I’m an European student heading to Shanghai for an internship where debit and credit cards are rarely accepted. Locals recommend using Alipay for payments, but I have heard mixed results about compatibility with European credit cards. Some claim credit cards don’t work at all with Alipay, while others say they have zero issues. It was suggested to get a Wise or Revolut card to use with Alipay. What are your thoughts on which option is more privacy friendly or if there are better alternatives.
I have also been advised to get a VPN for China. While I self-host a VPN, I planned to add Mullvad because of its obfuscation techniques. Except it was recommended to get LetsVPN or Astrill, they said because they work the best in China and that is what everyone uses. What are your thoughts on which VPN I should get? Also any other suggestion or advise for my internship in Shanghai are appreciated.
Have fun, China is pretty great aside from all the cigarette smokers, but you might be used to that as a European
FWIW really depends where in Europe, in France and Belgium at least the law radically changed where
… so yes there are still some people who smoke but it’s a LOT less public, in Western Europe, than just a couple of years ago.
To be clear some people still ignore those laws but if you compare to just a decade ago it’s radically less popular.
Good to know. When I think of French people, smoking is one of the first elements that comes to mind.
Behaviors changed a lot but even then according to
that’s an incorrect stereotype. According to this dataset for example since 1990 to 2021 France always had lower share of deaths attributed to smoking than e.g. the US.
Source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-deaths-smoking from broader https://ourworldindata.org/smoking
Thanks, will do. I unfortunately despise smokers and where I live I luckily rarely see them anymore. So I am curious how it will be over there.
Yeah same, it’s easily the worst issue I have when in China. Technically people aren’t supposed to smoke indoors but many people don’t enforce the rules which is annoying. I’ve not noticed a smell in any rooms I stayed in but in the lobbies, halls, and especially bathrooms, you can often smell it. And outdoors every 5th person seems to be smoking
The only other issue I really have had is on long train rides people will be watching videos loudly on their phones, which is also against the rules. Train staff will sometimes tell them to turn it down but not as frequently as it should be.