Going back to China without a solid VPN is a nightmare. Tons of VPN's get banned in China, and the rest of them charges like crazy. Why don't you have your own personal private VPN?
I strongly encourage you to apply for a new account if you DO NOT have an account already. GCP gives you $300(+$54)credit, and AWS allows you to use Cloud service 1 year for free (some restrictions may apply). They are pretty much same.
The AWS free tier offers a 750 hours/month running time for all running VM instance(s). If all VM instances running time goes over 750 hours, extra fees will be charged. E.g. I kept a Ubuntu instance and a Centos instance running on AWS for a whole month. 2(instances) * 24(hour/day) * 31(day/month) = 1488 hrs. 1488 > 750, I paid an extra.
n = days in calendar month, alpha beta and gamma are daily average running time for each instance. If you are in free tire, you can only have ONE instance running 24/7. 1 * 24 * 31 = 744 hrs.
So keep it in mind, never have two or more than two instances keep running 24/7 unless you are Bruce Wayne.
Its all up to you to choose between Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Service. Personal speaking, I prefer GCP over AWS because of GCP's nicer UI. One thing worth mentioning is that you need to be aware of your GCP credit. Setting up a budget alert can prevent you from bankrupcy.
- Log into GCP, Click on "Compute Engine" -> "VM instances" -> "Create"