Ask HN: Working Securely from China?

I'm familiar with using a VPN but China frequently manages to block, or at least seriously degrade, VPN connections (and currently seems to actually be cracking down on VPNs).

I can set up a tunnel over SSH and use that but I don't know how effective China is at messing with/blocking that. Also, TOR is out of the question as it is dog slow from within China. Anyway, I'm not trying to hide my surfing or avoid the police... just need to be able to log into my various work servers without worrying about them being arbitrarily blocked by the Great Firewall or getting sniffed by some bad guys lurking at Starbucks.

So, are there any potent methods that the folks here on HN can suggest for working secure from within China? Set up my own instance of OpenVPN (perhaps they block specific providers rather than VPN in general and my home connection would slip by undetected)? Just go with tunneling over SSH? Some other methods? Complex, technically challenging answers are welcome (as long as they are practical)!