[teekno]

I'm moving to China in a week for graduate school and have been asking myself many of these questions :)

In past trips to China, VPN services--specially Express VPN--allowed me to easily bypass the Great Firewall. That unlocks Twitter, FB, Google services, etc.

That being said, many services don't have a great experience in China. For example, Google Maps doesn't offer public transit or driving instructions. In these cases, using the chinese-based app (Du Maps) is just far better.