Getting by without Chinese

You can live in a Chinese city for a year on about thirty words plus a camera. What you cannot do is sign a lease that way, which is why this site keeps a translated copy of every listing and translates the chat both ways.

Before you arrive

• Install a translator with offline Chinese and download the offline pack. Networks are fine; app stores are the part that may not be.
• Learn to use camera translation on your phone. Menus, signs, contracts, washing-machine dials — this is the single highest-value thing on the list.
• Save a note with your address in Chinese characters, your compound name, and the nearest metro station. You will show it to a taxi driver in week one.

Where translation quietly fails

• Handwriting. A landlord's note or a market price scrawled on cardboard defeats every camera translator.
• Legal wording. A lease translated by an app reads fine and means something slightly different. Ask for a bilingual contract instead.
• Names of dishes. Machine translation of a menu produces poetry rather than food; photographs are more reliable.