8 ms·

I'm a US citizen in the SF bay area, bootstrapping a web company by myself, and I'm heading out to Beijing this summer. PG talks a lot about reaching 'ramen pr

by garply 18y ago

I'm a US citizen in the SF bay area, bootstrapping a web company by myself, and I'm heading out to Beijing this summer. PG talks a lot about reaching 'ramen profitability' and there's no easier place to hit that than China. It's going to cost me about $400 a month to live (frugally), and if I needed to, I could teach English for about $60 / hr. Worst case scenario, a native English speaker could dedicate one or two days a month to paying the bills. There is no lack of tech talent in Beijing - from personal work experience, Tsinghua's tech alums are just as bright as MIT's or Stanford's. And you can hire a fresh graduate for about $20k / year. If you can speak Chinese and you don't want to take external investment, screw Silicon Valley, Beijing is a bootstrapper's paradise.

ced 18y ago
Is there any reason why Beijing is better than other large Chinese cities? I heard it was expensive and polluted. As for teaching English, do you have first-hand experience backing the (very high) 60$/hr figure? And what kind of visa will you get?
- garply 18y ago
  If you're seeking tech employees, Beijing is probably the easiest place to find them. It's China's tech hub - the best universities are there. Google and MS, for example, locate their headquarters right next to Tsinghua University (China's MIT). It's not expensive compared to Shanghai, but it is more expensive than some of the lesser known big cities like Chongqing or Wuhan. The pollution is bad in Beijing. That's the only real downside, from my perspective. Shanghai is certainly cleaner. I'm not sure about the other big cities, but I'd bet they're something like BJ in terms of pollution. I do have first-hand experience on the teaching money, but I also advertised to my students that I have a degree from a prestigious American university, so my sample data might be skewed. Tourist visa for as long as possible (fewer hassles), but eventually I'll need to switch to a business visa.
  - fortes 18y ago
    At least back in 2006, Beijing was more polluted than most other Chinese cities (a notable exception be Lanzhou, which is ridiculous). This is in part due to the huge population, but also due to the geography (there are mountains nearby that trap a lot of pollutants, like LA -- and the Gobi desert is close enough to blow a lot of stuff in as well). I lived pretty well there on about $700 / month (going out and with a 2 bedroom apartment).
    - wallflower 18y ago
      "The best way to understand Beijing's size is to visualize what Manhattan might be like without the Hudson and East Rivers. Beijing just keeps going. Manhattan is almost 23 square miles. Beijing is more than 150!... Given the size, you can probably imagine the traffic. It's like Los Angeles without interstates, at rush hour, in the rain. It's impossible to get anywhere quickly. I was warned before my trip that traffic would be worse than anything I'd ever seen, and it was. One evening, it took our crew nearly two hours to go about eight miles... Had the Olympics been held last August, the air quality in Beijing would have been in violation of the World Health Organization standard every single day..." http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=3453777 http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=3453777
- poutine 18y ago
  Beijing is not just polluted, it's absurdly polluted. Think taking on a pack a day habit and that's nearly the long term impact on your health. Not good. $60/hr seems quite optimistic to me. I have never taught english but the teachers in China I know typically make between $1-$2k USD per month depending on where they are and their experience. Also, teaching english here is something that most introverted geeks couldn't handle. You'd often be called to teach quite young children. Think standing up and leading a class of kids in silly songs and dancing and you get the picture. I've been in classrooms visiting friends while they do this and I could never do their job. Additionally what you need to keep in mind about China is that as a foreigner you're going to pay more than the locals just because you're a rich foreigner. How much more is going to depend on you, but you do prepare a premium. Doing basic things in China takes a lot of time, for instance paying your rent at the bank could take you 2hrs. Sometimes you'll try to do a routine thing and you'll just fail. That's China, people have a lot of spare time and they don't optimize for a fast moving convenience lifestyle like in the US.
liuliu 18y ago
Other than Beijing, I am trying to get the government permission to start a start-up paradise in Qinghai, a province in the north-west of China with a very large and beautiful lake inside. Beijing's air quality is bad and the rent here is high (not comparable to bay area, but other parts of this country). As the first step, I am building a data center in Qinghai:)
nebula 18y ago
It might be just my personal prejudice but I'm a little scared of China; mainly because of the fact that its own citizens don't enjoy freedom of expression, God knows what might happen to a foreign national. What's your experience? Are my fears unfounded?
- rms 18y ago
  You can say just about anything as long as you never question the ultimate ruling authority of the Communist Party of China. As long as you aren't going around encouraging subversion, you're fine. And the internet police won't care that you are VPN'ing your traffic, they only care about locals and those that are actively spreading subversion. So yes, it is a situation of "as long as you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear."
