Review of Astrill VPN, a popular VPN in China

Astrill VPN, which was founded in 2009, for years it was one of the most popular VPNs in China because it was cheap and very effective at getting around Chinese restrictions. However, in 2017-2018, it was one of the targets of the Great Firewall of China, during which it stopped working for days or offered […]

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Making friends and networking in Asia: Internations and other useful sites

When in 2010 I moved to Hangzhou, in China, my excitement for the new adventure that was about to begin was certainly greater than the knowledge that I was moving to a city where I knew absolutely no one. If you add that I barely spoke Chinese and had just signed a two-year contract to

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How to Use Alipay in China for Foreigners – The Guide to Alibaba’s Platform

What is Alipay and how does it work? How to pay (or receive money) with Alipay Alipay’s other main functions Other interesting functions of Alipay Why choose Alipay? Frequently asked questions Banknotes seem destined to disappear in China: we’ve gotten to the point where even taxi drivers have begun refusing crumpled 10 Yuan bills at

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How to transfer money to China, Hong Kong, Thailand and other countries

How to transfer money to China, Hong Kong, Thailand and other countries cheaply, quickly and safely

How to transfer money to Asia – Index What is Wise (formerly Transferwise)? How do I sign up to use Wise? Why do I save money with Wise? Why with Wise the money arrives quicker? Is it safe to send money to Asia through Wise? In which Asian countries can you use Wise’s services? Can

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Review of VyprVPN – The Most Secure VPN for Asia

Over the past few years, we have been using VyprVPN in China to browse the internet securely and to access websites blocked in this county. During this time, VyprVPN has demonstrated that it is a fast, reliable, and extremely secure VPN. Below, we describe our impressions of this VPN and why we believe that it

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Enrollment Procedures for the Chinese Exams HSK, HSKK, BTC and YCT

Enrollment Procedures for the Chinese Exams HSK, HSKK, BTC and YCT

The first step for enrolling in all exams: Create an account on www.chinesetest.cn The first thing you have to do is go to the site www.chinesetest.cn; if you’ve never studied Chinese, look at the highest point on the top right of the page and you’ll see a listing of all available languages (简体中文 | English

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Study Chinese Beijing

Stories of the Poor – Zhang Xi and The Rat Tribe of Beijing

Zhang Xi, a young man from Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia, came to Beijing three years ago and since then has always lived inside a basement room on the periphery of the city. Young Xi, a theater and arts graduate, is forced to work as a traveling salesman and only rarely finds work in some

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Review of Surfshark VPN – An Alternative for China

Created in 2018, Surfshark is definitely one of the most promising VPNs at the moment. Despite not having been around for a long time, Surfshark has a broad network of physical servers across the globe, excellent security and privacy services and a broad offering of extra options, all at a very competitive price. Without a

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Best Dating Apps for Vietnam: Our Complete Guide

Best Dating Apps for Vietnam – Index Tinder YmeetMe Vietnam Cupid Badoo Bumble VietSocial Facebook Dating The online dating scene has exploded in the past 5 years, something that used to be tabu has become completely normal. Vietnam is not an exception and we’ve seen both international and local dating apps that are gaining more

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Best Dating Apps for China: Our Complete Guide

Best Dating Apps for China – Index Tan Tan (探探) Tinder Badoo Mo Mo (陌陌) Tencent’s QQ WeChat What should I do if a dating application is blocked in China? The online dating applications industry has literally exploded and companies receive funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars and are valued in the billions.

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Best Dating Apps in Hong Kong: A Complete Guide

Best Dating Apps in Hong Kong – Index Tinder Badoo WeChat Coffee Meets Bagel Bumble The online dating application market has grown immensely in the past decade and we’ve seen several new big brands popping up. At a start, people primarily used Badoo and Tinder, but we now see increased competition from companies that offer

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Best Dating Applications in Singapore: A Complete Guide

Best Dating Applications in Singapore – Index Paktor Tinder Mat & Minah Badoo Coffee Meets Bagel The online dating scene has risen fast in Singapore and nowadays we see both locals and foreign brands that have penetrated the market. Singapore is well-known for being a developed nation with tech-savvy users, so it’s not strange. If

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What’s Marco Polo Project? Interview with the founder Julien Leyre

World is small. And the internet is even smaller. In early February I joined the Hacking Chinese Characters Challenge. One of the rules decided by the guy that proposed the challenge, Olle Linge from Hacking Chinese (check it, it’s one of the best resources out there to learn Chinese), was that we had to connect

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Mandarin Companion: Novels in Chinese that even a beginner can read

Click here to discover what Chinese courses that we recommend at the moment! When Jared Turner, the co-founder of Mandarin Companion, sent an email to me, I’ve went to check his website right away. Why? Because, as you can read on the headline above, they offer an elegant solution to a difficult problem. No, I’m

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The first Chinese Newspaper Simplified: Interview with Sean of The Chairman’s Bao

Click here and get 15% of on all subscription plans using our exclusive discount code “sdctcb1523”! Today we interview Sean McGibney, Chief Marketing Officer of The Chairman’s Bao, a website dedicated to people that want to learn Chinese we discovered the past month. Sean, thank you for accepting this interview. What is The Chairman’s Bao

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My trip on the Transsiberian Express (Russia, Mongolia, and China)

Video: Transsiberian 2009 produced by Lluis Jané (yes, the one with long hairs it’s me). I’ve already discussed in a previous article how to plan your trip on the Transsiberian Express. Itinerary: Trans-Mongolian (Moscow-Beijing) with stops in Irkutz and Ulan-Bator. Goal: Reach Beijing in 23 days, that is before our return flight will take off!

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Pleco: Review of the English/Chinese Dictionary for iOS and Android Smartphones

Learning Chinese has become an increasingly common objective not just for future Sinologists and experts but also for neophytes in the world of business where it has become continuously more important. There are in fact an infinite amount of resources for how to best learn this language and facilitate learning for the user in this

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Sapore Di Cina About Us

The Writer Cao Wenxuan: His Life and Most Important Works

His life Cao Wenxuan, 曹文轩, one of the most-read Chinese children literature authors in China and among the most widely translated in the world, was born in the village of Longgang 龙港村 near the town of Yancheng 盐城, in Jiangsu Province, 江苏, in 1954. The family’s economic situation wasn’t the greatest, but that didn’t stop

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