Just so you know, China's internet is isolated to the rest of the world, like north korea, under the name of "the golden shield". Said to protect its citizens from harmful outside influence and other questionable reasonings. But they got their own websites that imitates the websites we're usually using so they're fine with it, though inferior in many ways. So no google, facebook, wikipedia etc over there. Only way to connect outside is VPN and many others. Too much hassle. The curcumstances are hard and chinachu is having a lot of problem to release it. But promised the accumulated chapters will not be forgotten and released in bulk when the time comes. So nothing we can do except for being patient.
I can attest to China's internet being wonky. It's not that VPN is 'required' per se, it's that without it accessing foreign websites can be so sloooooow.