  - garply 18y ago
    This is exactly my experience as well. I'm interested in hacking and making money - I have no interest in mucking about with a few hot-button political issues that, frankly, aren't any of my business. So, easily-circumvented firewall aside, nothing that they do really affects me.
  - poutine 18y ago
    This is indeed true. There's nothing to fear in China, unless you're a total idiot. You're probably safer here than in the US.
- chiffonade 18y ago
  > I'm a little scared of China How can you say this when the Bush administration has just spent the past 8 years systematically dismantling your privacy rights and running a global kidnapping and torture network? Meanwhile, the US imprisons more of its population than any other nation on earth, especially for non-violent crimes. It doesn't scare you that you can be thrown in jail for years because you like to smoke a little weed? I think what you meant to say is "I'm afraid of Chinese people/China and I haven't really put much thought into this." Why don't you go there before you start getting afraid of it. Do you even own a passport?
donw 18y ago
I'm also going to Beijing, albeit for a short trip, this summer -- my business partner is there right now doing a year of study abroad, and I've been thinking along the same lines as you. Although I don't think you get $60/hr for teaching English, unless you mean the equivalent of that in local wages. That said, how do you plan on coping with the Great Firewall? We've had nothing but problems with connectivity outside of China...
- garply 18y ago
  You can target wealthy families, build relationships so that you get recommended to their friends, and market yourself as an upscale tutor. Re: firewall, I haven't found it to be particularly problematic. Just set up a server in the US and use an SSH tunnel. The speed can be slow, but you should be ok as long as you're not trying to stream video or the like.
  - donw 18y ago
    Aaah, 关系. :)
- poutine 18y ago
  The bigger problem with the Chinese Internet is that it's just slow. Foreign links to the Internet are often congested and will slow down incredibly at times. It sucks. The Great firewall is mostly just a pain in the ass. However, it's easy to get around. Use FoxyProxy and OpenVPN to a server in the US (or one of the hosted VPN companies). I end up tunneling all my traffic most of the time. Except for this post, let's see if it works... :)
alecco 18y ago
Same here, but back in Argentina after many years in Europe. * ZERO visa problems, we welcome immigrants from hunger or financial disasters, since 1890 :) * Pretty women who like foreigners (never underestimate this!) * Great nightlife (or this.) * Projected economic growth (recession instead of depression.) * After '01 default, the country works on zero credit already (no surprises.) * But infrastructure and culture is significantly closer to US/Europe. * The constitution is modeled after French and US. * Hardworking culture. * Affordable reasonably good health-care. * Ubiquitous free Wi-Fi (cafés, bars, neighbors.) * Hacker culture, many knowledgeable people around. Granted: * It is more expensive than China or India, but definitely within the ramen-profitable range. * Some places are not as safe as it used to be, but most of the country is very safe. For example where I am people leave cares with the keys on ignition when going to the shops. * Banks aren't reliable but you can keep the bulk of money in US or use safety deposit boxes. YMMV, of course... :)
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  How easy it is to live there without knowing Spanish? What are the safer parts of the country? Also can you please estimate the monthly expenses?
  - alecco 18y ago
    About Language. Part of the population speaks basic English so getting around at first is not that hard. This is more so in business and of course tourism. We are a country of immigrants, so people are very friendly and welcoming to foreigners. Your basic Spanish can ramp up in a couple of months if you take basic lessons. If you are really on a shoestring you can always place an ad offering "my English for your Castellano, conversation" ad on some hostel or hotel or just go to a pub! (this is trivial, everybody would like freebie conversation, this is a classic way for hooking up, too :) (BTW: the language is called Castellano, like the language you speak isn't called British but English; but it's the same thing.) There are no safe parts of the country as a whole, it depends on the citi or town you pick. The largest city, Buenos Aires, 13 million, is mostly OK if you follow some basic rules (e.g. don't carry expensive watches or too much money, and stay in nice parts of the city.) If you have a big budget, you can live in isolation within the very expensive neighborhoods. But beware, it can get as fancy as you can imagine and your expenses get to Manhattan-life level. There are many areas in this city. About security outside Buenos Aires, security is mostly very good. There are a few exceptions and again, in large cities you are OK as long as you stay within OK areas. And even in the not that common case of mugging, say you leave a house party at a friend's place, it goes like this: "give me your money", "here you go", you give them your wallet with $200 and the guy leaves. You lost u$d 57, big deal, yawn. Just always carry something over 50 so they take it and leave. Argentina is the 8th largest country in the world with an extremely varied geography. Have a