3 Tips before You Move To China

Do you have any tips on how to be safe in the US?

Hahhah. Thats the one we shoud be real worried about right?

Well this is a site dealing with expats coming or are living in Asia so any help is valuable on Asia is helpful right? JW

Hello jsbmeb!

Thank you for these useful tips.

Harmonie.

JSbmeb points are of course valid and not just for the Americans.

However, they are not China specific and maybe less important for Yanks in China than those on assignments to some other countries that are seriously allergic to Americans.

My three tips before moving to China.

1) Ladies buy clothes and Gents shoes before you come to China - the typical female figure is (to be polite) is a lot slimmer than the average American / Westerners. I might be a tad exaggerating but a US small (S) could well be an Chinese XXL. An shoes for guys tend to stop at 43 / 44 (European).

2) Get a VPN/Proxy Tunnel for Internet Access.

3) Learn to use chopsticks.

Hey Manlin,

Appreciate your posts on the site. Re technology, is it difficult to set up a home wifi and a VPN/Proxy Tunnel? I use Apple exclusively at home and am wondering if I can bring and use my equipment (Time Capsule, Airport Extreme, Apple TV) from the states. I assume so since all the iPad2's for sale in the states were shipped back to China by an organized group that bought up daily allotments for a couple of months in major cities here!

If I move to Beijing (highly likely) my kids want to use FaceTime to connect--is this possible?

Many thanks

Cardinalrules hi and welcome to Expat-blog.

Lots of people in Beijing use Apple products (not me personally) and there are quite a few official Apple Stores.

Re work arounds to access non flavour of the month (year / decade) sites best to get before you come.

And a small reminder China works on 220V not 110V. ie your US products will be fried the moment you plug them in. You need transformers or to ensure that your electronics / electrical appliance can work with 220V.

That brings up a question from me What transformer brand do you recommend?

Transformers have brands?

Thanks. I travel extensively (been to China a couple of times on business) and lived in Europe and South America so thanks for the reminder on power issues.

Cheers

say, for example, I want to go on Facebook to tell my friends I'm safe in China... but I didn't know how to get on Facebook becauwse I'm here already and didn't know about "vpn"... how would I do that? :s

I would actually say don't get your VPN software until you're in China unless someone over here recommends one. 

The reason being is China blocked a load of VPNs a while ago.  Some 'recovered' but others didn't (including the one I was signed up with at the time).  Unless you're here, you don't know which one works and which doesn't!

That said, I use Astrill, and it's been pretty good. If you pay a year in advance it's only about 5USD a month, which is as good as you're going to get for a decent service. 

A decent VPN should be able to be used on any decent computer, or even an Apple.   Astrill works on my Android phone for example.

Chinarensblog.com

[Edit] One other thing.  Watch out for signing onto Paypal from a proxy or VPN.  I did once, (sign on whilst using my VPN) and they suspended my account for a week whilst I argued with them because I'd signed on from 'somewhere else'.  Sheesh.