Old World Meets New World In China

This lovely lady sells street food on the back of her bicycle. What’s most impressive about this is that like most places in China this lady can accept electronic payments via WeChat.⁣

WeChat is an app that’s used nationwide in China – and in other counties too. On WeChat you can, like Facebook, update your status. On WeChat it’s called “memories”. You can have conversations or chats like WhatsApp, share your location with friends and pay for your goods in participating stores. In China I’m fairly sure that ever store we’ve been in has accepted WeChat. WeChat has a translate feature, so we can speak with our new Chinese friends with ease. On occasions I’ve used WeChat to speak with people in shops rather than using google translate or trying to mime everything.⁣

WeChat uses the QR code to accept payments, to add friends and you can even use it in conjunction with third party apps, we used it to book a hotel once.⁣

In many ways WeChat feels like it’s really pioneering and I’m surprised the iOS / Android apps haven’t followed suit. Maybe it’s the downsides of WeChat that stop something similar being created. Afterall WeChat knows everything all in one app. Who you’re talking to, what you’re saying, where you are and your entire purchase history. It’s thought that the Chinese government keep tabs on WeChat and use it to monitor the behaviour of their citizens. The better behaved you are, the higher their thought of. Allegedly this all goes towards building your “social credit score” which allegedly scores citizens a number based on their behaviour. Urgh, let’s not get into this right now! ⁣

On the whole, it’s a really fantastic app, and if you’re travelling to China, you should, without doubt download it. You’ll need to be authorised before your account is activated but a fellow we-chatter can do this digitally. We found a good hotel and a member of staff authorised us. ⁣

For those interested the food this lady was selling was (I think!) tofu, cooked, sliced in half filled with Chinese spices and pickled cabbage. It was very good. ⁣

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