Learn Chinese, Travel, Study or Work in China and Asia
This guide is a collection of resources and practical advice for living in Shanghai.
Since March 15, 2022, Vietnam has been allowing all types of travelers to enter the country without going through quarantine if they meet the following requirements:
Important: Given that regulations can change suddenly, it’s important to confirm these requirements on the website of your closest Vietnamese consulate or embassy.
What brought me to Kashgar, in Xinjiang, was the desire to experience the culture, cuisine, and architecture of this part of China, which has few resemblances with East China.
Forget chopsticks, red lanterns, and ideograms.
In Xinjiang half of the population belongs to the Muslim Uyghur minority. Also, there are other ethnic groups as the Kazakh, the Kyrgyz, and the Tajik. Here the Han people – that is the ethnic group that constitutes 92% of China’s population, – are the real minority and Mandarin is the second language (the first is the Uyghur).
Kashgar, an ancient oasis located between the Taklamakan desert and the Karakorum mountain range, was one of the busiest stops along the Silk Road. The European, Arab and Asian dealers of silk and spices used to meet here and exchange their goods. Today the Silk Road is gone but the markets are still there.
September is the best month to come to Kashgar: you’ll get to see the hami gua (the green melon typical of Xinjiang) sellers, the figs dealers and the bakers that prepare the naan on their portable ovens. [Read more…]
We’ve received and publish this article written by Ardita Osmani, a vegetarian who “survived” China
If you thought that being a vegetarian was difficult, then you’ve never been to China.
Long conversations at the table, debates, fighting with friends, relatives, colleagues, your grandmother, passers-by, cleaners, and waiters because you chose a dish without meat will seem like a sweet, far-off memory if you should decide to live in China for awhile.
I might seem apocalyptic but yes, China is anything but “vegetarian friendly” and you definitely can’t expect the same Western comforts of detailed descriptions of ingredients or understanding on the part of those who bring your food or take your order, when you specify in capital letters “no meat in my dish”. But you shouldn’t renounce that wonderful Asian world for this reason, nor its culinary delicacies.
The heroine of this adventure.
Today we republish this old, great interview!
Pietro contacted me a couple of weeks ago because he’s playing with the idea of moving to China. In one of the emails that we exchanged he told me that last year he traveled from Italy to Mongolia by Fiat Panda.
Wait, wait…
…in Mongolia with a Panda?
I got curious and asked him some more questions. He even wrote a short book about its adventure (you can download the pdf of the book here but is only in Italian).
This interview is the result of our discussion (don’t blame Pietro for the English, I translated from Italian both my question and his answers). [Read more…]
Today we’re interviewing Luca Stanga, who has a rather interesting story to tell us since he teaches English in China on a work visa, which shows that such an objective is not impossible for those who aren’t born into an English-speaking country so long as they have the right skills!
Luca, what work do you do in China and when did you get there?
I work at an English private school for children in Xi’an. The school is a franchise run by the company Education First. I work in the afternoons and on weekends since in the mornings the students attend public school. My work can be subdivided into three areas: lesson planning, teaching and extra activities to promote the institute.
Planning lessons takes time and imagination, but supplementary material is provided and you can always ask for advice from colleagues or the director of studies. There are about 12 to 14 students in a class, and in my case, the ages vary between 3 and 10 years old. Since the students are so young, each class is assigned a Chinese national teacher who gives support.
I’ve been working here for six months and am very happy with the professional experience that I’m developing, also thanks to the fact both the director and vice-director are professionals in their field and know their trade well. My contract expires in September but I’m thinking about signing on for another year because there are many elements of this company that I consider to be positive.
How did you find this job, and what is your educational background? [Read more…]
© Josh Summers
In this article I’m going to review Travel to China: Everything You Need to Know Before You Go, the new book (and ebook) written by Josh Summers.
Even though I have never personally met Josh, I know his website, Far West China, since 2012, as it’s by far the most comprehensive website for people that want to travel to Xinjiang Province (and that’s where I went in October 2012).
Since then, I have chatted with him a couple of times, and even interviewed him for SDC.
When he told me he published a new book about traveling to China, I went ahead and bought it on Amazon.com. Last week I found the time to read it during my trip from Ho Chi Minh to Hong Kong, and today I’m writing this short review.
