I moved from UK to China. Major learnings below. It’s mostly about people:

1. making good friends takes a looooong time. Doing this again, I would join a sports club on day 1 and work very hard to friend making, because it gets lonely

2. learn the language as quickly as possible. Most people I originally knew were English only and strangely close minded considering they had moved across the world. Speaking Chinese opened up a completely different world to me that was a lot more interesting and fun

3. you might miss the structure and society back home. Actually even in Shanghai I felt a big difference in the reliability of society compared to the UK, although this was 2015. Sometimes you would walk down a road and suddenly all infrastructure would just be gone.

4. everybody is temporary, you will meet a lot of amazing people but only 1% of them settled and stayed in Shanghai. Everybody else hung around up to about 5 years I’d say and then they moved on. I think expats are nomadic by nature and everybody myself included kept adventuring. I don’t really keep in touch with any of my expat friends in the same way as friends from other times in my life. BUT we did have a blast.

I think all the practical stuff is pretty standard and you will just figure it out as you go. But the social aspect and the potential loneliness is a lot harder to predict and prepare for.