14 Useful Apps For Living In China Conveniently

China is a fascinating and special place for many foreign travelers. It has exotic Chinese culture, bizarre foods, unique customs and many interesting people to meet. There are so many wonderful things to explore. However you may be daunted by something such as language barrier. To tackle these challenges we made a list of 14 essential mobile apps for living in China and hope they will make your life in China much easier. 

1. Pleco ——Chinese Dictionary

Pleco is an awesome Chinese-English translation app considered one of the best apps available for translating, communicating and for learning purposes that helps you crack the language barrier in China.  It has a variety of features like handwriting recognition, color coded characters to help you remember right tones and also add-ons like flashcards, audio and live OCR (Optical Character Recognition). 

One of this app's cool features is its OCR  function. You can use your camera to scan characters like a menu, it will soon identify these characters and translate them into English. If you happen to get a document which you cannot read or a sign post which you needed to translate, just take a picture and the rest is simple. The app will know the characters and then translate into English, very efficient!

Pleco also supports text-to-audio function and you can imitate the pronunciation and intonation to speak to a native Chinese people to see if he/she can understand it. That will be an interesting thing to do in China.

Pleco is not free but has some free features, and you may spend few bucks to secure the full version. It is worth it!

2. 

Google Maps or Gaode Maps

Google Map is the best choice if you travel to China. It is completely available in both English and Chinese and can navigate exactly to the place you are looking for. But google-powered service is often disturbed and blocked by “Great FireWall of China.” In most situations you can not access its map service. So you should consider another awesome free map app named “高德地图”. This is the best mapping app in China with up-to-date database and accurate directions guide. The app is in Chinese only.

3. Ctrip

Ctrip is the leading player in China's online travel agency segment.

Now it offers hotels, flights, and China train tickets purchasing, which could be very useful, especially for foreigners who often go for business trips.

4. China Trains

China has developed train system and many major cities have been liked by fast trains. It just takes several hours to travel from city to city, and more importantly it saves your money than traveling by air. But China’s official train booking system only provides Chinese version interface, so it is a great challenge for foreign tourists to book train tickets. 

The “China Trains” app is designed to help English speakers to check train plan and book train tickets around the country. When type in cities and traveling date, it will display available train seats in real time and you can send a train booking request to order your train tickets. This app also has a Q&A column which allows users to ask any questions about train travel in China.

5. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is a must-have app when travel to China. There are millions of real travelers’ reviews and photos which will help you choose the best place to visit. Users can also ask questions about your trip and will get answered very soon. With just several easy clicks, users can locate the the nearby hotels, restaurants, and fun things to do in the city.

6. Skype

Skype is a useful app that you can use to stay connected with your family and friends. Skype is not blocked in China and works well at present. Buy some credits, you can make phone calls with extremely cheap prices to most countries around the world.

7. MoWeather

MoWeather is the English version app of China’s most popular FREE weather app “Moji Tianqi 墨迹天气”. It can show real-time weather and air quality for all places in China. It automatically displays the weather conditions in your place including: Humidity, Wind, Air quality index, Pressure, Sunrise, Sunset and more. It also offers 24-hour, 6-day weather forecasts which help you redesign your trip and know what to wear for the following days’ trip.

8. Bing Browser

The NO.1 search engine Google has been blocked in China and if you want to do English search, you have to choose Bing browser instead. If you download it in China, you may see Chinese version, you can switch to English version in its settings or click the option “只显示英语” in the searching results.

9. Wechat 

Chinese people don’t use Whatsapp and if you’re going to live here, you shouldn’t either. In China, WeChat is the most popular messaging app here. It is a necessary APP when associating with Chinese friends . 

WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing. It can exchange contacts with people nearby via Bluetooth, as well as providing various features for contacting people at random if desired (if these are open to it) and integration with social networking services，such as those run by Facebook and Tencent QQ. Photographs may also be embellished with filters and captions， and the machine translation service is available. 

Sending a voice message is easy, but to really master the app, you need to understand the “Moments” function to establish your own circle of friends. What you post in Moments, what you “like” and what you repost, these details allow you to learn more about Chinese people.

10. Taobao 

11. JD.COM

12. DIDI 

It is a great mobile platform taxi calling app in China that is used to request taxi services for convenience. This is a very useful and recommended App that enables you to call nearest taxi driver to pick you up. It has various car options that vary in prices so you may be sure to enjoy comfort without stretching your budget. You may grab a cab for yourself or share with others. The driver might charge a small fee for picking you mainly during peak hours but otherwise this service is free. 

13. Dazhong Dianping

Dazhong Dianping

Meituan Waimai/ Eleme

This is a very popular food related app in China. It provides you with list of restaurant with reviews in many cities. You can find restaurant by name, price, location, type of food. However the app is available only in chinese. The best part is that when you use this app you can get discount package on foods. If your chinese is good, then you should propably take advantage of the discounts.

However you can still check other Apps such as Meituan,Eleme and so on. Without some chinese knowledge you can still get what you want to eat by checking the pictures or typing in pinyin what you want to eat.

14. Meituan Waimai/ Eleme

Eleme is also an APP for ordering food online. It will search for the takeout restaurants nearby for you, and you don't need to take a call. Everyone can see others' comment and pictures of the food here. Collecting the restaurants that you like can make it easier to order. You can also enjoy many benefits and privileges.