look in Wikipedia. There is mountain, sea, jungle, prairie, desert, you name it. :) My advice is don't plan settling before checking out the options. ADSL 3Mbit is available on most big cities for $40-$70. The quality of the connection varies significantly. Budget varies a lot. Touristy prices are crazy high, don't fall into that. Temporary rent is also 50% more expensive. In BA an OK-good flat with 1 bedroom will go for u$d 350-500/mo and u$d 70-100 more for bills. In other towns you can get a beautiful house for that money. It all depends. Transport is cheap, just try to have always coins with you (trust me on this one.) Groceries depend on how fancy you live, for my spartan lifestyle is about u$d 55-80/week. Clothes and shoes are somewhat expensive, bring them. Same for skiing equipment and stuff like that. Computer hardware is mostly cheap, fancy things are a bit more expensive, like laptops. Something important: Don't use your foreign credit card. If you plan to stay, get a basic account with debit card (also, payments with local debit card get 4%+ refund from taxes.) And don't get too literal on statistics, in particular of the CIA "Factbook." For example, they say it is an "intermediate" chance of getting disease here. This is only applicable for people who come already in extreme poverty. For more info drop me an email.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
jasonkester 18y ago
Out of curiosity, have you spent much time in China? More important, do you speak Chinese? I've spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia, but only a couple months in China. One thing that struck me there was that it's one of the few places where you really can't get by in English alone. I mean sure, you can feed yourself and find places to sleep, but it's really tough to get to know the people because pretty much nobody speaks any English at all. I met some Chinese-speaking Americans along the way, and it was simply amazing to see what I'd been missing out on. Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. are much easier places to get by as an English speaker. They figured out long ago that nobody is going to learn Laotian, so they'd better start labeling things in English. China never had that problem, so it's still a bit painful to travel in unless you know the language. So yeah, if you know what you're getting into, then I bet you're going to have a great time. If not, I might recommend looking south a ways. Hanoi is quite livable for a SE Asian city, for instance. Regardless, you're on the right track!
- pageman 18y ago
  or come to the Philippines - most of the Filipinos are English speaking. Mor.ph is based here (they are trying to get some market share from Heroku - sorry pg) - you can incorporate in Hong Kong a pvt ltd to fast-track your corporate entity and have access to the a big pool of I.T. talent :)
- poutine 18y ago
  In China without some Chinese the basics such as transportation, food and shelter are a real pain. If you're going to spend any great amount of time in China you must learn Chinese, especially if you live outside of Shanghai and Beijing.
pageman 18y ago
as long as you don't run anything ghs.google.com - one of our startups just found out that Google is being blocked in certain parts of China :(
poutine 18y ago
Worst case scenario? Your numbers seem a bit wrong. $60/hr is incredibly optimistic as is $400/mo in expenses. Think more like $10-15/hr as an english teacher and $700-$1200/mo in expenses as a base. You will not be able to support yourself for a day or two a month, more like 20hrs a week and you're going to take a serious hit in quality of life from the US. Fresh graduates from good universities in Beijing and Shanghai will typically be from 2000-5000RMB per month ($4k-$10k USD per year). There are some nasty Chinese labour laws you should be aware of if you want to hire people. They are also not as good for software development positions in a startup as a graduates from Stanford or MIT, that's pure fantasy. Additionally you can't really set up a proper company in China as a foreigner the way you could in the US. There's a couple structures you can use but they take time to setup and have some tricky considerations. That being said, Beijing is good to bootstrap an Internet startup. I did it and it's going well. There's a whole host of pitfalls and it isn't all roses but still a great experience.
- garply 18y ago
  I've lived off of these numbers in BJ before, by splitting a 2 bedroom apartment and rarely buying anything beyond essentials. Aside from the pollution, I felt that my quality of life actually went up compared to living in the states because, although I go out to eat with friends very rarely in the US, I go out slightly more in China. Also, the women are very friendly :) We'll have to agree to disagree on the talent issue - I'm a Stanford CS grad and I've experienced no quality difference working with Qinghua CS grads. Can you explain what problems you've encountered regarding having a corporation in China? I'm also setting up a dessert cafe in BJ with a Chinese co-founder. We've registered it as a Nevada LLC and we have had to jump through a few additional hoops because it's a restaurant, but nothing related to the actual corporation part. And my software company is a Nevada S-corp - my understanding is that I'll pay taxes to the Chinese gov't for operating a company in their territory (I have yet to learn how much), but the first $80k or so won't be taxed by the US due to a trade treaty. And can you be a little more specific about the nasty labor laws? This is an area that I'm still looking into.
  - poutine 18y ago

