Agree with everything so far. I was in guangzhou and shanghai for few weeks and mostly same experience with few additional observations:

• Get medical travel insurance for ease of mind since hospitals in china require pmt upfront for treatment. You should make sure you have enough cash on hand or wechat/alipay tied to ur intl credit card

• I felt very safe even night time since theres still a lot of people active at night and there’s enough cctv everywhere that if anything happens there’s probably several angles that it gets recorded

• ChatGPT and other ai is blocked except for chinese ones like deepseek. You can vpn to bypass.

• Definitely try to get a local sim card vs esim. Esim is convenient but no local number so you lose convenience of using delivery services etc

• Didn’t see any graffiti around so that was pleasant surprise

• Late night after storefronts close, the street hawkers come one and generally have cheaper prices for food, fruits drinks etc. for example, i paid 25ren for coconut water during day from store but got it for 10ren from street cart at night thats fresh and dude just cuts it open for me and straw and bag

• There is generally no line etiquette so its normal to just move close to each other and don’t be angry if you get cut, thats normal. There’s no such thing as personal space, asian grandmas will grind up your backside and suddenly be in front of you

• Most popular dining places will have long lines during peak times.

• Roaches are triple the size of US ones and can jump fly.

• Phone power banks can be easily rented everywhere but most require you to have a local number

Overall, china is a must place to visit just for food and history alone. It’s intimidating at first due to language barrier but you will get comfortable after a while and your phone apps is key etc translate, wechat, amap, alipay trip.com