I've been all three here in Shanghai: rented a desk, rented an office and actually worked for Wework. For a non-tech freelancer, it's a good place to be: compa

I've been all three here in Shanghai: rented a desk, rented an office and actually worked for Wework. For a non-tech freelancer, it's a good place to be: comparably high-level people, decent free coffee and beers. For a tech freelancer "community area" tends to be extremely noisy, with annoying pop music playing loud enough to distract, dogs barking, cleaning ladies "chatting" to each other (in China chatting is usually a 90 dB+ affair). During lunch, everything turns into eating surfaces as people here are accustomed to getting food delivered. Some food is extremely smelly, which can be very distracting if you need to finish something and didn't eat yet. Offices are quieter, but they're really tiny, basic and dark, and very expensive compared to other market offers, at least in China. Shanghai has many managed offices, together with coffees, printers and set-up Wifi. Speaking of Wifi, all Wework locations in China I've been to have awful speeds, during workdays, it's sometimes a 30-50 KBps crawl, in evenings a bit better. Of course, you need to bring your own VPN to access anything outside China.