At home
If you've bought your computer with you, or picked one up here, there is a wide choice of internet service providers. Service is usually fairly good, though you can expect to get disconnected now and then. There are two ways to pay (ok, there are two ways to pay of that I know about).
- Through phone charges. These services advertise on bus stops and the subway. No registration or pre-purchasing is needed, you just tell your computer to dial the number on the advert (169 is a common one at the moment), and use the same number as both user-name and password. Couldn't be simpler. Charges are displayed on the advert and they're usually cheap, but can mount up. Watch out for introductory offers - you won't be told when the offer ends and the price rises which could leave you with a surprise when you hear how much the phone bill is.
- Buying a card. This is the one I use. You can buy internet access cards
at most places that sell IP cards and this works out even cheaper than paying through the
phone charges. I pay 36Y for one month's unlimited access, with a very cheap per-minute charge for the phone call on top of that
. The service is fairly good, it probably disconnects itself on average once
every two hours and the speed is average for dial-up. The access number, user-name and password are all on the card.
Broadband is available in some apartments, and you may be able to arrange it where it's not. However, I don't know anything about it, so I'm going to resist the temptation to bluff and admit ignorance. If you know about this, let me know.
internet Cafes
If you didn't come equipped, you aren't completely cut off. After a 2002 arson attack on an internet cafe which left a number of students burned to death at barred windows, all internet cafes in Beijng and many other cities in China were closed down for 'safety checks'. There was a lot of speculation that this was more to do with limiting internet access than safety. However, it is also hard to deny that internet cafes were not the most wholesome of places - smoke-filled, dingy, filled with teenagers screaming at each other as they blasted each other to pieces in their games of Counter-Strike, and a half-dozen English students practising their reading skills over your shoulder. The vast majority of them were unlicensed and therefore unlikely to adhere to safety regulations.
Over the last few months, a few internet cafes have started to open up again. They are nowhere near as common as before, but if you ask around you'll be able to find one, particularly anywhere where there are plenty of students. If you have trouble finding one locally, there is one (overpriced and slow) in the old railway station building at the south end of Tiananmen Square.
New regulations mean everyone who wants to use the internet in an internet cafe has to sign in - bring your passport.
web-based email
Almost everyone who travels now has a free web-based email account with a provider such as Yahoo! or Hotmail. I use and recommend Yahoo, as Hotmail seems to be significantly slower and less reliable. Most people I know who had Hotmail accounts have changed to Yahoo, and the others spend a fair amount of time cursing Hotmail.
instant messenging
Instant Messenging is throwing off the image of middle-aged men calling themselves Hotstud4U and trying to flirt with middle-aged women calling themselves Sweetlips19, and is an increasingly popular way to keep in touch. It's cheaper than phone calls, quicker than email, and once it's set up easy enough for you to teach your parents in an hour or two.
ICQ was one of the first and most popular, but for ease of use, I'd recommend either Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger. Both of these require either a Hotmail or Yahoo email address (see above), a 10-20 minute download and installation, and then you are away. You need to have both parties online at the same time, but you'd have the same problem with a phone call.