The following information was created by a Teacher Candidate for those travelling to China and wondering how they may be able to access Google Translate and use their cell phones.
Hello everyone heading to China for CFE,
I have appended information for accessing Google, Youtube, Facebook while we are abroad.
I will cover two main topics:
- Getting past Chinese censorship with UBC’s VPN service.
- Buying a data sim in China.
tl;dr Go to UBC VPN setup page to set yourself up now or before you go to China to bypass the censorship on laptop and mobile. You can buy a data sim locally with a passport, this is the cheapest option. Normally you need a Chinese ID to purchase a sim card. Foreign passports seem to be accepted only by the flagship stores of the providers (or at airports). Google your phone’s frequency band for compatibility, not all phone work with China Mobile’s 4G/LTE network for instance.
- Getting past Chinese censorship with UBC’s VPN service.
Why do we need to use VPN in China? Because censorship! Services like Facebook and Google (Gmail, youtube, trasnalte service, etc.) are all banned in China.
Our solution is to connect back to UBC first, tell it to fetch the sites we need and send it back. Since we’re not connecting to the banned services directly, the VPN can send us back whatever we ask.
You’ll want to set up the VPN program on both your laptop and mobile device. Go to UBC’s VPN setup page and select your device and follow the instructions there.On mobile, use “myvpn.ubc.ca” as server address, everything else should be work after you use your UBC credentials to log in.
2. Buying a data sim in China.
You can read the full info here.
- Compatibility
First off, you’ll need to do a little research on whether your phone is compatible on the 3 Chinese networks available: China Mobile (中国移动) China Unicom (中国联通) China Telecom (中国电信).
The biggest network is China Mobile and all iPhone 6 and 7 will work on their LTE network. The rest of us are most likely going on China Unicom’s network which supports some bands on phones sold here in Canada.
Google “iphone 5s china unicom 4g” for example to see if any LTE band on China Unicom is supported by your iPhone 5s.
Information on the band frequencies here.
- Buying a Sim card
Normally you need a Chinese ID to buy sim cards in China, it’s an official policy there. However…
From the wiki:
Better go to small mobile shops or the official shops [at the airport] of the operators showing your passport and say “SIM Kaa” pointing at your device. Don’t expect anybody to speak English (you may be luckier if you are in a foreigner area of a big city).
The initial credit is 100RMB, you can buy more credits depending on your usage of calls, texts and data over your 3 week stay.
- Roaming Charges
Buy your sim at the place you’re going to use it at, roaming charges apply for going out of your area / province.This applies to all calls, texts and data. This will be abolished in October 2017.
- Silent your phone at night!
From the wiki
You will get a lot of advertisements, which you can’t block. Ad text messages are the least annoying and can be deleted right away. But you will get calls in the middle of the night as well with only one ring. The idea is to make you call back an expensive premium number, so don’t call it back.
- Cancelling your Service
There MAY be issues if you leave the country without canceling your mobile service at a store. You’ll have a penalty to pay for next time you’re in China and need a sim, your account (registered under your passport) gets a monthly payment deduction for 3 months before it runs dry and stops.