[Vlog] China Hacks: How to survive in China

Living in China can be surprisingly easy. But first, you need to figure out how everything works. After spending more than three months in China as a professor while learning Chinese, I discovered that my biggest challenges were often not academic, professional, or even linguistic. They were surprisingly ordinary.

How do I order food when I cannot read the menu?

Which app do I need to call a taxi?

How do I unlock a shared bicycle?

Where did my package actually go?

What do all these buttons on the washing machine mean?

And perhaps most dangerously: how do I explain exactly what I want to a Chinese barber? 😅

These are the small challenges nobody really prepares you for. So in this vlog from Chengdu, I share 8 practical survival hacks that made my everyday life in China much easier:

🍜 1. Ordering food You do not need fluent Chinese to start exploring Chinese food. Learning a few key words, using your phone intelligently, and not being afraid to point and ask can take you surprisingly far.

🚇 2. Getting around Once I understood the combination of metro + Didi + shared bicycles, moving around Chinese cities became remarkably convenient.

🛒 3. Shopping for everyday essentials Sometimes the challenge is not finding a supermarket. It is figuring out what the product actually is when every label is in Chinese.

📦 4. Surviving the delivery ecosystem Online shopping is incredibly convenient, until your first package disappears into a locker somewhere around your building and you have no idea how to retrieve it.

🧺 5. Doing laundry A washing machine becomes an advanced Chinese-language examination when you cannot understand a single button.

💺 6. Fixing your workspace If you are staying for months rather than days, do not treat your apartment like a hotel. A decent chair, desk setup, and ergonomics matter.

💇 7. Getting a haircut Never underestimate the amount of vocabulary required to explain a haircut. Photos help. A lot.

🧠 8. Take care of your body When living abroad, walking more, working differently, sleeping in a different bed, and spending long hours at an unfamiliar workstation can add up. Small ergonomic adjustments make a difference.But after solving these little problems, I noticed something else.

China can be extraordinarily convenient once you understand the system.

That observation also appears repeatedly in reflections from other foreigners who have lived in China: convenience, efficient transportation, rapid development, openness to new technologies, and highly digitalized everyday services are among the things many say they miss after leaving. That was also one of my biggest lessons. At first, the digital ecosystem can feel overwhelming. Then suddenly it clicks. The QR codes, mobile payments, Didi, shared bicycles, delivery services, lockers, online shopping, and metro systems stop being obstacles and start making everyday life easier. And perhaps that is the real survival hack:

Do not try to reproduce your life back home. Learn how life works locally.

Living abroad makes you a beginner again. You make mistakes. You ask for help. You learn a few more Chinese characters. You press the wrong button. You order something you did not expect. Then, one day, you realize that things that seemed impossible during your first week have become completely normal. That process of adaptation has been one of the most rewarding parts of my time in China.

Throughout this Year of China, I want to share not only China's universities, research, cities, architecture, and technology, but also these ordinary experiences of actually living here. Because sometimes understanding a country begins with something as simple as figuring out how to collect your package.

好好学习，天天向上 Hǎo hǎo xuéxí, tiāntiān xiàngshàng. Study well and improve every day.

What is the one survival hack you wish someone had told you before moving abroad?

🎥 Watch the vlog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Afe08XAOs

📚 Learn more about our research https://www.sbd.uliege.be/

💻 Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.shadyattia.org/#/portal/signup

🌐 Explore previous posts and resources https://www.shadyattia.org

🔗 Follow all my professional links, including WeChat 🟩💬 微信 https://lnkd.in/eN3xZhhZ

#EyeOnChina #China #Chengdu #LivingInChina #LifeInChina #ChinaVlog #StudyInChina #WorkingInChina #ChineseCulture #UrbanLife #DigitalChina #TravelChina #Research #SBDLab #UniversityOfLiege#ChineseLanguage #DigitalChina #YearOfChina