GoKawiilSo, you’re going to China and you need to get your phone in order, but you don’t know where to start. That was me, a month ago.
Now I’ve been there, for a week of work and another week of personal travel in and around Shenzhen. In that time, I got a good grasp on the ecosystem of apps and mini-apps. Enough, at least, to get you started if you’re venturing to China anytime soon.
Most people will be aware – but I’ll say it here just in case you’re not – that many US-based apps and services aren’t available in China, thanks to the Great Firewall (a series of laws that limits and regulates internet use). This affects the availability of Western social media such as Instagram and the non-Chinese version of TikTok, messaging apps including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and anything that falls under the sprawling Google umbrella.
If you use an eSIM to roam while you’re in China (highly recommended), or manage to get a VPN to work reliably (not a given), you’ll still be able to access those services. But you will also need a whole different set of apps – and this isn’t optional. You won’t get by for a single day without them.
I’d been to China once before, over a decade ago. Unprepared for the Great Firewall and unaware of the workarounds, I just went offline for a week.
Now, that’s not an option – in large part because if you want to pay for anything in China, you must do so using your phone. I didn’t take a credit card out with me for the whole two weeks I was in the country. Anywhere else, this would have been reckless, but in China, I simply wouldn’t have been able to use it.
WeChat and Alipay: The super apps
Enter WeChat and Alipay. They’re super apps, meaning you can do all kinds of things with them, but you’ll mainly need them for payments. I would strongly recommend downloading both and setting them up by linking them to multiple credit cards before you arrive in China (it can be trickier to do once you’re in the country).
To pay for things, from groceries to public transit, you’ll either scan a QR code with your phone, or allow the vendor to scan your personal QR code.
I recommend having both apps because occasionally one of the apps didn’t play ball when I was trying to pay for something (a stressful experience if that something was a dinner I’d already eaten), but the other would work just fine.
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