I never watch TV, but I’ve been hooked on this nightly miniseries on the Chinese Travel Network lately.

It’s about a Chinese modern-day Romeo who decided to hitchhike from Beijing to Berlin to be with his girlfriend. He and his chain smoking friend set off from Beijing with a video camera, backpacks, and head west.

Most of the time they are picked up by truck drivers, with the occasional good samaritan in a luxury sedan giving them a lift. They travel all through China, eventually crossing the border in Xinjiang to Kyrgyzstan.

Shortly after, the chain smoking guy needs to go back to Beijing for some reason and Romeo is on his own. The road eventually leads through all the ’stans to the middle east, where he passes through war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq. The last episode he was in Bulgaria, where he inadvertently ends up staying at a trucker’s brothel.

Traveler or backpacker shows are a dime a dozen in the west, but what’s really interesting about this show is seeing it from a Chinese perspective, where budget travel is just starting to catch on.

Shanghai has a number of elevated expressways, and at night these are illuminated with bright blue neon lights.

For years people have been complaining about Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway and how much of an eyesore the elevated road is. Rather than spending billions tearing it down and making a tunnel, why not just add some neon?

Anyway, the effect is pretty cool, and driving under these roads at night always reminds me of Mute City from F-Zero.

Walking down Shanghai’s Huaihai Road this weekend, I passed by one of the many jewelery shops selling jade bracelets. When I looked at the prices of some of them though, I almost couldn’t believe it.

These bracelets were going for 680,000 RMB (or ~ $100,000 CAD); there was also a jade necklace on display for over 800,000 RMB!

Don’t get me wrong: I realize jade can be worth more than gold, and there is jade jewelery out there worth much more than this. It’s just the way these jade items were displayed so casually in very nondescript shop windows; the same way a 50 RMB bracelet would be displayed. It’s as if an impulse buyer walking by will see it and just say, “Hmm, why not?”

I wonder if you can bargain.

The other day I boarded the bus as usual and held my wallet up to the sensor, but there was no sound. I took the transit card (交通卡, jiaotongka) out of my wallet, held it up directly, and it still didn’t work. I tried a few more times, and nothing.

Turns out my transit card was completely dead. It’s not damaged and nothing happened to it recently – it just stopped working.

I’ve still got 70 – 80 RMB left on it, so I went to the metro station to find out what was going on. They couldn’t read the card either, but said I could leave it with them to be examined. In 10 days, if they can salvage the information from the card based, they’ll issue me a new card with the balance from the previous one.

But if they can’t? I’m completely out of luck – all they’ll give me is a new card with a 0 RMB balance.

If I’m out 70 RMB, that sucks but I’m sure I’ll survive… but I’ve seen* people that carry balances of hundreds of RMB on their cards or more. Knowing now that if your card gets lost or messed up some how you could lose it all, I’m never going to carry a balance of over 50 RMB again!

* When someone swipes their card at the turnstile or on the bus, their card balance appears on the screen and is visible to anyone else around. In the case of senior citizens, when their discounted card is swiped on the bus a voice blurts out “老人卡!” (or lao ren ka, literally ‘old person card’). China never was known for its sense of privacy.

Browsing the iTunes App Store, I was really surprised to see how many apps there are that are solely dedicated to finding the nearest cup of Tim Horton’s coffee in Canada. Out of curiosity, I downloaded one free app, TimmyMe, and got the above results. I clicked on the first one expecting a long – but walkable! – 7697 km, but it turns out it was actually twice as long as first reported!

Here are the directions to the closest Tim Hortons from Shanghai’s Luwan district. Which for some reason happens to be in Whitehorse… :

Almost 16,000 km and 37 days driving, a lot of which is underwater! Also, I’m not the best with directions… but from China, I would’ve gone east instead of west.

I’m not too confident about that ’shortcut’ west of BC either! Let’s hope and assume this app works better in Canada…

This turnstile has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists, contact the turnstile vendor.

