Hi Leona,

When I lived in Beijing I used WiTopia. It was pretty good and they have a 30 days money back policy. So you can subscribe and cancel if you are staying for a short period. Astrill was an alternative and quite popular among the expat community in Beijing. Honestly, I was the only one using WiTopia among my friends there.

PS: you can also drop fb and twitter and use their version renren and weibo heheheheh

Hi Leona,

If you need to use the Internet extensively in China, especially for getting work done, then the best solution would be getting a reliable paid VPN account. I use VPN every day in China and a lot of people I know do the same thing. The price would be around $10 per month, but in my opinion it’s definitely worth it (Just think about how much time you would waste on struggling with the Internet otherwise).

Please note that although there’re a number of VPN providers to choose from, not all of them work well in China. Some of them are completely blocked as well. To find out which VPNs work well in China, I’d recommend this website:

https://www.vpndada.com

It’s a VPN testing site based in China. They test VPN from China and recommend reliable ones to be used in China. Here’s a list of VPNs recommended by VPNDada:

https://www.vpndada.com/best-vpns-for-china/

A rather good forum site for foreigners in China
http://raoulschinasaloon.com/
The admins are a bit cautious in weird ways. Auto text replacement gets rid of various phrases that might be searched for or might provoke the Great Firewall. Any mention of “VPN” or “virtual private network” becomes “very passable nicety”. Search for that to find the posts relevant to your problem

You have to use a VPN, which unfortunately, is very hard to download once you are already on the ground in China.

I recommend VyprVPN from about 6 months of personal experience. You can’t access their main website from China, but you can access https://www.goldenfrog.biz to download the installer.

Try Laundrytown. They offer free pickup and delivery. I think the rate for “wash & fold” is 25RMB per kg. They operate in several cities in Asia including Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok, Tokyo, Singapore and KL.

Ah you may find that a bit tough at Jing’an hotel I’m afraid, it’s an upmarket part of town and as you’ve definitely noticed Shanghai’s a different world than Thailand.

There are lots of hole in the wall dry cleaners scattered around the place who should do you a load of laundry for around 50 yuan or less. Ask a local to help you find a 洗衣服店 xǐ yīfú diàn literally ‘clothes wash shop’ not sure if that’s the perfect Chinese but it’ll work.

Otherwise the classic traveler’s trick of washing 'em in the sink then leaving them to dry.

Good luck, and welcome to the the Hai!

Hi Nathan,

From experience, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have a lot of expat/DN entrepreneurs manufacturing or sourcing locally. I’ve met a lot of people through Enter China.

I’ve visited both cities a fair amount over the past few years. Shenzhen seems more livable and diverse. If I had to pick one for a longer-term stay, I’d go with Shenzhen.

Hope that helps. I’ll be back in China in mid-November.

-Fred

I was in China - Shanghai and Shenzhen this year just for a few weeks for a business thing. I’m not aware of any specific DN scene in China. However, in Shanghai there are many expats so I would suggest looking up expat groups and teachers. I met up with a friend whilst there who’s a teacher and she gave me the lowdown on expat scene there. I think it would be easy enough to integrate so long as you were planning to stay a few months as opposed to a few weeks.

Thanks Phil! I definitely agree with your comments on Shanghai and actually have the same plan re moving to South East Asia next year and getting a bit more nomadic (ie changing home every couple of months rather than every year). Thanks for the tip re meetup!

Hi Natahan,

I was such a corpo expat in Shanghai for two years before leaving to South East Asia and becoming a DN a year ago. I must say I found the (international) internet too weak to stay there and work online. Besides that, I also wasn’t that happy there (air pollution was one of the biggest issues for me). But that wasn’t your question. Just wanted to suggest checking related groups on meetup.com. I found some entrepreneur meetups and attended one or two. Was quite interesting, although not many of the members were nomads as such (there might be some though and it comes the closest to the nomad scene that I find in SEA).

Good luck,

Phil

Hi,

I’m a DN in Beijing, though I run an all-remote startup rather than lifestyle business. I do like the city life here, and I’m just starting to connect with the local startup scene. I haven’t run into other DNs, but I don’t use coworking places. I just know students (since I studied Chinese for a semester here). I’m aware of the corpo-expat types, but don’t know any.

If it exists, there’s a wechat group for it! So keep asking around

One good web resource for foreigners in China is Raoul’s China Expat Saloon. Nothing specifically for nomads, but lots of long-term residents & some good advice. I’ve left China and am no longer a regular, but you may see the odd post from me, user name ‘Pashley’.
http://raoulschinasaloon.com/

Hi Nathan!

I’m Chinese and I grew up in a city near Shanghai. I recently left the US after living there for 5 years. I’m back visiting my family for a couple of months. I’m a newbie digital nomad, still exploring different options. I’m curious to know if there are other DNs in the area as well

Kindly,
Meiyi

Thanks for the reply Nick! How did you find Beijing as base?
Almost every foreigner I know who lives there seems to love the place, but again that’s mostly expats / students instead of ‘nomads.’

Daily life here is pretty good for ‘digital nomad’ style work compared to other Chinese cities I’ve visited, great cafes (and let’s be honest, bars) to work and write from, and finding a tolerable wifi connection is normally possible. Certainly an expensive place though, so my next destination will probably be somewhere cheaper

Hey Nathan!

My wife and I aren’t currently in China but we’ve spent about 6 months in Beijing on-and-off over the last couple years.

Would love to check out Shanghai, just haven’t gotten around to it yet! Hear there’s a decent co-working scene there and it looks like a sweet city for daily life.

Might try to come scope it out for a couple weeks later this year!