Ipad working in China?

alyth

Please bear with me as I am a technological fool and have googled for this information but can't really find it out.

I'm moving to China over the summer, and have an ipad - 3 I think. On my ipad I have things like BBC iplayer, TV catchup, youtube, and various other things that are easily accessible in Britain. Does anyone know whether if I connect to a wifi connection in, say, a hotel, I will be able to access the icons and what I've got on my ipad?

I know things like BBC/Youtube/Facebook are banned, but I have other things such as itunes U and i-books as well as a lot of Chinese language stuff.

Any information would be very gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

vaio

BBC likely won't work with overseas IP for copyright reasons so you'll need a UK proxy.

More generally, the Chinese limit what sites you can visit browsers like Tor are designed to get round this so maybe worth a look

Anne_Marie_2

You can try Filmon for ipad which enables you to watch many tv programmes, including some from the UK. No idea if you would need a vpn or uk proxy to watch in China though.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/filmon-live-tv-free/id576167616?mt=8

agrinnall

I have a friend who occasionally posts on here, he regularly travels to China and I'm pretty sure he uses his laptop a lot over there. I'll email him to ask if he'll look at the thread and post any advice he has.

Anne_Marie_2

Found this https://ultrasurf.us/ which may be of some interest.

dampsquib

agrinnall wrote: »

I have a friend who regularly travels to China ....

That'll be me then.

Not sure how much help I can be though, as I have no experience of i-pads, i-tunes, i-books, etc, but enough of what I don't know, what do I know, following my experiences?
I'm lucky to have friends who have been teaching in China for a number of years, and I have been visiting them each year with my laptop.
Generally, I don't find restrictions in China to be much of a problem. I guess someone who's life resolves around the stuff you can't access would have a different opinion.
I'm a Radio 4 man, and I find I can listen live to R4 over the web, and also access programmes via 'Listen Again' services. Generally, I can also access the BBC site for news.
As you are already aware, you don't get YouTube. I don't miss this, but occassionally it's frustrating when I click on a clip somewhere else, which is linked to YouTube. Another odd restriction, I've experienced in recent visits is IMDB. I'm baffled as to why access to the IMDB has been removed by the authorities.
My friends get most of their British TV from a dwindling bunch of unofficial download sites, but they also have a number of DVD shops nearby, where movies, concerts, TV series (UK & USA), etc, can be had for roughly a pound a disk. The choice is a small shop can be huge, and I particularly like the fact that the choice is so diverse that I encounter foreign films that I would have otherwise never have heard of.
Don't know how much VPN's cost. If I was living there I might have looked into such things. One Chinese owner of a shop I visit, showed me some clips on YouTube once. When I pointed out that I didn't think you could access YouTube, he pointed out that he had a 'VPN' - so it's not just foreigners, who use such things.
I'll be in China again shortly. If I encounter anyone with an i-pad, I'll ask them about stuff that doesn't work.

alyth

Thanks - I really appreciate your replies. I am going out there to teach, having visited the country for a number of years. I have Chinese friends out there who use facebook/youtube via a VPN so I'm hoping they can set that up on my laptop for me. I'm also Radio 4, I don't have a tv at home so I'm not so worried about watching programmes, and I have Tunelm on my ipad so I'm guessing I can access stations via that even whilst in China. It was more the stuff I've downloaded for teaching such as the British Council website as well as my ibooks and itunes U which use a lot.

I've got a British friend at uni in Beijing at the moment so I've emailed her asking the same question, but dampsquib in particular thanks for taking the time to post a reply which was really helpful.

dampsquib

No problem.
alyth - I've sent you a PM with my email address, just in case you think I might be able to help with something else.

buglawton

A percentage of sites on entirely innocent topics, e.g. tech sites to fix a computer problem, are uncountably blocked and you cannot even see what you are missing. The entire Google cache (which can be used to load pages much faster) is also blocked. It gets frustrating if you are of a curious mindset.

dampsquib

alyth,
Tried to reply to your PM, but got a message to say that you have exceeded your space for stored messages quota, so can't receive until you clear some space.