Is there anything you wish you'd known about Beijing before you moved?

[zhouhaochen]

"Don't drink the water - even to wash your teeth.  (You can buy a water cooler for your apartment, and get the barrels delivered)"

 

I have been drinking Beijing tab water for more than 12 years whenever I ran out of bottled water and have had no whatsoever problems.....

The official government story is that the water is good and properly treated, however the pipes are old and so the water gets lead polluted in there, which means if you drink it every day for 20 years that is not good. If you drink it sometimes you are fine. For once, I tend to believe the government there but who knows. Not brushing your teeth with tab water is ridiculous though.

 

I think the thing mentioned on here the most, to make sure you choose accommodation that allows you to easily commute to work or even just get something short-time and then decide later once you know the city better is the most important. If you want to live a westernized life, you will want to be close to either Wudaokou or Sanlitun.

[Simon_CH]

1) Get a bike or e-bike!

2) Live close to work but also close to where your friends live/where they go out

3) Consider joining internations.com, meetup groups, couchsurfing.com etc, lots of Chinese on there as well and very easy to meet new people

4) Get Wechat asap and add people wherever you can, great to have a big network of people

5) Get an air purifier (can be cheap), it massively improved my sleep