My Curated App Choices
In a previous essay, I wrote:
It gives me a USA feeling. I mostly use apps made outside of China, only needing JD for purchases and WeChat to communicate with family and a few peers. For maps, I recently switched to Apple Maps, which uses Gaode Maps (also known as Amap) as its underlying service.
I don’t discriminate against Chinese-made products. I’ve lived here for almost 30 years. I’m simply preparing for a different life. I’m pursuing a degree to work outside of China.
There are still some Chinese apps that I use weekly.
One is the New York Times (CN) app. They select articles and translate them into Chinese for users. This app is great.
Although I primarily use WeChat Pay, Alipay still has some utility. For example, I need it to pay for purchases on Taobao.
For Weibo, I use the Weibo International app.
As for Pinduoduo, its biggest problem compared to JD.com is the slower delivery time, often taking two or three days. While things are very cheap, you can still find cheap options for the same product with next-day or even same-day delivery elsewhere.
Before receiving an oral job offer, I used the job searching app Boss Zhipin several times a month. Now that I will have a job soon, I won’t need to use it. My first priority is to obtain official certifications to work outside of China. Climbing the corporate ladder in China feels like a waste of time for me.
For banking, I use China Merchants Bank as my primary banking app. And for my mortgage, I use China Agricultural Bank, though I only open it a few times a month.
For ordering food, I often use Meituan and sometimes Eleme.
There are still other apps on my iPhone 14 Pro Max.
There are many games downloaded for my daughter to play, as well as some international and Japanese apps on my Pixel phone.
My old iPhone 6 functions as a dedicated offline media device. I use it to download content from Spotify and YouTube using their Premium features, and I listen to music through YouTube Music. It essentially acts as a background media player.
In total, I probably have 700 apps or games installed across my three mobile phones. If I use some of them, it means they are truly special. The creators may not care as I’m just one of their millions or billions of users. I don’t need to feel sorry about how I use apps selfishly or selectively.
The people most like-minded to me regarding app usage are probably English-fluent speakers who travel the world frequently. I’ve installed many apps from the US Apple App Store. As a software engineer, AI, blockchain, and tech apps are appealing to me. I’ve also installed local apps from Germany, the UK, and the UAE, among others.
I live in China as if I were a foreigner, an English speaker in China. It’s pretty normal for me, though it might sound weird to a typical Chinese person.