by garply 18y ago

ced 18y ago

Is there any reason why Beijing is better than other large Chinese cities? I heard it was expensive and polluted. As for teaching English, do you have first-hand experience backing the (very high) 60$/hr figure? And what kind of visa will you get?

garply 18y ago
If you're seeking tech employees, Beijing is probably the easiest place to find them. It's China's tech hub - the best universities are there. Google and MS, for example, locate their headquarters right next to Tsinghua University (China's MIT). It's not expensive compared to Shanghai, but it is more expensive than some of the lesser known big cities like Chongqing or Wuhan. The pollution is bad in Beijing. That's the only real downside, from my perspective. Shanghai is certainly cleaner. I'm not sure about the other big cities, but I'd bet they're something like BJ in terms of pollution. I do have first-hand experience on the teaching money, but I also advertised to my students that I have a degree from a prestigious American university, so my sample data might be skewed. Tourist visa for as long as possible (fewer hassles), but eventually I'll need to switch to a business visa.
- fortes 18y ago
  At least back in 2006, Beijing was more polluted than most other Chinese cities (a notable exception be Lanzhou, which is ridiculous). This is in part due to the huge population, but also due to the geography (there are mountains nearby that trap a lot of pollutants, like LA -- and the Gobi desert is close enough to blow a lot of stuff in as well). I lived pretty well there on about $700 / month (going out and with a 2 bedroom apartment).
  - wallflower 18y ago
    "The best way to understand Beijing's size is to visualize what Manhattan might be like without the Hudson and East Rivers. Beijing just keeps going. Manhattan is almost 23 square miles. Beijing is more than 150!... Given the size, you can probably imagine the traffic. It's like Los Angeles without interstates, at rush hour, in the rain. It's impossible to get anywhere quickly. I was warned before my trip that traffic would be worse than anything I'd ever seen, and it was. One evening, it took our crew nearly two hours to go about eight miles... Had the Olympics been held last August, the air quality in Beijing would have been in violation of the World Health Organization standard every single day..." http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=3453777 http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=3453777
poutine 18y ago
Beijing is not just polluted, it's absurdly polluted. Think taking on a pack a day habit and that's nearly the long term impact on your health. Not good. $60/hr seems quite optimistic to me. I have never taught english but the teachers in China I know typically make between $1-$2k USD per month depending on where they are and their experience. Also, teaching english here is something that most introverted geeks couldn't handle. You'd often be called to teach quite young children. Think standing up and leading a class of kids in silly songs and dancing and you get the picture. I've been in classrooms visiting friends while they do this and I could never do their job. Additionally what you need to keep in mind about China is that as a foreigner you're going to pay more than the locals just because you're a rich foreigner. How much more is going to depend on you, but you do prepare a premium. Doing basic things in China takes a lot of time, for instance paying your rent at the bank could take you 2hrs. Sometimes you'll try to do a routine thing and you'll just fail. That's China, people have a lot of spare time and they don't optimize for a fast moving convenience lifestyle like in the US.

liuliu 18y ago

Other than Beijing, I am trying to get the government permission to start a start-up paradise in Qinghai, a province in the north-west of China with a very large and beautiful lake inside. Beijing's air quality is bad and the rent here is high (not comparable to bay area, but other parts of this country). As the first step, I am building a data center in Qinghai:)

nebula 18y ago

It might be just my personal prejudice but I'm a little scared of China; mainly because of the fact that its own citizens don't enjoy freedom of expression, God knows what might happen to a foreign national. What's your experience? Are my fears unfounded?

