Bought a $89 VPN for a 2 week trip to Shanghai last March thinking it would let me read whatever I wanted, but the app wouldn't even connect past the airport wifi and I ended up paying $12 a day at the hotel just to check my email, so has anyone found something that actually works there or should I just give up?
Used to figure all VPNs were pretty much the same and you just picked whichever one was on sale. Then my brother went to Beijing for work and his $70 one died the same way, airport wifi worked fine but nothing past that, and he burned cash on hotel internet for ten days. Turns out the great firewall doesn't just block sites, it sniffs out the VPN traffic itself, so the cheap ones get spotted fast. These days I'd ask around for one built to hide that traffic (not just any random app), or plan on roaming if your phone plan covers it.