China Life & Culture
Understand, experience, and live in China — practical know-how and the culture behind it.
🛂 Visas & Immigration (7)
💳 Money & Payments (4)
🏥 Health (14)
- Booking a hospital appointment (挂号)
- Buying Over-the-Counter Medicine in China: Pharmacies, Apps & Useful Phrases
- Buying medicine at a pharmacy
- Dentist, optician & glasses
- Emergency numbers in China
- Finding an international hospital or English-speaking doctor
- Health check-ups (体检): cheap, fast, thorough
- Health insurance in China: what actually covers you
- Is the tap water safe to drink?
- Mental health support
- Seeing a dentist
- TCM, massage & tuina: how to try it
- Vaccinations & prescription medicine
- Visiting a Chinese hospital as a foreigner
🚇 Transport (6)
📶 Connectivity & Apps (6)
🗣️ Language (3)
🍜 Food & Dining (7)
🔑 Housing & Renting (4)
🏠 Daily Life (11)
- About NihaoLife
- Avoid the holiday travel crush (黄金周)
- Bargaining at markets
- Bars, beer and nightlife
- Giving your address and directions
- Online shopping on Taobao and JD
- Pick up a hobby: horse riding, folk music, ethnic dance and more
- Receiving packages (快递)
- Sourcing & wholesale: Yiwu, Guangzhou & the Canton Fair
- Tipping in China
- Your first week in China: the survival guide
📘 General (1)
🏮 Culture & Etiquette (17)
- Business etiquette and meetings
- Chopstick taboos to avoid
- Dining etiquette: how a Chinese meal works
- Dragon Boat Festival (端午节)
- Face (面子): the key to Chinese social life
- Gift-giving etiquette
- Guanxi (关系): relationships that get things done
- KTV: karaoke as a social ritual
- Lucky and unlucky numbers
- Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节)
- Names and how to address people
- Red packets (红包): money as a gift
- Spring Festival (春节): the biggest holiday
- Tea culture and the finger-tap thank-you
- Toasting and baijiu: surviving the banquet
- Where to experience Hanfu
- Who pays the bill (请客)