Search “ExpressVPN China 2026” and you get the same screenshot: connected, then not, then connected for eight seconds. On r/Express_VPN a traveler in Hunan wrote that it worked once on hotel Wi-Fi and then looped for the rest of a two-week trip, on both a China Mobile SIM and home Wi-Fi. Another post from Shanghai: Express and Nord did nothing; an eSIM and a company GlobalProtect box worked.
Nord’s China threads look the same. Fine on cellular for one person, useless on hotel Wi-Fi for the next. The brand is not the story. The network is.
What “it connected” hides
A handshake that completes is not a usable session. China Mobile’s hotel and campus networks are aggressive about long-lived encrypted flows they have seen before. The client reports connected. The first request goes out. The path is reset. The client reconnects to a new node. You have now used three exits in a minute and still have no WhatsApp.
People then switch protocol inside Express (Lightway, OpenVPN TCP, “stealth”) the way you jiggle a key. Sometimes TCP holds longer than UDP. Sometimes nothing holds after 22:00. That is why the subreddit answers contradict each other: the person in Hangzhou at 07:00 and the person in Changsha on Mobile Wi-Fi at 21:00 are not on the same internet.
Brand lists go stale
LetsVPN was the budget answer until r/chinalifer declared it dead, then a week later someone said the phone app returned and the laptop did not. Mullvad works for a Beijing trip and fails for the next. Astrill is the expensive default until it is not.
If your buying process is “which name is winning this month,” you will rebuy every visit. Buy a client you can actually reach for support, with a desktop app, and a traffic policy that does not punish you for leaving YouTube on overnight.
What to run instead of a logo
You want a tunnel that is meant to stay up on messy last-mile networks, not a consumer app that was tuned for café Wi-Fi in Berlin.
Qiao is a Hysteria2 fleet with a Windows, macOS, and Android app on one account. The job is a session that holds, not a 94-country map. Paid plans include every location we operate, unlimited traffic, and no-logs / RAM-only servers. Torrents are blocked.
Meridian adds Smart Flow so China Mobile’s real problem — you need WeChat *and* Gmail — is not solved by turning the VPN off. Local apps stay local. The tunnel takes the rest.
If you are on a short trip and you refuse to think about any of this, a home-carrier roam or a travel eSIM still wins for Instagram on a phone. That does not help a laptop that needs Claude, GitHub, and a company inbox on hotel Wi-Fi. That is the laptop case Qiao is for.
Test it on the network you will actually use
A home fiber test in Europe does not predict China Mobile Wi-Fi. Do this:
- Install and sign in before you fly.
- Take the complimentary Meridian day in the app.
- On arrival, try the hotel Wi-Fi and the SIM, not just one.
- If it dies, use the signed-in chat. That message is a ticket, not a void.
Website purchases have a 7-day money-back window on the first paid order. After seven days the sale is final.
See pricing — unlimited traffic is on both plans, written on the page, not in a footnote.