If like me, you love quality Chinese tea but aren’t about to pay an arm and a leg to buy it from the fashionable boutiques in the center of Milan nor drive 200 km to get some, then this article should appeal to you.
For some time, I buy Chinese tea online on TeaVivre, a website created by a group of passionate tea lovers that live in China.
The prices, as you’ll see as I continue with the article, are more than acceptable, especially if you consider that we’re talking about certified tea, often organic. As far as shipping goes, once you place your order the tea will arrive at your house within 6-10 days (if you decide to pay 8.9 American Dollars) or 12-20 days (if you opt for free shipping).
To finish, TeaVivre offers a “satisfaction or money back” guarantee for 15 days.
Keep reading to find prices and characteristics of the most popular Chinese teas (note that the prices are all in American Dollars)! [Read more…]
I’ve always been fascinated by the Great Wall of China (长城, Chang Cheng in Mandarin). The first time I had enough time and money to afford an intercontinental travel I took a flight from Paris to Beijing and I went straight away to see the Great Wall section of Mutianyu.
This was in February 2008 and since then I’ve visited the Great Wall other four times, once per year.
One of the first considerations after deciding to establish a new business in China is to hire employees from the local workforce.
Many businesses are hesitant to hire foreign nationals who are not already in China because of the additional steps that must be taken, including obtaining a visa and sponsoring an employee.
There are many reasons a firm would choose to instead hire locally, here the top three:
For these reasons and many more, it is convenient to hire a local employee, when possible. In the past, employers were more likely to hire locally due to the lower expectations for a compensation package. Although that was true in the past, the cost of living has risen across the world and specifically in China, where employee wages are also on the rise. It is important to not have these expectations when entering the Chinese market now.
Although the process of hiring a local Chinese employee is much more straightforward than that of hiring a foreign national, there are still many considerations in deciding to go this route.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the key considerations when deciding to hire a local employee in China, including:
Pudong International Airport, Shanghai
When traveling in Asia, oftentimes you’ll have to pass through a Chinese airport. For some time now, if you have a stopover in one of the airports listed below, you have the option of visiting China (for a maximum of 3 or 6 days, depending on the city where you arrive, see below for details), without needing Chinese a visa.
Note that the visa exemption only applies under specific conditions, thus we suggest you to read the whole article!
Also, you can check this new tool released by the Chinese government: just enter your nationality and the city of entry (Beijing, for instance), and the tool will let you know if you qualify for the exemption and for how long (72 or 144 hours).
Keep in mind that even though we’re happy to respond to all comments, we cannot absolutely guarantee that you’ll get an exemption, since we are not in any way affiliated with either the Chinese Immigration Office (which issues exemptions on your arrival in China) or any transportation company.
In fact, if you’re traveling by plane, ship or train, it will be your transportation company that will evaluate if you qualify for exemption (and thereby let you get off the transportation you took to China without a visa).
In this article, I limit myself to sharing my own experience (I did in fact get an exemption at Pudong Airport in Shanghai) and giving a general answer to the most frequently asked questions regarding 72 or 144 hour exemptions.
P.s. Click here if you need a hotel in China for a couple of nights.
We’ve received and publish this article written by Antonella Moretti, a blogger and writer. Author of the novel “Parsley & Coriander: Life in China with Italian flavour“.
I’ve been living in China for six years, and in my city’s Italian community I’m considered to be a bit of a veteran. In this period of time I passed through all phases of the expat parabola, seen the incredible changes in the city where I live, and I’ve even started to buy things on my own on Taobao and have ordered food from Elema.
But it wasn’t like that in the beginning. If I think of how I was when I arrived in Suzhou the first time…
What advice would I give to someone, who like Maia the protagonist of my book, arrives in China a little vulnerable, young and inexperienced? What are the things not to underestimate when you live in a country like this? Let’s look at it in detail!
It might seem like banal advice, since everyone knows that the Chinese culture is different than the European! But encountering it for the first time can be quite tough.
For example you could get angry when in the middle of a discussion someone laughs in your face. In reality it’s their way of expressing embarrassment. Your exuberance could be quashed by the composure of the Chinese: their sense of humor is very different. Here nobody likes the loud and noisy joking that we enjoy when in a group. [Read more…]
Many assume that the best method of entry into China is a Free Trade Zone. This method of entry has been popular in China for several years. Although there are certainly many reasons to consider setting up in a Free Trade Zone, it is always important to analyze the benefits as it would apply to your company. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the most important topics concerning a Free Trade Zone in China:
Guizhou might not be the obvious choice for the average traveller, trust me it wasn’t my first choice either, but let me tell you this, Guizhou will soon become one of China’s most popular travel destinations.