One of the perks about living in China is how cheap mobile phone service is here. Prior to using data features, on average I spent less than 50 RMB a month on my mobile phone.

Now I’m not much of a phone person (working in technical support made me hate talking on the phone), but one does need a phone, and in Canada I’d easily spend $50 a month. Most of the time I just used it to play that damn snake game.

Anyway, I thought I’d put together a list of stuff one might want to know about using mobile phone service here. I use China Mobile, so all this information is based on that, and is relevant to Shanghai.

Purchasing a mobile phone

Virtually every mobile phone you buy in China is unlocked. There are countless models to choose from, and nothing is tying you to any service plan. You simply go to a shop that sells phones, then go buy a SIM from a provider, and pop it in your phone. No ridiculous multi-year contracts with huge penalties for wanting out of them. You know, how it should be everywhere.

Phones prices start from around 200 – 300 RMB and up, with used phones and phones of dubious origin costing even less. There are several phone markets across the city, but if you’re looking for a smart phone (especially iPhone) you can check out Metro City in Xujiahui. If you want a more traditional handset, there are several booths at Zhongshan Park that sell phones (although the area seems to be shrinking more every month).

Purchasing a SIM card + phone number

You can go to most magazine stands or convenience stores and purchase a SIM package. For about 70 RMB, it includes the SIM card and about 50 RMB of air time. You can also go to any China Mobile or China Unicom office directly, but for some reason you have to officially sign up, provide copies of your passport, your registration information, etc., and if I recall correctly, it actually costs more.

When you purchase your SIM package, you also get to choose from a list of available mobile phone numbers. As I mentioned before, some numbers are unlucky, and these – along with seemingly random numbers – are usually the cheapest. “Good” numbers that consist of a lot of “8s” (8 is a very lucky number in China) or have an easy to remember sequence of digits, can cost a LOT. I’ve seen some good phone numbers listed for 20,000 RMB. I’m sure the best numbers are even more expensive.

Customer Service

If you call China Mobile, they do have English-speaking customer service representatives, and automated voice menus (although the latter are extremely difficult to understand). Their web site also has an English version, enabling you to add services to your plan, check your balance, and see your monthly statement online. The site looks like it was designed 10 years ago and optimized for Internet Explorer 6, but it does work.

To reach China Mobile, call 10086, or go to their website.

When you sign up for any plan or service, or make changes to any plan or service, it only becomes active the following month. There may be a way around this that I’m unaware of. If there is, let me know and I’ll update this.

Signing up for a plan

A mobile phone plan does NOT equal being tied down to some subscription. It’s just what will be deducted from your pre-paid balance every month. China Mobile has a few plans, but the one I’m with is the “Easy own subscriber” plan, which for 16 RMB a month, gives you free incoming calls.

International long distance

I’ve mentioned this before, but if you make any international calls and you do not use China Mobile’s 12593 service (or Skype), you’re throwing your money away. It’s much cheaper than regular international rates, pre-paid international phone cards, and also much more convenient. You can also use it to save on long-distance calls within China.

To activate it, dial 10086, press 8 for English, and ask the operator for the “12593 plan”. Once activated, it costs 0.4 RMB/minute + a 1 RMB / month service charge.

Data plans

Unfortunately, data plans in China are not so cheap. Without a plan, it’s 10 RMB/1MB. As of this writing, China Mobile offers the following:

When you purchase a handset, they’ll usually enter your provider’s data settings for you. If they didn’t, China Mobile’s data settings are:

AMN name: CMNET
Username: (blank)
Password: (blank)

More settings information here (Chinese only).

If you use Twitter or other social media sites that are blocked in China, you may want to look into signing up for a VPN service.

Topping up your phone

You can purchase 50 or 100 RMB vouchers at most convenience stores or magazine stands, and top up your phone. Vouchers are valid for 90 – 180 days from when you activate them.

