Working from home in China sounds fine until your neighbor’s renovation starts at 8 a.m. sharp and a drill eats through the wall behind your desk. That is when we started paying for a desk somewhere else — and found that coworking here has its own set of unwritten rules. TL;DR — the 30-second version:…
First time we needed a rental contract printed, we found the shop by accident — a narrow room with two big characters in the window and a humming Canon that smelled like warm toner. Ten minutes later we walked out with 40 pages, stapled, for less than a cup of coffee. Since then, print jobs…
TL;DR — the 30-second version You can do a print job in China entirely from your phone. Walk into any print shop (da yin dian — “print shop”), send the file over WeChat, say how many pages and which sides, and the whole thing costs a few yuan. The only habit worth building: turn everything…
Signing up for a gym in China takes about four minutes. Getting out can take four months. The gap is almost never the gym — it is the contract nobody reads while the sales tablet is in their hands. TL;DR — the 30-second version Memberships run from about 99 CNY a month at budget 24-hour…
TL;DR (30-second version) In most of China, the default answer to a broken thing is not a new thing. A phone screen, a zipper, a suitcase wheel, a lamp — repair shops fix these daily, usually in under an hour, often for less than the cost of lunch out. The real skill is not fixing;…
