I’ve been in North America for a while recently, and since it’s been many years since my last extended stay, I’ve reconnected with many old friends and caught up on the world of overseas Chinese communities.
On top of that — for reasons everyone knows — emigration has become a hot topic again in China, both last year and this year. Every day, readers in my community ask me: at this particular moment in time, should they go out and see a new world?
So let me take this opportunity and talk about this properly.
Unlike my other articles, this one is highly targeted. If you’ve already decided to spend your entire life in China, you don’t need to read this at all.
But if you’ve ever had even the slightest thought about studying abroad or immigrating to another country — this article is essential reading. It could save you from a world of regret.
Part One: Let’s First Get Clear on What Immigration Actually Means for You#
This is an interesting topic, because when I’m overseas, my social circle consists mostly of upper-middle-class Chinese — solidly bourgeois. In other words, people who completed their initial accumulation of both capital and capabilities back on the mainland.
At the same time, they’re all fairly sharp, resourceful, action-oriented, and highly adaptable. So for a while, I assumed that when they chose to settle abroad, it was the result of careful, deliberate consideration.
But as we all entered middle age and started genuinely reflecting on our lives, I was surprised to discover that even among this group, the real reason they immigrated was essentially: they had no strong conviction about it — they simply followed relatives and friends abroad to “take a look,” and once they took a few steps, they couldn’t stop.
Put bluntly: for a period of time, people around them were hyping up immigration, saying the grass is greener on the other side. They themselves lacked any deep understanding of life abroad. On the surface it looked decent enough. And once they took that first step, they just kept going — the momentum carried them forward.
That’s not necessarily a crime. As I’ve said before, the vast majority of major life decisions most people make are decided in a fog.
But in the old days, when information was scarce and people could be talked into things by one persuasive voice — that was understandable. In today’s age of near-total information transparency, if you still don’t do your homework, that’s genuinely a bit foolish.
Getting back to the core of this section: what does overseas immigration actually mean, in my personal view?
Simply put: it’s a super pivotal life decision that will consume at least five years of your life while simultaneously requiring you to rewire your thinking, recalibrate your mindset, and rebuild your skillset.
Read that sentence a few times. I believe especially for those who are already living abroad, those words will hit like a bolt from the blue.
What do I mean?
I’m not exaggerating. Over the past few years, after coming into contact with a large number of newly arrived immigrants, I genuinely feel that most of them made zero substantive preparation. Yes, they bought houses in various places abroad — but in their core identity, they remain completely Chinese. They never prepared themselves for the internal adjustment that living abroad requires: “Now that I’m here, I need to adapt and optimize from within.”
The result is an awkward limbo: on one hand, the major decision has been made, and walking it back would be an enormous loss of face and a waste of enormous financial resources. On the other hand, immigration has actually narrowed their world — cut off from the vast soil of their homeland, yet unable to integrate into the overseas environment, they live in an uncomfortable in-between.
Honestly, I’ve never quite understood this situation. I’ve asked them, time and again: what exactly are you trying to get out of this? And I’ve never gotten a clear answer — always vague deflections. So let me try to untangle that answer myself.
Part Two: What Kind of Person Should Actually Consider Starting a New Life Somewhere Else — and What Preparations Are Required?#
No hedging. Let me say it plainly: in my view, the type of person who can genuinely consider going abroad is someone who feels that their natural temperament is fundamentally incompatible with the systems and structures of life in China — and who is therefore willing to let go of what they’ve already built, start fresh in an environment that suits them better, and force themselves to adapt.
Let me give a few examples.
Some people are naturally free-spirited and crave direct, uninhibited expression — through culture, art, and language — with an outgoing, expressive personality. They might do well to explore what the outside world has to offer.
Or perhaps you’ve firmly made up your mind that you want to master a highly skilled trade, live a decent, humble material life, settle down with a family, and have zero ambition for fame or status. Then yes, going abroad might be worth a look.
Or maybe you’ve already built a solid foundation of capital, have the right connections to make moves internationally, enjoy traveling the world, thrive on constant adventure, and care more about the journey than the destination — that type might also consider giving it a try.
These are, broadly speaking, the types of people I believe can emigrate and still live well — both materially and spiritually.
Beyond these types, I genuinely can’t think of any category of person for whom immigration is an absolute necessity — or any compelling reason to make such a drastic move.