It’s worth nothing that when you purchase your SIM card, your number is valid as long as you keep a balance. If your balance is 0 or less, you have 90 days to top it up or your number becomes recycled and you lose it. Keep this in mind if you leave China for an extended period; after 90 days, you should either try to contact China Mobile and somehow transfer them money to top up your account, or ask somebody in China to do it for you.

You can top up your phone by calling 13800138000, press 8 for English, and listen to the almost incomprehensible voice instructions. Or, you can just SMS the following to the number 10086:

• CZ + [pin number of your pre-paid voucher]
  (CZ is short for “Chong Zhu” or “recharge”)

Also, you can check your mobile phone balance by sending an SMS with the following text (also to 10086):

• YE
  (YE short for “Yu Er” or “remaining balance”)

(I’m curious what other SMS China Mobile ’shortcut’ codes there are. If you know of others, please let me know.)

SPAM

Because there are so many mobile phones in China (China Mobile itself is the world’s largest operator, with more than 500 million subscribers), it’s no surprise that there is a lot of mobile phone spam and scams. The three most common forms I’ve encountered are:

• SMS messages all in Chinese that are not from China Mobile, but have big numbers in front of the 元 symbol. These are your typical spam messages. Do not reply.
• You receive a call that rings for only a second or two. These spammers are trying to mine active numbers/potential suckers; do not call them back. Ellen and I have phone numbers that are the same number, except hers ends in 22 and mine in 33, so when she gets one of these spam calls, I get it about 5 minutes later.
• Financial and investment services telemarketers: English speaking, foreigner telemarketers that get your phone number through expat websites and services. This isn’t exactly a scam, and from people I’ve talked to it’s may or may not be a bad deal, but still; it’s telemarketing, it’s unsolicited, and they get your phone number through sneaky methods. My opinion doesn’t change: they can piss off.

* * *

Aside from the pretty expensive data plans, using a mobile phone in China is efficient, cheap, and the service is pretty good. The thought of going back to Canada and being locked into another 2 or 3 year contract with outrageous monthly fees, horrible customer service, and overpriced, outdated phone models is not one that is pleasant.

PS: I see that the Canadian telecoms finally removed the mandatory $6.95 “system access fee” that they been screwing the Canadian public out of for years. Too bad they then immediately increased monthly service plans by $5.

The old place I lived in last year in the old French Concession area had an outside door to the courtyard that I didn’t have a key for. It would usually be unlocked, but a couple of times after nights out, it would be. In this case, it was either wait until morning for someone to open the door, or find a way in. So, after a few attempts, I figured out a way to climb the wall to get to the other side.

This involved scaling the 9 foot wall with a running start (there was a corner, so I did a sort of Super Mario wall jump to get to the top), stepping on the shards of broken glass put around the cement wall to prevent people like me from getting over, and then hopping off a nearby roof to the ground below. I often wondered if any neighbours saw, and what they would think of some tipsy foreigner scaling their apartment at 5 in the morning

There will be no doing that at the new place though! I just noticed this electrical wire that borders the building’s courtyard wall.

I’m not about to test it out, but something tells me it’s just some chicken wire with a sign put up to scare people off.

I’ve complained before about China’s notorious Great Firewall (GFW), which makes accessing sites like YouTube, Twitter, etc. difficult or even impossible.

For the longest time, I relied on free web proxy services. But as I mentioned previously, they are just not cutting it any more.

So, I started looking into the idea of getting a paid VPN (Virtual Private Network) subscription. After trying out the service we use at my company, I’ve decided it’s more than worth the cost.

It’s not as fast as surfing the Internet back home, but it’s so convenient you’ll forget the GFW even exists.

How it works

When you use a VPN service, a secure connection is made from your computer to a computer that is located somewhere out of China.

