VPN

And the colleague idea about the VPN seems to be good, I was able to find trips to Europe at better price buying from Europe itself.

You're fine to use local wifi. Just have a reliable VPN ready to connect if you're going to do anything financial or security related.

I believe you may want to invest in a vpn and pretend to book from a latam location. It will be cheaper. This is what I've heard.

i went there a few years back and just used my regular phone, downloaded a vpn before i left and it worked fine most of the time.

Just use a decent VPN that is known to work in China

From experience and try this out yourself when you look at a destination plus price it will give you a certain amount but let's say you just checking and haven't made up your mind, the next time you search it the cookies saved on your browser will remember your previous search and prices and will most likely upcharge you on that second price check even if it was just a few hours later. Again that's from my experience I could be wrong and other reasons why it would do that but the VPN is a loophole in a sense so that you aren't being upcharged just for not making up your mind when the site wants you to...test it out yourself