Offbeat China started with one traveller who kept wishing a site like this already existed.

Our founder, Alan Chen, has spent much of his life on the road — dozens of countries, most of them figured out one confusing arrival at a time. When he turned his attention to China, he found one of the most rewarding places he’d ever travelled, and one of the most misunderstood: brilliant to visit, but buried under out-of-date blog posts, contradictory visa advice, and tour pages that told him nothing about the actual place.

So he built the resource he’d wanted himself — a single, honest place that answers the questions a first-time visitor actually has, written for people who’ve never set foot in the country and shouldn’t need to speak Mandarin to plan a good trip.