Hey everyone!
I’m an international student in Canada, but I’m heading back to China soon. The Great Firewall over there means I can’t access my favorite sites like YouTube, Chrome, or Instagram. 
During my summer break, I really want to keep using these sites for both work and fun. Unfortunately, I don’t have data roaming, so I need a reliable VPN. I’ve found three options: NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark. They all require a subscription, though.
Do you have any advice on which one works best in China, or any other solutions to get around the firewall? Drop your suggestions below. Thanks a million! 
What do you think?
Set up your own. It can be done for free
If you don’t want to set up your own 200 gb is around 6-12 rmb a month for a “airport” download clash meta/verge and look for some hysteria2机场 you get a bunch of servers you can bounce around
Mullvad works. Don’t bother with Express and Nord - they haven’t worked for half a decade, no matter how many websites they’ve paid to say that they do.
Honestly just plain free GitHub v2ray sites worked like a charm last year for me, it’s not fast by any means but gets the job done, watching 4k YouTube and normal web browsing worked great so long if you updated the servers frequently (every 10 days or so)
Does your university have one? A lot of Canadian universities have one available to students. I’d ask.
If not depends what you want to pay but more people use astril if they are coming from the west. If you are Chinese I’d look at some HK options that westerners wouldn’t know about as they don’t typically read mandarin.
Qifei VPN is a good one for phones, laptops you need WARP and a warp plus bot generator change the default key and you’re good
Try out universal vpn it’s in android i guess it’s best vpn who usung shaadowshocks server with outline sdk as backbone l here is the link : Universal VPN for Android
If you don’t want to bother with installing your own - Astrill works the best
Just been in Beijing 5 days, free VPNs such as ‘StarVPN’ and ‘GoFly’ worked a treat.
Particularly recommend StarVPN, was getting 20mbps while on a 50mbps network.
No issues at all with either, other than usual VPN stuff like having to reconnect once your phone goes to sleep.
Enjoy your time!
Astrill is the best. The rest of these guys are shills. I wouldn’t do anything work sensitive on it though, just for youtube and personal fun stuff. (I’ve been in china for 5 years - astrill works - it’s expensive for a reason).
But if you had actual sensitive work to get done, your cybersec team should’ve set you up with a real vpn before you left anyways.
Can you inform how to set up VPN for free?
Yeah, till their AI blocks you for no good reason 
No I am in high school temporarily tho😭
Does UoFT’s work in China?
U r a shill too for astrill 
This is classic copium. I pay big money so it must be good. Astrill is expensive because it’s not express etc and it’s the main big one that people know about. I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve migrated away from Astrill because it goes down every now and then.
Set up a v2ray/vless vpn server on a VM Instance on Google Cloud Platform in HK/Tokyo - they provide $300 free credits for 90 days. Opt for standard tier Internet routing and the cheapest specs. If your GCP IP ever gets blacklisted by the GFW you can always stop and start the VM to get a new IP or get a new static external IP which costs the same as a non-static one.
It’s very fast, standard tier gives you 200GB of egress traffic per region and unlimited traffic to certain Google services like YouTube. Ping from China to HK’s GCP service averages about 50ms. 4K and 8K YouTube can be streamed quite comfortably from China.
I would recommend a HK server over Tokyo, though you can set both up as your credits should allow it. Do note that IP addresses from HK can’t access certain services like ChatGPT
I don’t know. I know Westerns did back when I was taking courses there maybe 8 years ago or so.
