Why numbers need context
A rent number alone tells only half of the story. A $500 apartment can be affordable for one person and impossible for another. The difference is not only the price — it is the income, the city, and the life surrounding it.
This site does not ask only "How cheap is this city?" It asks a harder question: What kind of life does this cost create?
How cities get chosen
Cities are chosen by how much there is to explain about them — not by population, and not by search volume. A large city with a familiar story can wait; a smaller one with a real economic puzzle goes first. That's why a porcelain town of under a million can matter more here than a megacity.
When a Chinese city is set against one abroad, the benchmark is picked for structural similarity, not nationality — two cities that solve the same problem, or fail the same way. It's how Xi'an ends up beside Rome, and a porcelain town beside Santa Fe.
Not every city here is one I have lived in or visited. When it isn't, there are no invented first-hand impressions: the piece is built from Chinese-language reporting and public record, with anything second-hand labeled plainly as second-hand. The bet behind the whole site is that readers don't need the author to have been everywhere — only not to pretend.
What each piece covers
- Housing. How much does a home cost, and how much pressure does it put on income?
- Daily expenses. What does ordinary life require — food, transport, utilities and everyday spending?
- Income. Who can realistically afford this city based on local earnings?
- Purchasing power. Is a city genuinely affordable, or simply inexpensive because incomes are lower?
- Lifestyle reality. What does living there actually feel like beyond a spreadsheet?
How each article is built
Every city article starts with public information and then adds context that can only come from understanding a place. The full account of what I gather and from where lives in Data & method; two habits matter most here.
- Evidence beats memory. Personal impressions are checked against published records and local reporting. When the evidence disagrees with memory, the evidence wins — and that disagreement is often the most interesting part of the piece.
- AI assists the language, not the thinking. I write in Chinese and use AI tools to help with English grammar, structure, and formatting. AI does not choose what to write about, does not evaluate cost structures, and does not invent personal experiences. The framework, the questions, and the analysis are mine.
Beyond city articles
The same approach extends to the other formats on the site.
Universities are organized by city, not by school. A page for every university in China would mostly duplicate what each school's own site already says. A page for every city, comparing the universities inside it, is the thing an official site can't give you — so that's the format Study uses.
Systems explains the infrastructure the cost numbers assume. A rent figure or a grocery bill means little without knowing how people actually get to work, pay for things, or find an apartment in the first place — so Systems covers high-speed rail, renting, mobile payments, getting connected and the rest of that layer directly. It's sourced the same way as everything else here: official disclosures and published data first, with my own firsthand use disclosed openly where it exists, and left out where it doesn't.
The calculators don't invent their own numbers. The should-you-move tool and the university cost calculator both run on figures already published and sourced in the site's own articles — never a separate, unverified database. Where a city's local wage data isn't solid enough to trust, that city is left out of the relevant calculation rather than filled in with a guess.
Data sources and limitations
Cost-of-living figures are estimates, not exact prices. Costs vary by neighborhood, season, household size and personal choices.
I use multiple public sources where possible, and say where a number is soft instead of pretending it's exact. I do not generate original data; I organize what is already publicly available.
Images and attribution
Photographs are selected to help readers understand a place. Images are credited to photographers, and captions identify when a photograph is illustrative rather than taken during my visit.
What this methodology is not
It is not financial, investment, tax, immigration or relocation advice. The goal is to provide context for thinking, not a single answer about where anyone should live.
It is also not a representative survey. These notes reflect one person's reading of public data and limited personal experience. They do not claim to speak for all residents, all foreigners, or all income levels in any city.
A city is more than its cost. The final decision belongs to the person who has to live there.