Independent cost-of-living research
An aggregator gives you a city's cost as one tidy index. It can't tell you whose income that number sits next to, what the low price quietly costs, or what your Tuesday would actually look like. That gap is what we write.
One of the cheapest cities we've measured to live in. Also the one where rent eats 49% of the local wage — the hardest to actually afford. Cheap is not the same as affordable.
Start here: the five kinds of "cheap" in this project →The four questions behind every guide
Three ways in
One deep-dive per city — the numbers, the history behind the price, and what an ordinary week there actually costs.
Browse all cities → Section · CompareChina's cities set side by side with their structural twins abroad — same shape, different rules for who gets to stay.
Browse all comparisons → Section · StudyOne flagship school per city, cross-checked against its own admissions materials — what it costs to actually get in.
Browse all universities →Now put your own number in
You've read whose income the price sits next to. The last question is yours: if you moved, would you come out ahead?
A calculator built on the same verified figures behind these guides. Choose where you'd move from and to, enter your take-home pay, and it does the one sum a table can't — your monthly gain or loss, and how many months the move takes to pay for itself.
Open the calculator →Start here
The one Chinese city that isn't cheap for anyone — where a single index number hides a dozen different lives.
Read the deep-dive → City · ChinaA porcelain town that keeps rent low on purpose. Here cheapness isn't decay — it's infrastructure, pulling makers in.
Read the deep-dive → Compare · China × USATwo frozen cities, one paradox: the more expensive one is where people actually have room to breathe.
Read the comparison → Compare · China × USAOne city is generous at the entrance and expensive at the exit. The other is expensive from the very first day.
Read the comparison → Study · ChinaA rule-based gate, in a city that rations almost everything else the same way — what it actually takes to get in.
Read the guide → Study · ChinaWritten by someone who actually has a degree from it — the one guide in this series researched from the inside.
Read the guide →Before you go
One short email when a new guide goes live — the real numbers, and the life behind them. Written by someone who lives in China and does the math in yuan.
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Who writes this
A number means nothing until you know whose income it sits next to.
That's a habit from 25 years in financial management. Living Cost Laboratory is written by Lin Hai — a Chinese reader doing the math on these cities from the inside, in Chinese sources and local prices, then in dollars.
Every guide tells you which kind you're reading: a city lived in, a city visited, or a city researched only from a distance. Perspective is stated, never faked.
AI helps with the work, not the judgment. The observations, the arguments, and any mistakes are the author's own. More about the method →