Heading to China?
Get your phone, payments, and tickets sorted before you land.

Hi, I'm Nick, a Guangzhou (Canton) local.

China is safe and easy to get around once your phone is set up. Most first-time visitors don't run into danger. They run into small problems that can ruin a day:

• "Will my card work?" Many shops want an Alipay or WeChat Pay QR code, not a card swipe. Linking a foreign card works, but passport verification and your bank's text code can trip you up if you wait until you land.
• "Will Google and WhatsApp work?" Not on hotel Wi-Fi or a local SIM. A roaming eSIM gets around that on cellular data, but not every "China eSIM" works that way.
• "The tickets sold out before I woke up." Popular sights like the Forbidden City release tickets 7 days ahead at 8 PM Beijing time (early morning in the US), and you book with your passport.
• "My hotel isn't on the map, or it turned me away." English hotel names often return nothing in Chinese map and ride-hailing apps, so you need the Chinese name and address. Some small hotels also can't register a foreign passport, so they refuse you at check-in.
• "I can't read a word, and something just went wrong." A driver calls you in Chinese, a menu has no English, a metro gate won't open.

You don't need a group tour for any of this. My free guides cover the basics so you can do it yourself. If you'd rather have a local on your side, I can help before you fly and while you're here.

A bit about me: Former Nortel Networks (a Canada company) employee, longtime event decorator for Guangzhou's expat community, and English-speaking Mandarin & Cantonese tutor.