Internet connection refused without vpn

Hi,

I'm having some issues on my Macbook Pro (Early 2011). I'm currently living in China so I use a VPN connection to access blocked sites. Recently I have been unable to access any internet sites in any web browser unless I am connected to my VPN (Express VPN). Chrome says "connection refused" and safari says "unable to connect to server" or something like that. It's not that I am not connected to the internet since I still can connect to my VPN. I can search Bing in the bar where you insert website names (search bar?), and it will show the results on the websites but if I try to open any of them it says connection refused.

If I'm connected to the VPN it works fine, but sometimes I need to go online without a vpn.

My Laptop runs on OS X El Capitan 10.11.2.

Thanks for any help or tips.