For example, let’s say you are in China and you are using a VPN service in the US. When you ‘turn on’ the VPN connection, any requests you make from your computer are securely sent to that computer in the US. That computer then makes that request over the Internet on your behalf, and returns the content to your computer through the secure connection.

All the GFW ever sees is that you are connected to some computer in the US – it does not see that you are connecting to YouTube or whatever – so it doesn’t terminate your connection.

The result is that you’ve got normal, uncensored Internet like you would have outside of China, and can access all of the sites that are blocked here.

Set up

Setting up a VPN service on your computer shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes, and only requires setting up a new network connection in your Control Panel in Windows or System Preferences on a Mac (if you’re a Linux user, I’m guessing you don’t need instructions on this:) ).

The company you subscribe to should provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to set it up, but it’s basically this:

• Create new network connection.
• Enter host name of VPN service.
• Enter your username, password, and then connect.

Some companies offer client software for you to install that tries to simplify this even more by providing you with an MSN-style window with a big green “ON” button, but it’s really unnecessary. That said, if you like to waste your computer’s memory and clutter your system tray/dock with unnecessary applications, suit yourself.

Access to regional content

One of the additional benefits of using a VPN is that you’ll be able access content that is only available to users in the region in which your VPN is located.

For example, a lot of BBC series are only available to Internet users that are in the UK. If you subscribe to a VPN service based in the UK (more accurately, if the computer you are connecting to is in the UK), your connection is technically coming from that region, so you can access all of that content that would normally be blocked. The same goes with TV shows in the US, and any other content that is restricted based on region.

So before subscribing to a service, you may want to consider where the computer you’re connecting to will be located.

Bandwidth allotment

Most services should not cap your bandwidth and don’t impose any restrictions on how much you download. That said, if you go overboard, they may suspend your account. As to what ‘overboard’ is, your guess is as good as mine. No service I’ve looked in to seems to advertise this, either for fear of being seen as imposing limits, or maybe just for the fact that it’s never come up. Either way, unless you’re some head honcho in the warez scene or something, you probably have nothing to worry about here.

Providers and cost

VPN service costs vary, but should be anywhere between $5 and $8 a month. More expensive usually means you’re allowed more concurrent connections. The two services I’ve tried so far are SwissVPN based in (wait for it) Switzerland, and My Private Network based in the UK. Both were relatively fast, reliable, and very easy to set up and use.

SwissVPN is cheaper, but unfortunately only allows you to establish one connection with your login credentials at a time. This really sucks if you have more than one computer in the home, or if you use your phone in addition to your computer to go online. Their recommendation is that you purchase additional login accounts at full price if you want additional connections. If they allowed at least 2 or 3 simultaneous connections, I’d highly recommend them. As is, I won’t be subscribing to them for another month of service.

Also worth noting is that I emailed them to inquire further about this and they didn’t respond to me at all, making me question what they’d be like to deal with if I ever encountered a support issue.

I haven’t had to deal with the support of My Private Network, but their service has been very quick and very reliable so far. They also have the added benefit of letting you sign up for either a UK or US VPN connection, or both. As for simultaneous connections, they apparently allow up to 7 at a time, which is more than enough for most people.

However, one annoying quirk I’ve noticed is that I need to always authenticate sessions and log in to YouTube when I try to open a youtube.com URL – this doesn’t happen with the other services I’ve used. I’m not sure why, and it’s definitely not a deal breaker, just slightly annoying.

Their service costs a bit more (£5), but if you’re planning on establishing more than one connection at a time, it makes sense.

It’s also worth noting that virtually all of these paid VPN services require payment through either credit card or PayPal. So if you don’t have either, you may be out of luck.

Is it worth it?

I guess that depends on how often you go online. But for me, at this price? Definitely. After forever dealing with timeouts, unreliable proxies, or going without access to a lot of the most popular western sites, a VPN service is something I wouldn’t want to be without. If you use the Internet a lot in China, and especially if you’re into social media stuff, there is really no reason not to sign up for one.