The reason you find it hard to find experiences is that there aren't a lot of us who stick around.<p>Across most of China the dominant foreigner is the young visitor, maybe as a student, maybe teaching English. There are also some old English teaching hold-outs, married people running F&B businesses, and a few traders (the imported wine merchant is a classic). Other professionals are rare outside of major cities and industrial areas, save occasional NGO/intergovernmental projects, conferences and trade shows. Travelers are pretty rare. To over-generalize, the type of media these people leave online is usually somewhere between "OMG squat toilet!" and "found a McDonalds!", to "selfie at [landmark]" or "[me picking up locals]".<p>I've done my time: 18 years here, and only hospitalized for salmonella three times! About half-way through I went back to the west for 2 years, then came back to China. I've also taken an extra year out. The short answer is the situation has been changing frequently. It's a lot more expensive now (cost of living), visa rules have changed greatly, the government is getting more aggressive at taxing foreigners, there are still few decent jobs for foreigners (outside of multinationals who generally fill them via internal transfer from elsewhere), and the domestic economy is in slowdown. It's a great place for hardware businesses, mostly due to supply chain. The manufacturing isn't the cheapest anymore. Legals and government are a pain in the ass.<p>My advice? If you want the language, you have to stay, and if you're going to stay, make sure to study a few hundred characters, and study basic Chinese history. You'll get <i>far</i> more out of your stay with no additional overhead after covering those basics. If you want a job from someone else, go elsewhere unless you bring experience and are in to career track stuff like management consulting, marketing strategy or some other kind of middle management where international perspective can add some value. If you want to start something in hardware, it's better to do it off-books and base yourself somewhere cheap near the border, eg. border-hopping Hong Kong/Shenzhen, or nearby in Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, etc.<p>Running a company here is a real grind. <i>Everything</i> is a hassle: government, banking, visas, lawyers, logistics, medical, education, internet, business culture/negotiations, etc. It's not cheap anymore either.<p>Personally I couldn't live in most of the country due to lack of nature, pollution, cold winters. I've lived in Shanghai, Qingdao, various parts of Yunnan, Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Don't get me wrong though, China is fascinating, represents and allows you to better understand a massive chunk of humanity, and has some of the best history, nature and food on the planet. Happy to answer any specific questions.