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Access in China


Access in China

China has more Internet users than any other country in the world. Internet cafes (网吧 wǎngbā) are abundant throughout China. Many of them are designed mainly for gaming though and are not useful places to do business. It is cheap (¥1-6 an hour) to use a computer, albeit one with Chinese software. Internet cafes are supposed to require users to show identification (passport), but enforcement varies by region. Traffic may be monitored. It may be difficult to find an Internet-cafe with any service beyond simple access. If you need to use a printer or burn a CD, expect to search for the service, paying a fairly high price when and if you find it. The exception is tourist areas such as Yangshuo where these services are fairly readily available, though still at a price. In general: printing, photocopy, fax and other business services can be provided by small shops in every town. Look for the characters 复印 (fùyìn) meaning "photocopy" and you will likely be able to get the service you need. Printing costs about ¥2 per page and photocopies are ¥0.5 per page. These shops may or may not have Internet access so bring your materials on a flash drive. Some hotels provide access from the rooms that may or may not be free; others may provide a wireless service or a few desktops in the lounge area. Also, quite a few cafes provide free wireless Internet service ? for example, Costa Coffee, Italy cafe, Feeling4Seasons Cafe in Chengdu, Padan cafe in Shanghai, etc. Some cafes, especially in tourist areas such as Yangshuo, even provide a machine for customer use. A word of caution: as elsewhere, public computers and the Internet are not secure. Assume that anything you type is not private. Do not send extremely sensitive data such as banking passwords from an Internet cafe. It may be better to purchase a mobile data card for use with your own computer instead (these generally cost ¥400 and data plans run ¥10-¥200 per month depending on your usage). Wi-Fi is the least secure of all. If you are connecting to the Internet with your own computer, be aware that some places (especially college campuses) require you to use Microsoft Internet Explorer and to install dedicated software on your system and/or accept certificates in order to use their services. For Macintosh or Linux users, look into using a browser that can pass itself off as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, such as Opera. E-mail access through an Internet based service is very helpful to have. Examples (free) include Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, etc. But, keep in mind that almost all of these have co-operated with, and given personal information to, the authorities. As elsewhere, if your email provides evidence of a crime, do not be surprised if you get caught.

The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about China


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China Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

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