rms 18y ago
You can say just about anything as long as you never question the ultimate ruling authority of the Communist Party of China. As long as you aren't going around encouraging subversion, you're fine. And the internet police won't care that you are VPN'ing your traffic, they only care about locals and those that are actively spreading subversion. So yes, it is a situation of "as long as you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear."
- garply 18y ago
  This is exactly my experience as well. I'm interested in hacking and making money - I have no interest in mucking about with a few hot-button political issues that, frankly, aren't any of my business. So, easily-circumvented firewall aside, nothing that they do really affects me.
- poutine 18y ago
  This is indeed true. There's nothing to fear in China, unless you're a total idiot. You're probably safer here than in the US.
chiffonade 18y ago
> I'm a little scared of China How can you say this when the Bush administration has just spent the past 8 years systematically dismantling your privacy rights and running a global kidnapping and torture network? Meanwhile, the US imprisons more of its population than any other nation on earth, especially for non-violent crimes. It doesn't scare you that you can be thrown in jail for years because you like to smoke a little weed? I think what you meant to say is "I'm afraid of Chinese people/China and I haven't really put much thought into this." Why don't you go there before you start getting afraid of it. Do you even own a passport?

donw 18y ago

I'm also going to Beijing, albeit for a short trip, this summer -- my business partner is there right now doing a year of study abroad, and I've been thinking along the same lines as you. Although I don't think you get $60/hr for teaching English, unless you mean the equivalent of that in local wages. That said, how do you plan on coping with the Great Firewall? We've had nothing but problems with connectivity outside of China...

garply 18y ago
You can target wealthy families, build relationships so that you get recommended to their friends, and market yourself as an upscale tutor. Re: firewall, I haven't found it to be particularly problematic. Just set up a server in the US and use an SSH tunnel. The speed can be slow, but you should be ok as long as you're not trying to stream video or the like.
- donw 18y ago
  Aaah, 关系. :)
poutine 18y ago
The bigger problem with the Chinese Internet is that it's just slow. Foreign links to the Internet are often congested and will slow down incredibly at times. It sucks. The Great firewall is mostly just a pain in the ass. However, it's easy to get around. Use FoxyProxy and OpenVPN to a server in the US (or one of the hosted VPN companies). I end up tunneling all my traffic most of the time. Except for this post, let's see if it works... :)

alecco 18y ago

Same here, but back in Argentina after many years in Europe. * ZERO visa problems, we welcome immigrants from hunger or financial disasters, since 1890 :) * Pretty women who like foreigners (never underestimate this!) * Great nightlife (or this.) * Projected economic growth (recession instead of depression.) * After '01 default, the country works on zero credit already (no surprises.) * But infrastructure and culture is significantly closer to US/Europe. * The constitution is modeled after French and US. * Hardworking culture. * Affordable reasonably good health-care. * Ubiquitous free Wi-Fi (cafés, bars, neighbors.) * Hacker culture, many knowledgeable people around. Granted: * It is more expensive than China or India, but definitely within the ramen-profitable range. * Some places are not as safe as it used to be, but most of the country is very safe. For example where I am people leave cares with the keys on ignition when going to the shops. * Banks aren't reliable but you can keep the bulk of money in US or use safety deposit boxes. YMMV, of course... :)

kirubakaran 18y ago
How easy it is to live there without knowing Spanish? What are the safer parts of the country? Also can you please estimate the monthly expenses?
- alecco 18y ago
  About Language. Part of the population speaks basic English so getting around at first is not that hard. This is more so in business and of course tourism. We are a country of immigrants, so people are very friendly and welcoming to foreigners. Your basic Spanish can ramp up in a couple of months if you take basic lessons. If you are really on a shoestring you can always place an ad offering "my English for your Castellano, conversation" ad on some hostel or hotel or just go to a pub! (this is trivial, everybody would like freebie conversation, this is a classic way for hooking up, too :) (BTW: the language is called Castellano, like the language you speak isn't called British but English; but it's the same thing.) There are no safe parts of the country as a whole, it depends on the citi or town you pick. The largest city, Buenos Aires, 13 million, is mostly OK if you follow some basic rules (e.g. don't carry expensive watches or too much money, and stay in nice parts of the city.) If you have a big budget, you can live in isolation within the very expensive neighborhoods. But beware, it can get as fancy as you can imagine and your expenses get to Manhattan-life level. There are many areas in this city. About security outside Buenos Aires, security is mostly very good. There are a few exceptions and again, in large cities you are OK as long as you stay within OK areas. And even in the not that common case of mugging, say you leave a house party at a friend's place, it goes like this: "give me your money", "here you go", you give them your wallet with $200 and the guy leaves. You lost u$d 57, big deal, yawn. Just always carry something over 50 so they take it and leave. Argentina is the 8th largest country in the world with an extremely varied geography. Have a look in Wikipedia. There is mountain, sea, jungle, prairie, desert, you name it. :) My advice is don't plan settling before checking out the options. ADSL 3Mbit is available on most big cities for $40-$70. The quality of the connection varies significantly. Budget varies a lot. Touristy prices are crazy high, don't fall into that. Temporary rent is also 50% more expensive. In BA an OK-good flat with 1 bedroom will go for u$d 350-500/mo and u$d 70-100 more for bills. In other towns you can get a beautiful house for that money. It all depends. Transport is cheap, just try to have always coins with you (trust me on this one.) Groceries depend on how fancy you live, for my spartan lifestyle is about u$d 55-80/week. Clothes and shoes are somewhat expensive, bring them. Same for skiing equipment and stuff like that. Computer hardware is mostly cheap, fancy things are a bit more expensive, like laptops. Something important: Don't use your foreign credit card. If you plan to stay, get a basic account with debit card (also, payments with local debit card get 4%+ refund from taxes.) And don't get too literal on statistics, in particular of the CIA "Factbook." For example, they say it is an "intermediate" chance of getting disease here. This is only applicable for people who come already in extreme poverty. For more info drop me an email.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

