What I Wish I Knew My First Week in China (As a New Teacher)
A foreign teacher coordinator in Tianjin shares what really helped during the disorienting first week of moving to China — SIM cards, WeChat, and getting through the overwhelm.
What I Wish I Knew My First Week in China (As a New Teacher)
In my first week in Tianjin, I got lost trying to find a supermarket. No Google Maps. No English signs. My phone data wasn't working yet. I stood on a street corner for twenty minutes, surrounded by millions of people, feeling completely invisible.
That was seven years ago. Today, I coordinate a team of foreign teachers, I've built a life here that I genuinely love, and I've spent a lot of that time writing down everything I wish someone had told me before I boarded that flight.
That first week, though, was hard in ways I didn't expect. Not because China is difficult to live in. Because nobody had prepared me for the practical reality of landing somewhere completely different and having to figure everything out from scratch, alone, in a city of 14 million people.
If you're about to make the same move, here's what I'd tell you before you land.
1. Get a Local SIM Card the Moment You Land
Not tomorrow. Not after you've checked into your apartment. Day one, ideally at the airport. Almost everything you'll need in your first days, maps, messaging your school, ordering food, runs through your phone, and being offline in an unfamiliar city makes every small task ten times harder than it needs to be.
2. Set Up WeChat Before You Even Reach Your Apartment
In most other countries, you can get by without a specific app. In China, WeChat isn't optional. Your landlord, your colleagues, your school admin, food delivery, even paying for things in person- all of it runs through WeChat. Get it installed and set up before you land if you can, so it's one less thing to figure out while exhausted and jet-lagged.
3. The Overwhelm You're Feeling Is Not a Sign You Made the Wrong Decision
This is the one I most wish someone had said to me directly. The disorientation of week one feels enormous in the moment, and it's easy to mistake that feeling for evidence that you've made a mistake. It's not. It's just the first chapter. Every teacher I know who's made this move felt some version of the same thing, and the overwhelming majority of them are still here, years later, glad they stayed.
4. Find One Thing That Makes You Feel Like Yourself
For me, it was a small noodle restaurant around the corner from my school. I went every Friday. It became my anchor, a small, predictable, comfortable part of the week in a place where almost nothing else felt predictable yet. It doesn't matter what your version of this is, a coffee spot, a gym, a weekly call home, find it early and protect it.
5. Ask for Help Sooner Than Feels Comfortable
Chinese colleagues, other foreign teachers, expat groups, and people here are genuinely happy to help, often more than new arrivals expect. In my experience coordinating teachers, the ones who struggled the most in those early weeks were consistently the ones who tried to white-knuckle through everything alone instead of asking. Asking early isn't a sign you can't handle it. It's the thing that adjusts faster for almost everyone.
It Gets Better, Then It Becomes Normal
The first week is genuinely the hardest part. Then it gets easier. Then, at some point, you won't even notice it happening; you stop surviving China and start actually living here.
If you're in the planning stages right now and want the practical, hour-by-hour version of what to do when you land, sorted out before you even need it, I put all of it into a free guide called First 24 Hours in China. It covers exactly this kind of week-one logistics: SIM cards, WeChat setup, getting from the airport, and the small things that make the first few days far less disorienting.
For the fuller picture, on top of arrival logistics, salary, visas, housing, and life as a teacher here long term, that's covered in Teaching in China: The Complete Insider Guide.
Have you ever moved somewhere completely new and felt that first-week overwhelm? I'd love to hear your story.