Tag: Shanghai

Philbert’s Phables Shanghai Edition – II – A Brief Overview of Major Chinese Apps

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This next post is something of a testament to how difficult it is to get basic services set up as a foreigner in China. First off, I got my health report back with no problems, so now I am eligible for a work permit. This is what the report looks like:

Next, I had to get a bank account and a China mobile phone number. For a bank account I needed my basic identification (passport, visa) and a signed, “chopped” copy of my employment contract with my company. Chopped, meaning it has the official seal of the company plastered in red ink or some such.

This was not too difficult – However, a bank account is only of limited use in China since most payments are conducted using WeChat Pay or Ali Pay. These are third-party payment methods offered by WeChat (China’s largest social messaging and networking app offered by TenCent – more on this later) and Alibaba, respectively. Basically the Chinese do everything through their phones now, even in some instances unlocking and locking doors.

Cash is almost non-existent and credit cards are not prevalent as they are difficult to obtain. I’ve mainly only seen foreigners using cash (myself included). You can transfer money to other people using the app (though again, there are limitations for foreigners) or pay vendors like shops and restaurants.

With Alipay, you scan the vendor or a friend’s QR code and pay or transfer money them through the app. WeChat pay is similar. There is a daily limit for transfers (image from https://www.saporedicina.com/english/alipay-alibaba-payment-platform, a helpful article on Alipay)

But in order to get those services, I needed real-name authentication of a Chinese phone number – I needed to be personally identified with a Chinese cell phone number at the China Mobile office, with my picture taken, along with my passport information, for the real-name authentication to take effect.

I got a real-name-authenticated, local Chinese number, which I was able to link up with the bank (debit) card I received in WeChat and Alipay, so that I could pay directly out of the bank account or transfer money into the two apps and vice versa. With that, here is a brief overview of the main components of China’s app (they call them “A-P-P”’s ecosystem.

This non-exhaustive list of essential apps in China includes WeChat （微信）, DiDi （滴滴）, Baidu Maps and Baidu （百度）, Alipay （支付宝）, TaoBao （淘宝）, JingDong (JD.com)（京东）, ELeMe（饿了吗），Meituan （美团），Dazhongdianping （大众点评），CTRIP， Tielu 12306 （铁路12306）and DingDong Maicai （叮咚买菜). They are displayed in order below:

WeChat: It would take an entire blog post or more to describe the centrality and functionality of WeChat to Chinese life, but besides being the most popular social messaging app in China (1 billion users worldwide as of early 2019), its payment feature allows you to pay vendors (restaurants, stores, even fruit sellers and locksmiths) and receive money yourself from friends and others.

There’s a lot of features in WeChat, but once you add money to your WeChat balance with a Chinese bank account (and Chinese cell phone number,) you can transfer money by scanning people’s QR codes and adding them as friends, or pay others using the Money button, where the vendor scans your QC code that pops up (picture from helpful https://lerner.co.il/2018/12/28/the-foreigners-guide-to-wechat-payments-in-china/)

DiDi Chuxing: China’s highly dominant ride-sharing service, equivalent to Uber or Lyft. You can order more than one type of car (nicer vehicles, or regular taxis) at a time when queue times are long, which happens a lot in a busy city (there isn’t so much of a surge charge as there is in the US). Of course, you pay with WeChat or Alipay. Lots of safety tips and driver rating systems.

Baidu Maps and Baidu: Very similar to Google Maps and Google, but in China

Alipay : There are a ton of features and products on this app too, but it’s mainly used to pay with – Dominant in Hangzhou, where Alibaba hails from

TaoBao, JingDong (JD.com) : Similar to Amazon in China, you can buy pretty much anything on these sites, although the stuff on TaoBao tends to be cheaper in quality and price. I’ve ordered 24-packs of Perrier, silverware, and clotheshangers so far.

As you can see, lots of food can be ordered in bulk

ELeMe（饿了吗）[Blue theme]，Meituan （美团）[Yellow theme]: Food delivery apps, think GrubHub or DoorDash but not as expensive – it’s only slightly more expensive than dining in a restaurant. Super popular.

Dazhongdianping （大众点评）: This is like the Yelp of China, lots of ratings of restaurants, shops, stores, bars, everything.

Stores in the hot pot category, you can filter by distance, rating etc.

CTRIP : Dominant Chinese version of Orbitz, Kayak, etc., you can book tickets for plane, rail, tour packages, hotel and hostel trips, and so on.

Tielu 12306 （铁路12306） : One of the main apps for rail ticket booking in China

DingDong Maicai （叮咚买菜) : They will purchase groceries for you and deliver them to your door.

To show some of the complexity around these apps, many of these apps link to one another within the app itself. For example, WeChat connects to Didi, Jingdong (JD), Meituan and Dazhongdianping, as shown below:

I could keep going with these apps – and probably will – but this is just a start. Remember, basically all of these apps require a smartphone to operate.

Philbert’s Phables Shanghai Edition – I

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I flew to Shanghai on September 1, 2019 as part of my relocation to my company’s China office for at least two years. It’s only been about five days since I arrived, but of course there are already Phables to be told. It’s China! 