jasonkester 18y ago

Out of curiosity, have you spent much time in China? More important, do you speak Chinese? I've spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia, but only a couple months in China. One thing that struck me there was that it's one of the few places where you really can't get by in English alone. I mean sure, you can feed yourself and find places to sleep, but it's really tough to get to know the people because pretty much nobody speaks any English at all. I met some Chinese-speaking Americans along the way, and it was simply amazing to see what I'd been missing out on. Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. are much easier places to get by as an English speaker. They figured out long ago that nobody is going to learn Laotian, so they'd better start labeling things in English. China never had that problem, so it's still a bit painful to travel in unless you know the language. So yeah, if you know what you're getting into, then I bet you're going to have a great time. If not, I might recommend looking south a ways. Hanoi is quite livable for a SE Asian city, for instance. Regardless, you're on the right track!

pageman 18y ago
or come to the Philippines - most of the Filipinos are English speaking. Mor.ph is based here (they are trying to get some market share from Heroku - sorry pg) - you can incorporate in Hong Kong a pvt ltd to fast-track your corporate entity and have access to the a big pool of I.T. talent :)
poutine 18y ago
In China without some Chinese the basics such as transportation, food and shelter are a real pain. If you're going to spend any great amount of time in China you must learn Chinese, especially if you live outside of Shanghai and Beijing.

pageman 18y ago

as long as you don't run anything ghs.google.com - one of our startups just found out that Google is being blocked in certain parts of China :(

poutine 18y ago

Worst case scenario? Your numbers seem a bit wrong. $60/hr is incredibly optimistic as is $400/mo in expenses. Think more like $10-15/hr as an english teacher and $700-$1200/mo in expenses as a base. You will not be able to support yourself for a day or two a month, more like 20hrs a week and you're going to take a serious hit in quality of life from the US. Fresh graduates from good universities in Beijing and Shanghai will typically be from 2000-5000RMB per month ($4k-$10k USD per year). There are some nasty Chinese labour laws you should be aware of if you want to hire people. They are also not as good for software development positions in a startup as a graduates from Stanford or MIT, that's pure fantasy. Additionally you can't really set up a proper company in China as a foreigner the way you could in the US. There's a couple structures you can use but they take time to setup and have some tricky considerations. That being said, Beijing is good to bootstrap an Internet startup. I did it and it's going well. There's a whole host of pitfalls and it isn't all roses but still a great experience.

garply 18y ago
I've lived off of these numbers in BJ before, by splitting a 2 bedroom apartment and rarely buying anything beyond essentials. Aside from the pollution, I felt that my quality of life actually went up compared to living in the states because, although I go out to eat with friends very rarely in the US, I go out slightly more in China. Also, the women are very friendly :) We'll have to agree to disagree on the talent issue - I'm a Stanford CS grad and I've experienced no quality difference working with Qinghua CS grads. Can you explain what problems you've encountered regarding having a corporation in China? I'm also setting up a dessert cafe in BJ with a Chinese co-founder. We've registered it as a Nevada LLC and we have had to jump through a few additional hoops because it's a restaurant, but nothing related to the actual corporation part. And my software company is a Nevada S-corp - my understanding is that I'll pay taxes to the Chinese gov't for operating a company in their territory (I have yet to learn how much), but the first $80k or so won't be taxed by the US due to a trade treaty. And can you be a little more specific about the nasty labor laws? This is an area that I'm still looking into.
- poutine 18y ago