@OldDouglas
It's not looking very hopeful, I'm afraid, but still waiting for final confirmation of the situation.
However, I thought I'd mention now the more general problems I experienced with communications when in China in 2014. My PAYG phone didn't work, which didn't entirely surprise me, but, despite excellent internet access in most places, at no point could I access any of my email accounts, nor could I view any news sites. So I found I could check my bank balance, and also discover what rare birds had been seen in the UK, but had no means of contacting friends or family. Though there was an organiser of the trip with us; his contract phone worked fine, and he had a VPN set up, so could have sent messages on my behalf if necessary.
I think the only outward communication I managed was a few posts on the Forum and a couple of PMs to fellow CCs. If I had realised this in advance, I could have got a family member to register on the Forum, so that we could exchange PMs, or I could have registered with Linkedin, which is/was another route for bypassing the censors. Obviously, if there had been a serious emergency, there were other options I could have tried, but do be prepared for communication to be difficult, and possibly have some strategies set up to make things easier.
