9 Useful Apps for Traveling in China

Not all the mobile applications used in your home country will work in China, as most websites and apps like Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter are still blocked by the Great Fire Wall of China. The language barrier might also limit your access to essential information through Internet, such as navigating to the accommodation, searching for restaurants, and ordering dishes by a Chinese menu. The mobile apps with English version available below will make your China trip exploration easier.

Like WhatsApp in western countries, WeChat is a multi-purpose messaging and social media in China. It is the most dominant and popular social network with more than one billion monthly active users. WeChat is a powerful app for everything on account of its massive functions far beyond simple text, voice and video messages. Now, mobile payment has taken China by storm, and the most used one is WeChat Pay. Chinese people could go cashless to make payment at restaurants, shopping malls, souvenir stores, and even subway stations.

For foreign travelers, Wechat would be a useful tool to keep in touch with your travel consultant or tour guide throughout your trip in China. You can also post the trip pictures and videos on the moments where your Chinese friends can like and leave comments.

For most travelers to China, the first-line problem is to overcome the language barrier, but learning Chinese is not an easy job to undertake in a short term. WayGo would just come handy as a translator application offering instant visual translation of Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters. Scanning the Chinese texts, this apps is able to automatically translate them into English immediately. You could find the beauty of this application when ordering dishes on a Chinese menu like a pro or locating a road sign like a walking map. Moreover, the biggest advantage of WayGo is its offline work, which means you don't have to rely on internet access.

Since Google Maps is unavailable in China, you can go for another alternative Offmaps 2. It is a well-designed app for easier real-time navigation in a foreign country like China. The unbeatable merit of Offmaps is its offline service accessed by the built-in GPS on your device to track your position abroad at a data-off mode. The maps also enable you to check out the routes and the direction you are heading, which is especially useful for travelers to explore the cities on their own. With this app in hand, there is no reason to get lost in China.

Pleco is an awesome Chinese-English dictionary app that assists you break the language barrier during your journey. This app has handwriting recognition that allows you to draw Chinese character to look up its meaning, but writing characters by hand is not easy if unfamiliar with the order of strokes.

However, the optical character recognition would let you scan the Chinese characters to search for the equivalents although the service comes with a small amount of fee. Besides, Pleco could be the best tool for you to talk to Chinese locals. You can get people to speak to your phone, and app will show you what they are approximately saying. Anyway, this application will not only aid you to communicate with Chinese people better in the travel, but also help beginners to pick up the language.

The social media apps like Facebook, Instagram and Gmail are inaccessible through Chinese networks, which could be a pain for people addicted to pop social networks. However, Virtual Private Networks, or VPN for short would be an essential tool to unlock these blocked services, so that you could stay in touch with your families in 24 hours or upload the selfie you just took on the Great Wall. ExperssVPN in mainland China is the best choice when traveling in China as it is stable, fast and easy to use. Offering different package plans, it is absolutely worth the price.

If you are an independent traveler or have free days during your tour package, this app would do you a big favor for navigating the public transportation system in China. With clear and straightforward user interface, MetroMan covers subway maps of all the metro-facilitated cities in China such as Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu and Hangzhou. Inserting the start and terminal point, you can get the quickest route with ticket price and duration of the ride as well as the transfer method. MetroMan even could help you to locate nearby dining options and shopping malls with detailed English-marked maps.

Though hundreds of weather apps could be founded in the app store, you are suggest to download and install the Weather Live before going to China. This app shows real-time weather information of your place including temperature, air quality, humidity, precipitation, wind, sunrise, sunset and more. It also offers hourly, daily and 7-day weather forecasts that remind you to prepare what to wear and the necessity of rain gear for the following day's trip in China.

As one of the most prevalent travel app in the world, TripAdvisor is a must-have app when traveling to China. Tons of user-generated reviews and photos on hotels, attractions and restaurants as well as rated tour operators are displayed for free to research. It would be a terrific source of information for you to make the most of your trip regarding the travel destinations and choices for restaurants.

As you know, the No. 1 search engine Google has been banned in China so far, and Baidu widely used in China usually provide results in Chinese. If you want to do some English research online, Microsoft's Bing would be your best choice as a web content search engine and also a browser. Although the information you get from Bing is not as much as what you get from Google, you can do well with it when searching for the basics about the travel destinations, attractions and some travel guidelines.