Sadly, it has recently been affected. The cyber crack down on wiki, news services, and other things means that sc has been difficult at times without a VPN.
Welcome to China!
Grab a VPN before you come. I recommend, expressvpn, astrill, and Nord VPN. It seems geographic and company dependent as to which service is best. For instance astrill works best for me in Beijing, express better in Shanghai.
Send me a pm and I can guide you if you need.
But you should be right to just pay a month for any one of these services. Expressvpn the punter's choice.
Good news is that this site remains unaffected.