Alternative to Gmail when traveling to mainland China

Question

Overview

Are there other webmail services similar to Gmail that have a better performance in mainland China?

The last year I traveled to China and have some problems to access www.gmail.com. Sometimes the page takes too long to load, others the page didn't load completely and other it didn't load at all. Even the HTML basic view had similar problems.

In the future I maybe will have to travel again there and would to be better prepared.

Requirements

• Responsive web desing
• POP / IMAP access
• Import/export contacts

References

Websites blocked in mainland China - Wikipedia

Answer 1

This worked me a few weeks ago:

I ran Teamviewer on my pc back home and logged into it to check the mail using my home PC to grab it.

This has the added advantage that you don't have to change your email address.

EDIT

I think the security is fine. As the two pcs have to exchange keys. And you have a password to log into your account (there is a free one, which is what I used). And then you use the windows login to log in to your machine.

Answer 2

The Great Chinese Firewall blocks only connections which it can interpret. If you have an encrypted VPN tunnel, it can't interpret that and thus it doesn't block.

In your case I would let my home PC open, and used some home VPN solution to connect it from anywhere (also from my laptop in China).

Answer 3

Create a Outlook email account and forward all your Gmail emails to that mail address.

Go to Gmail settings and Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and add your new Outlook email address. So every email you receive in Gmail will also be in your Outlook Inbox.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957/?hl=en&authuser=0