Tunneling Under the Great Firewall?

An anonymous reader writes: I am travelling to China sometime in the near future, and needless to say as a Slashdot reader I am going to require access to the internet. The whole, unadulterated, unfiltered internet. Also needless to say, I am very scared of the government there(my lack of a nickname on this submission being testament to that). I will only be there for a few weeks, and will not be using the computer for a large amount of time there, so I don't want to shell out a significant amount of money to a VPN service. However I also do not want to be hindered by extremely slow speeds such as those provided by the Tor network. I have experience implementing web servers and work fairly often with Linux, however many of my friends who also face the same dilemma don't. So Slashdot, what would be the most cost effective(free is best!) method for me to subvert the Great Firewall during my travels while maintaining sufficient anonymity and enjoying sufficient speed?