Mildly Infuriating

Chinese, and to a lesser extent Asian Big Tech is what American Big Tech dreams and aspires to.

Everything is intimately linked to the super app platforms WeChat/Alipay (China) or LINE/Kakao Talk (Japan and Korea). Nearly everything online is designed primarily with WeChat/Alipay plugins/mini apps as the primary entry point and it is not uncommon both many services/pages to simply not exist outside of these super app ecosystems.

The apps are super invasive with privacy and require identity documents and banking details to even function. To some extent, it has resulted in convenience for the locals, though tbh this is mostly just replicating the convenience of western infrastructure like payment systems.

Where it gets messy is dealing with foreigners. China is particular has an incredibly messy system of regulations, mostly to curb money laundering and capital controls, that interact in very unforeseen ways.

Foreigners must link their identity documents and a payment method. Many vendors (either due to laziness or laws) cannot deal with foreigners at all. Additionally, due to capital controls, foreign payment methods cannot transfer or receive money. Many smaller vendors only accept payment via personal transfers, so you can easily end up being unable to pay, or split bills with locals. The inability to receive money also means you can't receive refunds.

It gets way worse when interacting with HK/Macau, which operate their own, distinct parallel WeChat/Alipay systems. So, not only do you need to set up and maintain separate accounts for these, doing so may still be of limited use due to capital controls. A common trip around the Pearl Delta region covering Shenzhen, HK, and Macau unironically requires planning out a convoluted chart of which specific systems and accounts you need to use.

you have been banned from lemmy.ml

Welcome to the future, where everything is a stupid 200MB phone app which doesn't even work properly. At least here in Germany you can still eat without any. But you definitely have to download some fat BurgerKing app with lots of 4k fire animations to get an 1€ coupon. Of course it'll also ask for all kinds of stuff.

I ask and they say need to order from their app, just scan the qr code

Yeah, that's the point I would have turned around and walked out.

The app:

It just has thumbnails of food shown at 200*150 pixels, how it can be 200 mb???

'I went to China'... Ahh see, there's the root issue.

Please drink a verification can.

This is spreading to the rest of the world too. I just came back from Singapore and encountered this exact scenario several times. I just get up and leave- can't be bothered would rather eat a mini mart sandwich then.

Can’t pay with credit card??? Only weixin pay

You put your credit card into wechat/alipay and you can use weixin pay.

You can get a local number for like 1USD/month for receiving sms.

To be honest I went cashless during covid. I like my debit card more than I like carrying cash, it's convenient to me. I would hate to have to lose the option though because when I go to buy a dutch, a lighter or a kinder bueno I don't want to pay the atm fee that some places will charge to get up to the 5$/minimum and I'd rather pay cash.

My local liquor store doesn't charge me the fee and I'm happy about that but I'd rather have a 5$ bill on me to buy a lighter or chocolate than pay the extra atm fee that might be added on to cover the 5$/minimum at some stores. So I usually have a little cash on me.

Not accepting cash should be illegal. What am I talking about they don't even accept card.

I spent three weeks in China this year, had a blast. It's true you need an app for nearly everything, and while it's too late for this advice, I'd recommend before you go:

• download/install alipay (skip wechat, it's less prevalent)
• add and set up your CC from your home country before you arrive in china
• have a VPN ready to go, setup before you leave (mullvad worked perfectly for me)
• get a physical SIM in China, and get one with high data caps; they're cheap, you might as well
• be sure to have a translator app installed and ready to go, with downloaded chinese (simplified) packs that don't require internet connection

Once you've got the physical sim, you'll have fewer issues with phone verification (obviously). The eSIMs I found (I also had one) were based out of hong-kong, and there are regional weirdness/connectivity issues with it. It worked, kind of, but was less reliable than the real deal. Good luck, god speed.

For wechat verification, I had to have a third-party (i.e. one of my chinese friends) perform a verification for me before all options unlocked. If you don't know anyone there, this is obviously challenging.

WeChat is like Facebook and Venmo combined into one app. I understand that it pretty much replaced cash entirely in China.

I feel like the most horrific thing about it all is that the government can just deactivate your account at any moment. Happened to a friend when they were visiting, maybe some connections on the phone they did not like it. They didn't tell them and it happened automatically after connecting with two locals.

Yeah I have a way to get my weixin pay funded so I can Didi everywhere and I have an international roaming plan. Without weixin China is extremely troublesome, and other parts of Asia are similar.

This is a reason I'll never go to China unless it's with thousands of others who also don't want to be there and professional logisticians taking care of the food problem.