Travel China
like you have a friend
who lives here.
A physicist's AI guide to a country I know from the inside. Built to answer the questions that matter — about payments, visas, hospitals, and what's worth your time — written without the brochure.
Plan a journey
Same country, four completely different reasons to come.
Real itineraries from someone who takes the high-speed rail every other week. Beijing in 3 days, Chengdu food maps, the cities the algorithms forget.
Why "becoming Chinese" is trending on TikTok, and what it means to actually try it. Hanfu, mahjong, tea you'd actually drink twice.
Hainan's medical free zone. English-speaking hospitals. Dental work in Shenzhen. Honest cost comparisons, not commission-driven advice.
Short Chinese-language programs. Summer schools at Tsinghua and Peking. The visas, the costs, what they actually feel like as a Westerner.
What's actually happening in China this week.
I built this because the existing China travel internet is either fifteen years out of date, or a brochure. I wanted something a friend would write you.
I'm Dr. Zhang Zhiyu — a soft-matter physicist with research training at Brown University and UC Davis, and a PhD from City University of Hong Kong. I now build AI products under Conflux Labs, a UK-registered company. Pavilion exists because the English-language internet about China is mostly years out of date, or written from a distance. I wanted something different: a thoughtful, current guide written from the inside, the way a friend would write you.
Get a weekly dispatch from inside China.
What's changing in policy, what's trending on Xiaohongshu, what's worth knowing before your next trip. No filler, no upsell.