If you land in China with Google Maps, a Visa card and nothing else, your first 48 hours will be harder than they need to be. This is the list of eight Chinese apps I install on every phone I set up for a friend arriving here, in the order I install them — because the order matters more than the number. Two of them, WeChat and Alipay, should be working before your plane touches down. The other six take about twenty minutes on hotel wifi. None of them cost anything to download; the only decision that involves money is which one you link a card to.
Why this list, and why the order matters
Chinese apps are not really "apps" in the Western sense — they are infrastructure. WeChat is a messaging app that also pays your taxi. Amap is a map that also books your train ticket. Meituan is a food delivery app that also sells you movie tickets and a haircut. That bundling is why you cannot just substitute one with a Western equivalent: the substitute usually covers 30% of what the local app does.
So the order is: get paid first (WeChat, Alipay), get moving second (Amap, DiDi), get fed third (Meituan), then book things (12306, Trip.com) and buy things (Taobao, JD). Every item below is free unless I say otherwise, and I have noted the one number you should remember for each.
The eight apps, in the order I install them
1. WeChat (微信) — messaging, and then everything else
Start here, because it is the one app you cannot avoid: colleagues, landlords, restaurant staff and tour guides will all ask for your WeChat before they ask for your number. Underneath the chat is WeChat Pay (微信支付), which I used for 11 of my 14 purchases last week, and Mini Programs (小程序) — tiny apps inside WeChat that handle everything from hospital registration to ordering at McDonald's. Verification with a passport took me about six minutes. Foreign Visa and Mastercard can now be bound to WeChat Pay, but coverage is patchy: it worked in a Shanghai supermarket and failed at a small noodle shop in Xi'an. One number: 6 minutes to verify.
2. Alipay (支付宝) — the payment app that actually likes foreign cards
Install it as the backup and it will end up as the primary. Alipay is where the tourist-friendly payment flows live, it is accepted at almost every machine that prints a QR code, and it also carries your transport code (乘车码) for buses and metros in most cities. Foreign cards are supported; the thing to know is that transactions above ¥200 carry a service fee of around 3%, while small everyday payments do not. That threshold is why I pay for a ¥5 breakfast with Alipay and a ¥900 hotel bill with a card at the front desk. One number: ¥200, the fee threshold.
3. Amap (高德地图) — the map that knows where the bus is
Google Maps will open in China, but walking directions are often off by a few hundred metres because of the coordinate offset applied to maps inside the country, and it has no real-time transit. Amap (高德地图) is the one I trust: it gives bus arrival countdowns, indoor floor guides for malls and stations, and a taxi-hailing tab (打车) that queries several operators at once. Last Tuesday it told me bus 402 would arrive in 3 minutes; it arrived in four. Baidu Maps (百度地图) is the credible alternative — I keep both, and about one time in five they disagree about which metro exit to use. One number: 3 minutes, and it was right.
4. DiDi (滴滴出行) — the taxi in your pocket
DiDi has a working English interface and that alone makes it worth installing before you arrive. The useful part is not the ride itself, it is the price: a 6.2 km cross-town ride cost me ¥18 and the car showed up in four minutes, which is why I stopped arguing with taxi ranks years ago. You do not strictly need the standalone app — Amap's 打车 tab calls DiDi and several rivals from one screen and lets you compare 快车 (standard), 专车 (premium) and a regular taxi side by side. I use the Amap version 80% of the time. One number: ¥18 for 6.2 km.
5. Meituan (美团) and Dianping (大众点评) — food, and where to eat it
Meituan delivers; Dianping reviews; they are the same company and the review data flows between them, so install both. Beyond takeaway, Meituan sells group-buy vouchers (团购) that are genuinely cheaper than walking in — a two-person hot pot set for ¥39 that is ¥68 at the counter. Delivery fee on my last order was ¥6 and the food arrived in 28 minutes. Ele.me (饿了么) is the other delivery app; in my experience Meituan has more restaurants and Ele.me has slightly better coupons, so check both for your first order. One number: ¥6, the typical delivery fee.
6. 铁路 12306 — the official train ticket app
This is the only place to buy Chinese train tickets at face value. Tickets go on sale 15 days before departure, and for popular routes the good seats go in minutes, so set an alarm. Third-party agents sell the same seats with a markup and a handling fee; 12306 has zero service fee on domestic tickets, is real-name (your passport is your ticket), and shows you the exact seat map. A Beijing–Shanghai second-class seat is about ¥553 here and ¥600-plus through an agent. There is an English interface but it is rough — worth switching to the Chinese UI once you know the station names. One number: 15 days, the booking window.
7. Trip.com (携程 Ctrip) — flights, hotels, and a human on the phone
For anything that is not a train, Trip.com (携程) is my default: it holds domestic flight inventory, it takes foreign cards without drama, and — the real reason — it answers the phone in English at 03:00 when a hotel cannot find your booking. Prices are usually at or slightly below the hotel's own walk-in rate: one Hangzhou room was ¥398 through the app and ¥460 at the desk. Fliggy (飞猪) is the Alibaba-owned rival and sometimes beats it on domestic flights, so if a ticket costs real money, check both. One number: ¥62 saved, one booking.
8. Taobao (淘宝) and JD (京东) — buying things that are not experiences
Only install these if you are staying more than a couple of weeks, but once you are staying, they change your cost of living. Taobao is the bazaar: millions of sellers, absurd choice, and the legal right to return anything within 7 days without a reason (七天无理由退货), which makes buying from strangers much less scary. JD is the warehouse: its own-stock items (京东自营) ship free above about ¥99 and arrived next morning in every city I have lived in, which is why electronics and anything with a plug on it go in the JD cart. One number: 7 days, no reason needed.
How to pick: the list compressed by trip length
Two to three days: WeChat, Alipay, Amap, DiDi. Four apps, forty minutes, and you can eat, move and pay for everything. Add Meituan only if you plan to eat in your hotel room.
One to three weeks: add Meituan and 12306. This is where the trips get cheaper, because you stop paying agent fees on trains and start paying local prices for meals.
A month or longer: add Taobao and JD, and then the boring infrastructure people forget — your city's metro app, a delivery app for groceries, and the official app of whichever bank you end up using. At that point you are not a visitor any more, and the apps that matter are the ones your neighbourhood runs on.
Four mistakes I see on day one
1. Installing WeChat but never finishing payment verification. An unverified WeChat Pay wallet is a wallet with no money in it. Do the passport step the evening you install it, not at a noodle shop with a queue behind you.
2. Trusting a foreign map for walking directions. The offset issue means the blue dot can sit half a block from where you are. Use Amap for anything on foot and keep the other one for neighbourhood-level planning.
3. Buying train tickets through a reseller. You pay more, and you hand your passport number to a company you have never heard of. 12306 takes foreign passports directly.
4. Linking your card to everything on day one. Link one payment app, use it for a week, then decide if you need a second. Every extra wallet is one more place to check when a charge looks unfamiliar.
Eight apps, about forty minutes of setup, and one rule that matters more than any of them: get payment working before you land, not after.