Adapt-to-China sets out to turn the fragmented, high-friction process of settling into China into one trusted, guided system.
A website that might help with your daily life problems in China.
The most useful things here often come from people one step ahead of you, the small traps they hit so you don't have to. A few are pinned below. Read them, then pin your own.
If you're settling here for months, check your phone before you come. A US-model iPhone (14, 15 and up) is eSIM-only and can't take a Chinese physical SIM, and mainland China barely supports eSIM, so you can't get a local number on it. On holiday I never noticed. When I moved here I had to buy a whole new phone.
Set up and do the passport verification for Alipay and WeChat in your home country, before coming to China. I did this with Alipay in the Netherlands and had no problems at all here. I downloaded WeChat after arriving and had a lot of problems with it.
Every time you move to a new address, or even re-enter China, register with the police within 24 hours. Hotels do it for you automatically. A flat does not. The online form takes five minutes and saves you weeks of paperwork later.
Everything here is free. The only thing that costs money is the week pass behind door number four.
Landing, payments, taxis, trains, takeout, paperwork, the seven things you need working in your first week, checked against 2026 rules.
Read the guides →A 30-second "how bad is it" check, plus the full step-by-step hospital guide as a free PDF, triage, booking, the counters, insurance.
Open healthcare →Real reader questions, answered in the open and anonymised, so you can see exactly how I work before trusting me with yours.
Read the wall →Just landed, and every day brings five new little problems? For 7 days you have me on WeChat: unlimited everyday questions, each answered with real screenshots, within 24 hours.
Get the week pass →A guide that's missing, a service you wish you had, an event or meetup you'd come to, tell me. This is anonymous: no name, no contact, just the idea.
I can't reply to these (there's nothing to reply to, no contact collected), but I read all of them, and they genuinely steer what I build next. If you want an actual answer, use the Ask page instead.