Let me illustrate with an example. Not long ago, a middle-aged mother asked me: “Life in Canada seems really wonderful. I’ve noticed you often mention Vancouver, Master Chi. My husband and I are still young enough to make big moves — should we try relocating to Vancouver?”
I sent her three red-light emojis and told her to hit the brakes — hard.
Why?
Because the group I least recommend considering immigration is this: people who’ve already made it to the middle class in China, and then one day have a sudden impulse — drawn in by the scenery, culture, or lifestyle of some foreign place — and are ready to upend their entire lives to move there.
Once this group emigrates, I can say with full responsibility: 99% of them will be slapping themselves in the face ten years later. Not for any other reason than that I’ve simply seen it happen far too many times.
Here’s what I’d actually suggest: if you’re genuinely attracted to the lifestyle of a particular place, take a leave of absence, bring some savings, and go live there for a while. Quietly enjoy that life. Once you’ve had your fill, come back to China and gradually return to your normal trajectory of development.
Never go all-in on an immature impulse. Never burn your bridges. Never throw away everything you’ve built for a half-formed idea.
It rarely ends well.
Because here’s the truth: there is no perfect place in this world. Every location has its trade-offs.
For instance, if you see somewhere with birdsong and flowers, scenery so beautiful it looks like a fairy tale, a peaceful and unhurried pace of life — then without exception, that place will lack career advancement opportunities, be extremely inconvenient in terms of basic amenities, and getting anything done will require a 30-minute drive just to reach a small grocery store.
Or maybe you see somewhere bustling and advanced, the air practically humming with money, with a city motto like: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” Trust me — that place will be insanely competitive, have sky-high living costs, and as a newcomer without the advantages of locals, you’ll already be running half a lap behind with no realistic chance of catching up.
Or perhaps you see somewhere orderly and refined, with high civic standards — streets are spotless, no one curses, everyone greets you warmly and treats each other with genuine respect. You’ll quickly discover that this place is intensely exclusionary, the social pressure is immense, and while they’re polite to you as a tourist, the moment you want to settle there, you’ll face constant pressure to suppress your own personality.
If you’ve traveled and seen something of the world, you’ll recognize that those three paragraphs cover virtually every flavor of the “foreign moon is rounder” fantasy.
My point is simply this: there is no perfect place. Every location has its clear strengths and weaknesses. It’s only a matter of which environment you personally can adapt to.
Speaking from my own experience — longtime readers know I’ve been globe-trotting since very early on. At twelve or thirteen, I was already dragging a carry-on through major airports around the world, and that’s been going on for decades now.
So why did I ultimately come back to China?
Purely my personal view: I feel that in China today, virtually any city you can name has a near-perfect score when it comes to “infrastructure + livability.” Without spending a fortune, you can have almost every aspect of daily life handled for you. Transportation, delivery, food, clothing, housing — the four pillars of daily life — three of them are handled for you with remarkable ease, and at remarkable value.
Of course, housing costs are high everywhere in the world — no desirable place comes cheap. Take a look at rent and property prices in any major overseas city over the past few years — they’ve all been soaring.
So when people say life overseas is so comfortable, so serene, so focused on family — I genuinely don’t know what to make of that. Of course it is. You left behind your primary career, took a job that just gets you through the day, and because of the language barrier, you can’t really socialize with locals — so naturally all your energy goes to family.
But you could do the exact same thing in any Chinese city: take a basic job, have no social life, and you’d also be very “family-focused.”
Part Three: So Is Overseas Life a Disaster and China Dominates Everything?#
Note that I’ve never been one for extremes, or for tearing one thing down to build another up.
The reason I’m writing this article is that too many readers have been asking me this question lately — and most of them are middle-aged people with families and established lives. My concern is that they’ll make this decision too quickly and find themselves unable to turn back.
To borrow a phrase I’ve used before: immigration should follow the current, not burn your boats.
This is hard to illustrate with a single example. Simply put: when you feel that everything around you is naturally falling into place to support this decision — doors opening, things progressing smoothly on their own — then it’s worth considering.
Never force the current in the wrong direction. Especially when everything and everyone around you is clearly pushing back against the decision and you’re still trying to force it through — that’s when things will go wrong.
The most telling story I have on this comes from the past three or four years, all within the same social circle.
