China Republic Is a Search Term, Not a Survival Plan If you are an Australian student packing for Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Hangzhou or another Chinese city, you might start with a broad web search such as “china republic” and hope the internet sorts out the rest. Fair enough — everyone starts somewhere. But once you arrive, that sort of vague search phrase will not help much with the things that actually make daily life tick: finding a flatmate, locating a campus buy-and-sell group, asking where to get a SIM sorted, or meeting other people before the first homesick Sunday hits. ...

A board game, a group chat, and the hard bit: finding your people Picture a Tuesday evening in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu or Changsha. You have finished class, wrapped up work, or survived another day of figuring out local life in a language that is still very much a work in progress. You fancy a proper game of Chinese chess — xiangqi (象棋) — not another lonely puzzle against an app bot. So you search “club xiangqi app”, download something promising, and then hit the familiar snag: where are the real people? ...

Searching “Taiping China”? Start With the Right WeChat Basics If you are an Australian student, worker, parent or long-stay traveller looking up “Taiping China”, chances are you are trying to get a practical answer, not write an essay about it. You may have been sent a WeChat contact, invited into a group, asked to scan a QR code, or told that someone can help with a local service. And suddenly the whole thing feels a bit murky. ...

xiao ying app in China: useful tool, confusing name, no worries If you are an Australian student in Shanghai, a working-holiday traveller in Guangzhou, or simply packing for a semester in Chengdu, you may have seen people mention the xiao ying app in a WeChat group. Then comes the usual chain reaction: someone says it is for videos, someone says it is for photos, another person drops a QR code, and before long you are wondering whether you need it at all. ...

Shanxi, China Is Easier Once Your WeChat Is Sorted For Australians heading to Shanxi, China — whether you are bound for Taiyuan, Datong, Jinzhong, Changzhi, Yuncheng, or a smaller city where English is less common — the big adjustment is rarely one dramatic culture shock. It is the hundred small things. Finding a flat. Ordering dinner after a long day. Working out where to get a SIM card. Asking whether a shop accepts a foreign bank card. Joining the class chat before you miss the timetable change. ...

The Sheng Siong App Question: Useful Tool or Wrong Country, Wrong Shop? It is a familiar little drama. You are an Australian student getting ready for China, or already living in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen or Chengdu. Someone in a WeChat group drops a link, a screenshot or a cheerful “try the Sheng Siong app”. You download something with a supermarket logo, then hit the usual wall: an unfamiliar phone-number field, a different region, payment options you cannot use, or a delivery address page that plainly does not recognise where you live. ...

Chow China Starts With One Useful WeChat Habit You land in China, settle into a uni dorm, a share flat or a hotel near work, and sooner or later the question arrives: what’s good to eat around here? Not what is technically open. Not the shiny chain restaurant with a translated menu and a queue out the door. Proper chow China: the noodles people actually go back for, the little barbecue joint hidden behind a shopping arcade, the dumpling shop that does a cracking breakfast, and the café where you can sit with a laptop without being moved on after 40 minutes. ...

App Xiaomi Yi in China: the Small Setup Jobs That Can Save Your Bacon You land in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou or Chengdu with a Xiaomi Yi camera, your phone, and the perfectly reasonable plan of filming the trip properly. Then the little jobs start piling up. The app Xiaomi Yi needs permissions. Your clips need exporting. A mate asks for the footage on WeChat. The app prompts you to sign in again. Suddenly, what felt like a five-minute setup has become a small arvo of button-tapping. ...

China’s Largest City Is Big Enough to Make a Good WeChat Setup Essential Ask ten people, “What is China’s largest city?”, and you may get ten slightly different answers. Some mean the biggest municipality by resident population. Others mean the largest built-up urban area, the busiest business centre, or simply the place where the rent is eye-watering and the metro map looks like a plate of spaghetti. For Australians arriving in a major Chinese city for uni, work or a fresh start, the ranking debate is not the bit that matters on a Tuesday morning. The practical question is this: how do you get your life organised when your new city is enormous, fast-moving and run through WeChat? ...

Why the Lianhe Zaobao App Can Be a Handy Reset for Australians in China Picture this: it is 7:40 am in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou or Chengdu. You have a class group pinging about a room change, a work chat tossing around a document, your mate sending dinner plans, and three WeChat Official Accounts all pushing headlines before you have properly opened your eyes. Fair dinkum, it can feel like trying to drink from a fire hose. ...