Etiquette & customs
The first thing to understand is that Chinese people do not expect foreigners to know Chinese etiquette, and are generally delighted rather…
Culture, etiquette & history
Travelling well in China is mostly about reading the room. This section covers the cultural logic behind what you will see — why people queue the way they do, why the banquet has rules, and what 3,000 years of history left on the ground.
Mandarin basics
What you need to know about the language Mandarin (普通话, pǔtōnghuà) is the official spoken standard and is understood nationwide, though…
Festivals & holidays
China uses the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes and the traditional lunisolar calendar for festivals. That is why Chinese New Year…
History in brief
The short version China's history is usually told as a sequence of dynasties, each conventionally understood to have risen, consolidated,…
Religion & philosophy
Westerners tend to assume religions are exclusive: you are one thing and not another. Chinese religious practice has generally not worked…
Tea culture
All true tea comes from one plant, Camellia sinensis. What separates a Longjing from a pu'er cake is processing — chiefly how much the…
How China Works
Most travel writing about China describes what to see. Very little describes the machinery a visitor actually interacts with — and that…
Economy for Visitors
This page is the companion to how China actually works, which covers the administrative machinery. This one covers the economic landscape —…
Art & Architecture
After a week in China most visitors have seen a dozen temple halls and can no longer tell them apart. The problem is not the buildings; it…
Ethnic Minorities
Travel in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia or the Tibetan areas and you will meet a China that does not match…
Literature & Film
The art and architecture pillar covers how to look at things. This one covers what to read and watch first, and — more usefully — where the…
Massage and bodywork
Western visitors tend to arrive with one mental category — massage as a spa treatment, booked, expensive, quiet, faintly indulgent. China…
Sacred mountains
Chinese mountains are not sacred in a vague scenic sense. Nine of them are sacred in a specific, systematised, administratively recorded…
Opera & performance
"Chinese opera" is a category, not a work — the way "European theatre" is. China has hundreds of regional operatic forms, distinguished by…
Lucky numbers
Our own position on Chinese taboos is that most published lists pad them out with things nobody observes. That holds. Numbers are the…
Heritage protection
"Is this actually old?" is the question that follows visitors around China, and this site answers it constantly — Mutianyu is restored,…
Temples and money
The etiquette side of visiting a Chinese temple is straightforward and this site already sets it out. The money side is not covered…
Hanfu and photoshoots
Walk into the old quarter of Luoyang on any evening, or through Xi'an's Tang-themed streets after dark, and a large share of the people…
KTV and karaoke
If a Chinese colleague or new friend suggests an evening out, there is a good chance it ends in a KTV — and if your mental image is a pub…
Going to the cinema
A Chinese multiplex is modern, enormous, comfortable and cheap, and going to one is a completely ordinary evening that almost no visitor…
Parks in the morning
Almost every itinerary on this site contains the same instruction, and it is good advice: be in a park early. Beijing's Temple of Heaven…
Mahjong
Chinese cities have a soundtrack, and in Chengdu a large part of it is tiles. It comes from teahouses, from ground-floor rooms with the…
Public libraries
Three pages here mention libraries. One lists them among the premises that need a hygiene filing. One counts them in a tally of Shenzhen…
Seals & chops
Two pages here touch seals and then move on. The shopping guide lists a carved stone seal with your name on it among the classic buys, in…
Chinese medicine
This site has one page on Chinese medicine without saying so. The massage guide opens by noting that tuina is one branch of it, alongside…
Herbal medicine
The massage guide opens by naming four branches of Chinese medicine — tuina, acupuncture, herbal medicine and dietary therapy — and then…
Weiqi and chess
The mahjong page here opens by admitting a gap: no page on this site covered any Chinese game at all — not mahjong beyond two passing…
Intangible heritage
This phrase turns up all over this site. Seal engraving is intangible cultural heritage. So are kunqu and Peking opera, acupuncture, weiqi…
Chinese zodiac
The lucky numbers page makes an argument this site stands by: most published Chinese superstition is padding, and numbers are the exception…
Blind boxes
A 盲盒 (máng hé, blind box) is a sealed box holding one figure from a known series. You are told the series; you are not told which figure.…
Lotteries
The mahjong page sets out what Chinese law treats as gambling and what it does to you. The blind box page records that an operator may not…
Internet cafés & gaming
The hygiene licence guide lists the seven categories of public place a licence covers, and its third category names games arcades alongside…
Tattoos
The drinking-age answer sets out a sentence pattern from the Law on the Protection of Minors: a seller must put up a sign saying it does…
Rubbish sorting
Ranks of four coloured bins stand outside Chinese residential compounds, in hotel corridors and on station concourses. This site has never…