Nanjingculture & etiquette

Article 39 of the Exit and Entry Administration Law requires anyone staying outside a hotel to register with the local public security organ within 24 hours of arrival. Hotels file it invisibly; private landlords do not. Take passport, visa, lease and landlord to the neighbourhood pàichūsuǒ and keep the slip, because it is requested again at your residence permit application and every renewal. If you are living in university accommodation the international office usually handles it, which is exactly why people who later move into a private flat do not know the rule exists.

A Z visa or an X1 study visa gets you across the border and expires. Within 30 days of entry you must apply to the Nanjing Public Security Bureau's Exit–Entry Administration for a residence permit. Universities here are well drilled and usually run the process for their international students in a batch, but a researcher or a language student arriving off-cycle can fall through it. The deadline attaches to you, not to the institution.

Nanjing has one of the densest concentrations of universities and research institutes in China — Nanjing University, Southeast University, Hohai, the aeronautics and astronautics university, the normal university and dozens more — plus the Jiangsu provincial government. The consequence is that the foreign population here is weighted toward students, researchers, language teachers and academics rather than corporate expatriates. That makes the community younger, poorer, more transient and considerably more welcoming than Shanghai's, and it means the services built around foreign residents are university-adjacent rather than commercial.

Nanjing South to Shanghai Hongqiao runs in a little over an hour on the high-speed line, with departures every few minutes. Rents here are roughly a third of central Shanghai's, the city is calmer and greener, and the Yangtze delta's economic gravity still reaches it. For anyone whose work is delta-wide, or who is comparing a Nanjing offer with a Shanghai one, the arithmetic is genuinely favourable. What you give up is the depth of Shanghai's international job market and its direct long-haul flights.

Nanjing has been the capital of Chinese states repeatedly, most recently as the Republic of China's capital, and it was the site of the mass killing of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers by Japanese forces in the winter of 1937–38. The Memorial Hall is a major civic institution and the anniversary each December is marked with a national commemoration. This is not background: it shapes how the city sees itself, it is taught intensively in local schools, and it can surface in conversation in ways a newcomer may not expect. Reading about it properly before you arrive is a basic courtesy to the place you have moved to.

Nanjing is traditionally counted among China's 'furnace' cities. July and August combine high thirties with humidity that removes any evening relief, and the city sits in a river basin ringed by hills that trap the heat. Winter is short but damp and hovers around freezing, and like everywhere south of the Huai river there is no municipal central heating — you will heat one room with a reverse-cycle air conditioner. Spring and autumn, when the plane trees turn, are genuinely lovely and genuinely brief.