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Get the real playbook
for living Asia well.
Tested guides on AI, money, travel, and culture — written by someone who actually lives the questions you’re searching. Decisions, not listicles. Receipts, not vibes.
By Lingye — a decade in Shanghai, now in Taipei · 15 years investing · daily AI userFour pillars, one lived lens.
Each pillar is its own deep practice — together they’re how a curious Western reader actually navigates modern Asia.
AI
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — and the Chinese models you’re not testing yet: DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi.
Smart Money
Asia investing, cost of living, and cross-border money moves — 15 years of real positions, not theory.
Asia Travel
Itineraries that hold up, visa reality, eSIM & VPN that work, payments that don’t strand you.
Asia Culture
Food, festivals, etiquette, language — the context that turns a trip into understanding.
Latest guides.
The newest field-tested work — framed like gallery pieces, written to be acted on.
Common AI Coding Agent Problems: The 5 Issues + a Weekly Fix Routine
The five recurring AI coding agent problems, the quickest fix for each, and a copy-paste before-work / daily / weekly maintenance routine.
Claude & ChatGPT Rate Limits Explained (or Is Claude Getting Dumber?)
Usage limits and the 'is it getting dumber' feeling are two different problems. A 30-second triage routine to diagnose each and fix the right one.
How to Cut AI Coding Token Costs Without Losing the Agent
Agentic coding tools bill you for context on every turn. Here is the routine we use to cut AI coding token costs without giving up the agent.
AI Coding Agent Deleted My Files? 5 Guardrails for AI Agent File Safety
Telling an AI coding agent 'don't delete X' is a hope, not a boundary. Here are five guardrails that make destructive runs revertible instead of catastrophic.
Codex Eating Disk Space and SSD Wear? A Safe Cleanup Playbook (2026)
Codex's SQLite/WAL log store under ~/.codex can grow very large. A safe size check, targeted cleanup, scheduled prune, and backup-exclude for Mac and Windows.
How to Invest in Asia ETFs From the US (2026)
Investing in Asia from the US is cheap and simple in 2026 — the hard part is choosing how broad a bet you want. VWO, SPEM, IEMG and AAXJ, compared by cost and what's inside.
First-Time Shanghai Survival Guide 2026: What Actually Works
Most of what Westerners think about visiting Shanghai is years out of date — here's the 2026 first-timer survival guide.
China Visa-Free for US Citizens in 2026: The Real Rules
China isn't visa-free for US passports the way the headlines claim — here's what actually applies in 2026.
ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini for Coding Web Apps
A practical comparison workflow for choosing an AI coding assistant when a simple web app needs planning, patching, testing, and a clean handoff.
AI Subscription Audit Workflow: Cut Tool Stack Waste
A practical AI subscription audit workflow for small teams that need to cut overlapping paid tools without losing the AI features that actually support recurring work.
Reddit Outranking My Site? Forum SERP Recovery Workflow
A practical workflow for bloggers and SEO leads who see Reddit or forum results outranking their articles and need a clean rewrite, community, or pivot decision.
Claude Fable 5 Is Suspended: What to Use Instead Right Now
Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are suspended worldwide as of 13 June 2026. The fast, reversible fallback for most work is Opus 4.8 — plus a five-minute playbook and the one-line API fix.
Lingye writes from inside the region, not above it.
A decade building a life in Shanghai, now based in Taipei. Fifteen years putting real money into Asian markets, and a daily heavy user of every AI worth testing — Western and Chinese. Every guide here is something actually used, audited, or lived.
Before you dive in.
Who is MyLing actually for?
+Curious Western and English-speaking readers who want Asia explained with first-hand authority — not a tourist blog, not a wire-service summary. If you read the AI, money, travel, and culture beats and want decisions instead of listicles, you're home. There's a Spanish edition (/es) for the same reader in Spanish.
Is the AI coverage Asia-only?
+No — the AI pillar is general. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini get the same depth as the Chinese models you may not be testing yet, like DeepSeek, Qwen, and Kimi. The edge is using all of them daily and telling you which one actually wins each job, wherever it's built.
What makes the travel guides trustworthy?
+They come from trips actually taken across the region, kept current rather than copied from older posts. Visas, eSIMs, VPN reality behind the Great Firewall, mobile payments for foreigners — each one is written from doing it, then fact-checked against primary sources and dated, because the details change fast.
Can foreigners use Alipay and WeChat Pay?
+Yes — both now let foreign visitors link an overseas Visa or Mastercard, which used to be the single biggest pain point. There are still caveats around limits, verification, and which features stay locked, and the travel guides walk through the current setup step by step.
What does the Smart Money pillar cover?
+Asia investing, cost of living, and cross-border money moves — fifteen years of real positions reported from inside the market, not theory. It's about the mechanics a Western investor actually hits: access, fees, taxes, and moving money in and out of the region.
What makes MyLing different?
+MyLing is written by one person — Lingye — who spent a decade in Shanghai, is based in Taipei, has invested for fifteen years, and is a daily heavy AI user. Every guide is something used, audited, or lived, and claims are sourced before publish rather than guessed. That first-hand lens is the whole product.