Hello, lived in China for a long time, also played videogames. For a decade I spent there used Astrill VPN. For good speeds you can also get a router with a built in VPN, from them directly even if I remember correctly
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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Here's some VPN recommendations for you:
Mullvad
ProtonVPN
LetsVPN
Wannaflix
Astrill
Shadowsocks (if you want to set something up yourself)
For gaming, you'll need a booster as well as a VPN, services include:
UU booster
LeiGod
Qiyou
This is perfect, thank you!
I was leaning towards SurfShark earlier, but I'm looking at these now.
Glad to help!
Also, from what I understand, those are the VPNs that are known to work inside the great firewall. There's probably others, but those are the most recommended.
The rule of thumb is to usually avoid the most popular ones that don't have China-specific features (especially ones you see on youtube) as their protocols are generally not hardy enough.
Anyway, good luck!
If I have follow-up questions, do you mind if I keep in touch?
Absolutely, feel free to send a message and I'll reply to the best of my ability.
ProtonVPN works very well, even with its free option.
Mullvad works, sometimes with some issues, but make sure you set it up before you go. Otherwise there is shadowsocks which is more of a proxy than a VPN. It doesn't help anonymize you as well in the US, but is more reliable in China. You can use an app called clash which works for most devices, there are others eg nekkoray which works on linux. These are mostly just different graphical user interfaces, the main thing is to make sure you either get or set up the proxy and have an app that uses an up to date protocol for it.
Also worth noting, if you have a US sim card, it will probably work for foreign websites and the like while in China. Depending on your data plan, eg. You might have unlimited but very slow data abroad, that can be a good backup in case something is not working.
On a similar note, you could look into getting a sim card from Hong Kong, which should allow you to use it for stuff in China while also having fast data and access to blocked websites.
Congrats on going to China, Chengdu is a great city. Make sure you take the opportunity to visit other places too, with the high speed train (and regular train if you want to save money) it's really easy to visit other cities & provinces and definitely worth taking advantage of.
I appreciate the help, but I don't have anything concrete yet. I do have a plan though.
LetsVPN is what my wife used while she lived there, and what I used when I visited. Works well enough to play online games too
That's cool AF. Is there any noticable lag? And is it good for streaming/torrenting,as well?
My wife used it to watch my Netflix account and said it was fine. She didn’t torrent though so I can’t speak to that, or overall throughput downloading large files, she had pretty slow internet so it took her a while to download anything no matter what.
In my experience Mullvad has worked very well when I was in China earlier this year, and I plan to continue using it when I study in Shanghai from September onwards. I don't know how well it compares to alternatives however, so there might be better solutions regarding delay and whatnot.
Hey I might be studying in Shanghai starting September too!
Could you tell us your process for moving there?
For a work visa, you'll typically need at least a university-level degree and two-years of "work experience". If you have a Master's degree or better (or for teaching, a degree in education), then you don't need the work experience requirement. You'll also need all your documents apostilled, which takes time, and to send them off to the local consulate for approval. There's services for that, if you're far away from one. Some places require a health check-up before you come to the country, but you'll need to do one on arrival as well. Mostly they are looking for highly contagious diseases.
As for finding a job, it's good to look for recruiters on LinkedIn first, then talk to them on wechat, as a lot of jobs are posted there.
If you intend to move here, I'd recommend buying most things in country, as there's very little you can't get here for cheap. But I also like to live minimally, so your mileage may vary.
Are you from China? Or are you non-chinese working/living in China?
The second one.
I'm trying to plan something.
I used Shadowsocks when I lived there. You have to set it up and run it yourself. A big benefit is when they crack down periodically on the big VPN players this usually flies under the radar since it is just you connecting back to your own server