Yes, xray is better. Forgot about that. I think there had been a couple newer ones.

The thing with gfw circumvention is that even older approaches work surprisingly often, as detection methods change and often detection depends on the amount of suspicious traffic. I had most success with a more conventional setup on a vps, but that was more for testing out stuff. Found commericial providers to be more reliable.

VPNs work surprisingly often from what others tell me. They only block these occasionally. I think astrill and express often work. Just know that the ones that work, probably have chinese govt access.

Yes, tor never works.

Look into shadowsocks, or just normal vpn.

Pandafan was quite reliable for me. You might also be able to diy with hk, sg or sk vps instances, but it was a lot of work and a misconfiguration will cut you off.

In EEng most positions in Germany are without mandatory teaching. Unless you want to, as you would need teaching experience to be eligible for a professorship.

Germany is actually really good if you have a full-time position, as the salary is somewhat comparable to a normal job, at least in CS/CE.