Hi, I'm Captain Mike
A local Chinese entrepreneur and lifelong traveler. I've been to every mainland province and 100+ cities. This site exists because of one question friends kept asking: "Mike, I'm coming to China — where do I even start?"
Why "Captain"? Because your first trip to a new country deserves someone who's sailed the route — friends started calling me that years ago, and it stuck.
I was born and raised in China, and I've spent the last decade running two companies here — so I know the country the way locals do, not the way guidebooks describe it.
Travel is the other half of my life. I've been to every mainland Chinese province and more than a hundred cities — the karst peaks of Guilin, the snowfields of the Altai, the morning fish markets of Zhejiang, the late-night lamb skewers of Ürümqi. Outside China I've explored 30+ countries, and the US keeps pulling me back: the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Olympic National Park, the Cascades), the Southwest's national parks (Zion, Bryce, Arches, the Grand Canyon), and the long curve of the California coast from Big Sur to Mendocino.
Why this site exists
For years, the same friends kept asking me the same question: "Mike, I'm coming to China — where do I even start?" Some spoke a little Mandarin. Most didn't. Every one of them hit the same walls: payments that wouldn't go through, menus they couldn't decode, apps they couldn't download, taxis they couldn't call.
Then the visa-free policy landed, and the walls started coming down. Forty-five-plus nationalities now enter China without a visa. The country I'd been quietly evangelizing for years was suddenly open to almost everyone I knew.
So I built No Worries China. Two companies and a hundred cities taught me how China actually works. The friends who kept asking taught me what trips actually need. This site is the answer I kept giving them — written down, kept up to date, and aimed at the questions real travelers ask when they're three days out and the guidebooks have already let them down.
The numbers behind it
What travelers say
Set up Alipay on the plane using the checklist screenshots. Paid for my airport taxi 40 minutes after landing.
— Sarah M., London
The QR-menu chapter alone is worth the $29. The waiter in Chengdu asked if I lived there.
— Daniel R., two weeks in Sichuan
When I'm not updating guides
I'm answering traveler questions on X @NoWorriesChina and making YouTube videos about the parts of China that don't make the brochures. If you're planning a trip and want a human to sanity-check your route, I also do 1-on-1 trip planning sessions.
Start with the free checklist
Twelve pages. Zero guesswork. See if China is for you.
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