The China Helper
Your practical guide to studying, living and learning in China.
Most people arrive assuming friendship here will be difficult and find instead that it is easy in one direction and strangely hard in another. You will be invited to things within days. People will feed you, show you around, add…
The panic usually arrives about a week before departure, when someone tells you that Chinese food is pork all the way down. It is not. A country with this much Buddhist history, this much vegetable-forward regional cooking and a Muslim…
At some point in your first semester you will need medicine at a moment when you cannot read a single word on any box in the shop. That is the real problem this guide solves — not the theory of…
Staying active in China is easy once you know where people actually go, and confusing until you do. There are commercial gyms with monthly memberships, campus facilities that are free or nearly free, twenty-four-hour self-service gyms you enter with a…
One of the biggest surprises for students arriving in China is that winter is two different experiences depending on where your university is. North of the traditional heating line, buildings are warm enough that people wear t-shirts indoors in January…
Finding a flat is usually the first thing that makes a new city feel real — and the first thing that can go expensively wrong. The listings are mostly in Chinese, the photos are optimistic, and the person showing you…
In most countries, bills arrive as paper you grudgingly pay. In China, most utilities run through your wallet app, a chunk of them are prepaid, and the first time your electricity cuts out mid-cooking you will learn the system very…
China is, by most measures, a safe country to live in — violent crime against foreigners is rare and walking home late is unremarkable in most cities. The risks that do exist are different from what you may be used…
Why the first months feel hard, how to make Chinese and international friends, unwritten social rules, and where to find your community.
Set up accounts, pay, read listings, track parcels and collect packages from lockers — a beginner's guide to shopping online in China.