Myself and other half have been travelling around Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet and now Shaanxi the last 3/4 weeks and travelling across Asia for 11 months and have not experienced internet speeds this slow anywhere else in the world. What’s going on?
I know there are factors such as the firewall, throttling, VPNs etc but even when not using a VPN across all devices we are often unable to even load a website let alone watch or download a video.
Would love to know if there are any obvious reasons why? Everyone is on their phones playing games and stuff here, how is this happening on these speeds? It would be impossible to be a digital nomad…
The internet “exits” from China ISPs to other countries have always been notoriously congested ever since Internet became a thing. This is common knowledge among Chinese people who use foreign websites.
Now, if you heavily depend on foreign websites and Apps – YouTube, Google, Facebook, whatever – remember that they have zero servers within China mainland. All your traffic will need to compete with others that share the same internet exits. Being slow is normal. VPN does not help – you are sharing limited bandwidth with others anyway.
If all your network traffic is domestic, your experience would be much, much better. That means to access local Chinese websites and use local Chinese Apps.
(There are more to discuss, such as the potentially poor interconnectivity between different Chinese ISPs or even across different provinces, but probably that is too much for you right now.)
Also travelling around China for 2 months! Any Yunnan recommendations?
Internet wise, I have an esim (nomad) and my partner has a China unicom local sim. Hers works much better for local stuff, for foreign websites it’s probably similar.
I find I have to switch VPN servers for speed sometimes - UK ones seem slow so I only use those for home stuff, US is normally fine but sometimes seems to fall apart. I’m using Astrill VPN
I spend about 50¥ a month for 50gigs of 5G and unlimited 4G. I can get a few MB/s on non-vpn required sites. If you’re using a VPN, it’s possible that the particular server you’re using is slow or capped. Switch that. If you’re on an iPhone, sometimes being connected to both WiFi and cellular will cause an issue.
Yah it’s brutal, Chinese censorship makes the internet borderline uncrushable for anyone who isn’t Chinese, a phenonmen that just about no one in any other country has to deal with, as a foreigner in china, I will have a better experience in Vietnam than China with 1/3 the gdp and hdi
Dali ancient town was a highlight, hiking up to the gorge and going down the cable car. Also took a cab to Xizhouzhen and got e-bikes down the lake. Very nice! The town itself has some v nice quiet pockets away from the many tourists dressed as ethnic minorities.
Speed tests won’t make a difference the issue is that there are no local servers for the content you want in China, you need to fetch data from servers overseas.
Do it! If you have a tent you can make a big loop up to the Haba area as well.
I didn’t care for Dali old town. Too much poorly done reconstruction. Shaxi was much better. You can get a bus from Lijiang or carshare from Dali (ask your hotel)
Yeh it’s spectacular. It’s definitely not the hidden gem it may seem like from the information available on Western internet sources, it was very busy along the path and lots of construction in the villages to accommodate new domestic interest in hiking and roads now linking formerly remote villages. The hike is not really that hard or far, we did 1 night and to be honest that was enough. You could stretch it to 2 nights if you really wanted.
