Visiting or living in another country is always a difficult experience. From greetings to where to put the toilet paper (or even where to get the toilet paper), food shopping to apartment hunting there’s a wealth of information that we’d like to know NOW.

Now there’s a way. Send us an email with your question and if we choose your question our resident experts will answer it for you. Drop us a line at cs@eChinacities.com. Don’t worry, help is on the way.

---

Questions:

1-5    6-10    11-15     16-20    21-25    26-30    31-35    36-40     41-45 

46.  What’s the quickest way to get things sent to me in China?

47.  Why can’t I open some websites? When I try to open some sites it says it can’t find the page or there’s a connection problem but some of these are big sites!?

48. Whether quietly religious like Tony Blair and or blatantly like the American presidents, many world leaders are known to be religious - are Chinese leader’s religious?

49. Are there quiz nights in Beijing?

50. Is there anywhere to buy English language books in Tianjin?

---

What’s the quickest way to get things sent to me in China?

There are a variety of services that do express mail to China including Fed Ex and DHL. Regular post will be slower but if you send it by air it should arrive in about three weeks. No matter what kind of post your mom, or whoever is shipping you things uses, make sure to send them your address in Chinese characters for them to copy by hand or paste on the box. Packages sent to addresses written in characters tend to arrive a few days sooner than those addressed in Pinyin.

Why can’t I open some websites? When I try to open some sites it says it can’t find the page or there’s a connection problem but some of these are big sites!?

You’re encountering what many expats call the “net nanny” or the “great firewall of China”, in other words, government censorship of the internet. It’s hard to anticipate what sites will be blocked – sometimes it’s because of content the site has posted, or the name of the site contains terms that trigger censoring, and sometimes it seems completely random. The BBC and New York Times have been on and off over the past few years, as have blog and social media sites like Blogger, Wordpress, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Sometimes individual searches are affected – occasionally certain Google searches will come back as broken links. The good news is that there are ways around this, a search for “circumventor” and “proxy” should find you what you need.

Whether quietly religious like Tony Blair and or blatantly like the American presidents, many world leaders are known to be religious - are Chinese leader’s religious?

A slightly tricky question. Religion is certainly not banned in China, but the government itself is an atheist government and has stated that religion and party membership are incompatible. You certainly don’t hear Hu or Wen going on about god in the way Barak Obama does, though, and although Mao is on all the bills, there is nothing like “in God we trust”.

Are there quiz nights in Beijing?

Oh there are. Frank’s Pub, Paddy O’Shea’s, and Bar Blu all hold their weekly quiz night on Wednesdays. Probably deeming Wednesday a bit busy, the good folks at The Bookworm have decided to hold their new quiz night on Mondays.

Is there anywhere to buy English language books in Tianjin?

If you click your way over to Tianjin >> Living in Tianjin >> Service >> Bookstores you will find listings for two bookstores in Tianjin carrying English language books.

 

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.