A group of loosely connected acquaintances — about seven or eight of them — finally decided to move to Canada. They formed a “reconnaissance team,” bought houses, made the move together.
Three to four years later, when I reconnected with them recently, nearly all of them were complaining that their quality of life had dropped sharply.
First: once they left, it became very difficult to maintain their businesses back in China. Their income streams gradually dried up at the root.
Second: a group of seven or eight people easily creates the illusion of “we have numbers — we can support each other.” But in reality, a group that small can’t sustain genuinely mutually beneficial long-term cooperation. Back in China, everyone had their own livelihood, so there were no problems. But abroad, with savings depleting and no new income, everyone started watching the money very carefully — all of them in their forties and fifties, finding it nearly impossible to build new careers. Tensions emerged, and what was once a united group became fractured.
Then, one by one, they started drifting back to China — only to realize that life back home was, in relative terms, far more comfortable.
Part Four: Every Endeavor Has Its Prerequisites#
Let me briefly cover what I consider the non-negotiables — the strategic goals you absolutely must lock in if you genuinely decide to build a life abroad:
• Fluent, natural spoken language ability — this supersedes almost everything else, even money itself.
One of the biggest disadvantages for Chinese people is a mindset ingrained from childhood: “I’ll only use a skill once I’ve reached a ‘good’ level.” This is wrong. With spoken language, there’s no trick to it — it’s purely about practice and the thick-skinned courage to just speak up.
Why is spoken language so critical? Simple: it unlocks enormous local social resources and creates vast life opportunities. Why do so many new immigrants get taken advantage of by long-established overseas Chinese? Because they won’t open their mouths, won’t compare options, won’t ask around. Leave that habit untreated and you’ll keep paying for it — it really is that simple.
• An open, inclusive mindset, and a calm, grounded emotional state.
Life after immigration easily triggers what I’d call “daily cognitive reconstruction.” It’s not that you’re wrong — it’s that something you’ve always believed may not hold up in the new environment. Many social rules that work perfectly in China simply don’t translate abroad.
I’ve evolved considerably in this area myself — especially socially. The way I engage is quite different in China versus overseas, because you adapt to where you are. The worst thing is someone who achieved modest success in China and then assumes their approach will work everywhere. That’s a guaranteed way to hit walls.
• Ideally, two highly specialized trade skills — these are your foundation.
I always joke with friends: foreign countries produce most things, but they don’t produce people. So anything involving manual labor is absurdly expensive. Can you afford it? Sure, but there’s honestly no need — picking up various trade skills, especially in repair and maintenance, is genuinely valuable.
Here’s a fun example: a friend of mine in Hangzhou built a very successful e-commerce operation — real, solid assets touching a hundred million yuan. He fell in love with Canada’s scenery and wanted to immigrate. He asked me what was the fastest way to integrate locally.
I jokingly said: “Weren’t you a furniture repairman before? If you don’t mind, roll up your sleeves and go blue-collar for a bit?” Not for the money — just to get to know the place.
And he actually did it. After six months working part-time in a wealthy neighborhood, he’d mapped out the entire local residential construction process — and leapt from that into becoming a small-scale local property developer. A fascinating story.
• Strong capital management ability — this is something I can’t elaborate too much on here.
Let me just say this: in many ways, China’s financial sector isn’t truly mature yet. Many product categories are thin, with limited options and low reliability. But abroad — especially in countries built on finance — there are genuinely interesting products and structures to explore.
Are there risks? Of course. A financial crisis can bloody your nose just as badly anywhere. But at least many underlying assets, and much of the real estate, are genuinely solid — proper weight, proper substance. The specifics vary enormously by country and region, so I can’t go into detail here. I just hope that once you’re actually moving through the world, you’ll make this a priority. Don’t let opportunity pass you by.
To close this out, since we’ve covered a lot of ground:
I hope you can appreciate that in many respects, China’s development is genuinely at the world’s leading edge — particularly in infrastructure and daily convenience. These things are easy to take for granted once you’ve grown accustomed to them, to the point where they feel like a given.
Conversely, why do the advantages of living abroad feel so striking at first? Because you haven’t adapted to them yet — and you haven’t yet experienced the corresponding costs that come with them.
Immigration is something that can shape three generations upward and transform your entire life downward. Please — think carefully. And only after you’ve spent real, personal time living in your prospective destination, make your decision.
That is the only truly responsible thing you can do for yourself.