This fairly unknown province offers some breathtaking scenery, proper street food and an interesting, friendly and diverse population. Furthermore, hiking up into the fresh green hills between the rice paddies is a great way to escape the crowds. Allow me to convince you why you should travel to Guizhou before everyone else does.
Together with three friends of mine, I wanted to plan a trip for the National Holiday in October. However, since the whole of China is on the move to get home that week and it was already halfway through September, there were no train tickets left to any of the popular travel destinations. We decided we didn’t want to stay in Beijing all week, so we checked which provinces still had tickets left.
Two weeks later, with very little preparation we got into a sleeper train to Changsha where we switched trains and got into a K train. If you know anything about trains in China, you would know that K trains are super cosy and usually full of 老百姓 (common people) from all over China.
Next to me sat a 60-year old woman and she started speaking to us in heavy accented Chinese. I had trouble understanding her, but she asked where we were going, whether we had booked a hotel yet and about a thousand other questions. When we answered that we hadn’t booked anything yet, she urged the girls who sat across from us to help us book a hotel in Zhenyuan, our first destination. [Read more…]
LingQ is a platform created by polyglot Steve Kaufmann, for the purpose of learning one or more languages in an interactive way.
What impressed me, compared to the many other courses that I’ve used or reviewed here on this site, is the level of interaction the platform allows, which offers sort of an “open system” for importing study material and using it the way you want.
For example, you can import an entire book in PDF, click on words you don’t know to find the meaning and pronunciation, save those words to a list of flashcards (or “LingQ”, as the platform is called), which you can then use to review the new words.
But let’s go in order… [Read more…]
Today we’re interviewing Gessica Cipriano, a classical dance teacher in Jishou, a city located in Hunan Province.
If you’d like to learn more about Gessica and her adventures in China, take a look at her YouTube channel.
Gessica, first of all thanks for agreeing to answer my questions. Many people ask us how to find a job in China, so let’s start there. How did you get them to take you on as a classical dance teacher at a Chinese university?
Since 2015 I traveled throughout the United States and a little bit in Germany to learn what type of work opportunities can be found abroad in my field, and I dreamed a lot about these two possible destinations. I never actually thought of China and knew nothing about it.
In Spring of 2017, the university’s own international office saw my professional profile online and contacted me about the classical dance teacher position that was open, asking me if I was interested in applying.
Originally I didn’t think I’d want to consider the offer, because even though I’m inclined to traveling and moving around, I never considered Asia, other than a far off fantasy of Japan, but only as a tourist.
However I believe that China literally “called” me in some inexplicable metaphysical way, because, despite my rational side’s unwillingness to accept the idea, my subconscious began suddenly experiencing sleepless nights, almost unwitting daydreams and fantasies about this far off and mysterious world.
So, during yet another sleepless night, I started looking online for more information about this University, in Jishou in Hunan Province. There wasn’t much information available, but despite that I decided to start the application process. [Read more…]
This article describes the WFOE capital requirements involved when setting-up a Wholly Foreign Owned Entity in China.
Chinese government reconsidered the WFOE capital requirements in China, which had been hardly restricted. A quick overview of the relevant changes can be found in this article. [Read more…]
The purpose of this guide is to show you how and where to book a hotel in China. If you’re interested on booking a hotel in a specific Chinese city, you can head directly to our hotel reviews.
Before going on, you need to be aware of these points:
I took a Tibet tour in 2010, so most of what you’ll read on this page comes from personal experience. First of all, though I started my article on Beijing Tours explaining in which cases you should take a tour and in which cases you shouldn’t take a tour to Beijing, when it comes to Tibet, things are different. Why?
Because nowadays if you want to visit Tibet, you need a “Tibet Entry Permit” and only a licensed travel agency can provide you with it. Also, you aren’t allowed to travel by yourself in Tibet: you need a travel guide. Therefore, the only way to legally travel to Tibet is to join a tour with a licensed travel agency.
If you’ve already decided to book a Tibet tour but you aren’t sure what travel agency to choose, we can suggest a reliable agency to you Click here to contact us and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
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