Hi everyone and hope you’re all well. I’m Chinese and I’ve spent the past 30 years of my life in China. During this time, I’ve witnessed incredible changes that have taken place in the country. Having also traveled to many other countries, I’ve noticed that there can be a disconnect between the international media’s portrayal of China and the actual experiences of people living here.
In this post, I invite all of you to ask anything about China—whether it’s about daily life, culture, societal changes, challenges, or the negitive/positive transformations I’ve seen. I’m just an ordinary citizen, but I’m here to share my observations and experiences in the most honest and unbiased way possible.
Feel free to leave your questions in the comments, and I’ll do my best to provide insights into the real China as I’ve come to know it.
Thanks for the great advice and info. She has native level English and Japanese and the Japanese really helps sometimes. Like with 薬, 道路, 産業, 食品, 酒店. We don’t know how to say it, but we get the meaning. I’m American, BTW, not Japanese. We downloaded Baidu Maps and were able to use it pretty well despite no English and pretty bad coverage where we live. I just tried Gaode Map and they have zero coverage here at all, so I can’t test it, but it looks pretty intuitive. I found 大众点评, but haven’t registered yet.
I’m told WeChat is the app to use to communicate between China and Japan, but I suppose if she can use the VPN, we can continue to use Line and Signal.
I will make sure she gets the Forbidden City tickets in advance. Thanks.
haha nice, for you got the name Osaka. I’m really sorry, that;s racist for me to think you as JP. Gaode should have English version and it’s good for China, no worries on that.
If she got a native English level, then totally don;t need to worry about the tour in Beijing. For communications, wechat is the most widely used Chinese chat app and we also do all payments or make orders in restaurant with wechat (your wife will tell you how Chinese are doing that when she get back. LOL.). VPN is ok for individual usage, just feel free for that. sometimes the VPN network may not be that good, and definitely you can reach her by texting messages. Forbidden City tickets here: https://intl.dpm.org.cn/ticket_details.html, need to be prebooked, she can use the passport.
can you ask her what types of food she would like to try? and how many ppl for a table? which areas or district she may stay in Beijing? I can list some recommendations with map locations for restaurants (i’ll post that in real chinese food community) that local ppl go to, so she wont experience those fake ones for foreigners only.