal town. In the big cities you mentioned this should not be a problem (I went all over so had some problems a few times). Learn things like thank you, water, bathroom, food, train, yes, no and you can survive almost anywhere. Since you are going for work you will probably have other people around you that know the area, language, good spots, places to avoid, etc.

Before you go, I would ask your company: is there going to be a translator, driver, guide? Drivers and guides can be had for cheap.

---#4--- You can not miss going to a mall there. Hear me out, a mall is like its own self contained city. 5+ stories. Has everything from food, to tech, to salons, clothes, etc and it is absolutely humbling, amazing, wonderful and fun to walk around, window show, or actually shop.

The food. I ate better the 3 weeks I was there than anywhere else I have ever been. Go to hot pot (pay by the hour!). Go to dim sum. Eat vendor food. Find a place and have pigeon, real peking duck (where they cut it and serve it at your table for you), and jelly fish.

Find a fish / sea market. I went to one where quite literally you could not see the ends of the thing from where I was standing because it was so long (and well yes there was smog).

If you can find any sort of palace (aka mansion / estate) I would highly recommend it.

The obvious tourist traps are obvious for a reason, The Great Wall, Forbidden City, etc.

--#5-- Unless you get some Yuans from your bank at home don't both with conversion services, just go to your bank in China or any ATM. If you use a credit card and they ask you if you want them to change the charge to USD for you the answer is always no (they charge a fee and conversion is not always accurate) - use this anytime abroad. Also make sure your CC has no foreign transaction fees and you call them and your bank to let them know where you will be so they do not block your card.

EVERYTHING is negotiable. But be aware once you show the cash or order the item the deal is locked. See something you want to buy? Point to it, and ask "how much?" or just shrug and they will barter with you by trying to speak, (unless you don't look like them) then they will write down a number on their hand or a piece of paper. You take the pen, mark thru the number and write your own number. Back and forth until you come to agreement. Circle the number and make sure the seller agrees, then you pay and get your item.

Bring a roll of toilet paper with you.

Make sure you have all your shots.

Do not make yourself a target (ie dont wave money, dont wear shirts that say "im a dumb american", don't walk alone down a dark alley at 3am).

Cash (and gold) is king.

Keep a copy of your passport back at the hotel. (some say keep the copy on you and real one at hotel but in a pinch your passport is the most powerful document you will ever touch, read the "to whom it may concern" to understand the power of it).

Do not use your hands to touch food.

If you have a weak stomach I would suggest training yourself by eating raw sushi.

Do not ask what you are eating until after you have had 2 bites.

Most meals are family style, get over it and enjoy the best way to eat.

Hope you like tea. If you pour yourself some make sure to top off your neighbors (don't ask, just do).

Use chop sticks before you go. They will try to offer you a fork behind your back but show your fearless chop stick skills; even if they are bad.

You can STAB and SCOOP with chopsticks, it is kosher I promise.

I was told that using your personal cell phone on China Cell was a bad idea as a non-resident by someone I trust. We bought burners at the market outside the airport.

Obviously bring a camera and take pictures but don't focus on taking pictures.

You drink 1 (maaaaaaaybe) 2 beers and thats it.

A smile is universal.

This was beautiful to read, well written and very helpful, thank you very much! :)

American speaking here who spent 2+ years in China.

3) Use fanyi.baidu.com (Baidu's equivalent of Google translate) and translate.bing.com -- both work really well in my honest opinion, even for entire sentences.

Additionally, use Pleco. It's the world's biggest Chinese-English dictionary and it's all offline with a plethora of example sentences. You will love it.

In tourist spots, be extremely suspicious in anyone approaching you AND speaking english. They 99 % try to rip you off. Most Chinese are lovable and inviting and hospitable indeed, but they will NEVER 1) approach YOU and NEVER 2) speak English.

5) Download the Beijing and Shanghai Metro app, such that 1) You always know where you are (GPS) and 2) know which line to take if you have no internet

Wow, those apps are super useful! Thank you very much :)

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