Actually, this entire process to transfer to China took five months, and it’s still ongoing. Two months for corporate and leadership to approve the transfer, two months to gather and prepare the necessary documents, and about one month of just waiting around. Here are my bags packed and ready to go after the apartment got cleared out. 

There were more bags than this

To be honest not many Americans understand or know much about China. But I believed that this was the right decision for my career and my future. 

The flight itself went well. I didn’t sleep much but watched a lot of movies, some of questionable quality. American Airlines claims not to edit their movies for “objectionable” content, but they did for the latest Hellboy movie, which is obscenely violent. Aquaman needed no editing, being one of those mass market PG-13 comic book romps, but what struck me about both movies is this idea of a hero of mixed “breed” trying to unite both worlds – Demon and Human in Hellboy’s case and the undersea people and surface people in Aquaman’s case. Both characters were born as hybrids of humans and whatever other species. I kind of took to this idea since I’m mixed with both Chinese/Taiwanese and American heritage, and sometimes see my purpose as bringing the two (well, three) worlds together, all the more important during these times of difficult relations for all sides. 

I also identified a lot with the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga movie A Star is Born, but mainly the song “Shallow.” I knew I really wanted to watch the movie since I’m a fan of both of them but I never got around to doing it until this flight – and I only watched the first parts where people were still enjoying themselves. The timing kind of worked out well – here are the lyrics to Shallow that really resonated with me on where I was in life, going to a new city in a foreign land (well, not that foreign, as I’ve lived here before):

I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in

I’ll never meet the ground

Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us

We’re far from the shallow now

I’m not exactly escaping my problems in the US, but things weren’t going that well for me, either. I went straight to the deep end on this one in a sort of career Hail Mary. Over the past five days I still find it kind of crazy that I’m actually here. More work remains. Just listen to the story of how I had to get a state-sponsored health checkup in a neighboring city.

My office building in downtown Shanghai

In order to apply for a work permit in China, I had to get a health checkup at a government-sponsored hospital. Since there is apparently only one such hospital per county, city region, or whatever, and the one in Shanghai was booked out for “group” checkups until some undetermined date, Suzhou was the only option within reach. Suzhou is about 30 minutes from Shanghai by high-speed rail, which is pretty reasonable. So I went. 

It was pretty easy to buy a train ticket at Shanghai station and get through security (I had to show my passport and train ticket a bunch of places) and it was easy getting to the Suzhou official hospital as well. I got a pass in my application as I didn’t have one of the required documents but they were able to use an alternative method of authentication, and I also later got a pass in one of my medical exams (I wasn’t supposed to drink water but did in the morning since I was too thirsty, but they let it slide “this time”). Someone on the staff there also re-sized my application photos for me.

A note on photos and picture-taking, there are definitely sensitive parts of China I would be uncomfortable taking pictures of, for law enforcement reasons or just out of courtesy, so you’ll have to imagine those parts from my descriptions.

There were seven examinations in a number of different rooms or stations, each staffed by Chinese nurses, technicians, or maybe doctors. I had to get an ultrasound of some of my internal organs, a chest x-ray, blood drawn, a urine test, an eyesight and color blindness test, an EKG test and my height, weight and blood pressure measured. Everyone was very nice about it but it did feel like going through the official motions. There were specific diseases they were screening for (like venereal diseases and diseases of the liver), but I’m not sure what the big picture on this is, and the rules have definitely gotten a lot more stringent in recent years.

A number of other applicants were there as well, we all passed through the stations together. While standing in line I met Austin, an American linguistics student from Syracuse University studying in Suzhou. He said his dad would probably tell him not to talk to me owing to the rivalry with Georgetown. Other students and entrepreneurs from other countries were there too. 

I didn’t see much of Suzhou, I wanted to go visit 寒山寺, Hanshan (Cold Mountain) Temple, as it is featured in a poem by Tang dynasty poet Zhang Ji which is (or was) one of the lessons in Taiwan’s middle school textbooks that I remember. According to Wikipedia the poem is taught in Chinese and Japanese (?) curricula too. The poem goes like this (slightly altered English translation from https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/zhang-ji-maple-bridge/):

The moon descends, crows caw, frost fills the sky;

riverside maples and fishermen’s lights face me in my worried sleep.

Outside Gusu city lies Cold Mountain Temple;

at midnight, the sound of bells reaches the ferries.

But I picked a random place in the city to eat noodles (I love noodles) and it was pretty far from the temple. Next time – At least I got a cappuccino in Gusu city. Zhang Ji would be proud.

Suzhou

One other note is how helpful the younger people have been on my trip. I got help from a man on the high speed rail about finding out which was my ticket and which was the receipt, and while at a CoCo beverage stand in Suzhou the young woman working there helped me with directions and even offered to have someone drive me to the nearest metro station on an electric scooter, which would have been a Phable all by itself. I walked.

So it’s been a somewhat exciting five days. Can’t wait to see what the coming days bring.

Until next time…