Moving to China: A Guide for Prospective Expatriates (Guides for Prospective Expatriates)

So, you’re moving to China. You’ve been bombarded with conflicting advice, outdated blog posts, and absurd questions from relatives. This guide is your life raft in a sea of information overload. Forget the five-thousand-year history lessons and philosophical treatises; this is a practical, honest, and often humorous survival manual for the modern expatriate. It skips the fluff and dives straight into the glorious, chaotic reality of setting up a life in the Middle Kingdom, starting with the first boss battle every newcomer faces: the Great Wall of Bureaucracy and the bewildering quest for the correct visa and residence permit.Prepare to unlearn a lifetime of habits. This book is your cheat sheet for navigating a society that has sprinted a decade into the future. It provides an indispensable guide to the cashless world of WeChat Pay and Alipay, from opening a local bank account to paying for street-side snacks with a QR code. It demystifies the fast-paced and sometimes comical apartment hunt, decodes the three tiers of the Chinese healthcare system (from chaotic public hospitals to pricey international clinics), and provides a battle plan for conquering daily culture shock, including the dreaded squat toilet, the unnerving public staring, and the beautiful logic of the midday office nap.Beyond simple survival, this guide equips you to thrive. It offers a practical toolkit for learning "Functional Caveman Mandarin"—just enough to order a beer and direct a taxi—and explains the essential apps that will become your new best friends. You'll learn how to navigate the Great Firewall with a VPN, master the art of online shopping on platforms like Taobao, and understand the unwritten rules of the Chinese workplace, from the concept of "saving face" to the potent social rituals involving baijiu. It's your key to unlocking the social scene, offering strategies for making both expat and local friends and demystifying the all-important concept of guanxi.This comprehensive guide covers every facet of the expatriate experience, providing essential advice on everything from bringing your pet to China to enrolling your children in the right school. Discover the best ways to explore the country's vastness with its world-class high-speed rail network, and learn to survive the joyful pandemonium of a Golden Week public holiday. From the etiquette of gift-giving to the etiquette of the KTV microphone, this book covers the necessities of your new life, right up to the final, often overlooked chapter: the strange and disorienting experience of reverse culture shock when it’s finally time to go home. Read more