Internet That Works for Foreigners in China

Being a Laowai (term for Foreigner in Chinese) that speaks almost zero Chinese is hard enough to live in a country where most of the people speak almost zero English, and it gets more difficult that the great firewall of china prevent you to ease your life as well! 

These are some of major websites, desktop and mobile applications that do not and do work in China without VPN and their alternatives with English user interface,

Search Engine

All Google services are blocked in China, even the websites and applications that use Google API like Waze, Youtube and Google Playstore are useless. For English speakers it is easier to use Bing. I use Bing all the time. It may not give the exact same result, but what you're looking for may be on the second page.

Email

Gmail does not work in China. However, "Sign in with Google" feature still works, but you can't receive or send emails. Outlook and Yahoo do the job pretty well.

Note

Google Keep users can switch to Evernote. I wouldn't mind. Evernote is an equally powerful app.

Accommodations

Thankfully there aren't much difference for hotel / apartment stay. My personal favourite, Airbnb still works in the mainland China only with different name, Aibiying (爱彼迎).

Map

Until now I still can't find a good map application that works in English. I don't really like Bing Map, and Baidu Map only works in Chinese characters. What I do is translate it to Chinese then paste it to Baidu Map. It's a two time work but at least it minimizes my chance to get lost.

Translator

As I said, anything that is related with google does not work, that includes Google Translate. Baidu translate (http://translate.baidu.com/) has the same function and does the job pretty well. But still lacks in photo scan feature and character draw. Also, open Chinese websites in Chrome browser, because translate page feature still works.

Music app

Spotify works. naff said.

Chat applications

Whatsapp works, Line does not. As you might've heard, Chinese use WeChat and QQ as a chat platform in mobile and desktop. 

e-Payments

It's sort of a surprise for me that most of Chinese shops now use cashless system, even the little food stalls in a small city. People here use Wechat Wallet and Alipay (Zhifubao). To use these you have to have a China bank account, you can add your credit cards (Visa, Mastercard) to the apps but you can't pay with them, so what's the use. Your local internet banking (CIMB clicks) works too if you want to access your bank account in your own countries.

Transport

The Chinese Uber is Didi. But to use it you have to have a registered Chinese number, it is useless if you just arrived to China for the first time and do not have an active Chinese number. And unlike Uber, Didi can only be integrated with WeChat Wallet and Alipay, meaning you can't pay with credit cards.

Have fun in China!