If you’re preparing for a trip to China, you probably already know that you’ll need a lot of space on your phone: in this country, practically everything happens through your device, and their app ecosystem is completely different from ours. Want to pay, order a taxi, or take the subway? You’ll need AliPay . Want to know how to get from one place to another? Use AMap (Google Maps won’t help you at all). Want to find a good restaurant and get a discount? Check Dianping. Figuri

AliPay is a must-have if you're traveling to China. This super app will be useful for many things, but there are two functions that make it truly essential: making payments and using public transportation. When you download and open it for the first time, you'll see a home page full of icons. To our eyes, accustomed to more minimalist Western applications, this may seem chaotic or excessive, but in China it's very common. There, what's popular are very powerful apps, with

Getting around China's big cities can seem complicated at first. Everything is vast, distances are deceiving, and many of the transportation and mobility apps we usually use don't work or are completely useless. The reality, however, is that their system is perfectly organized and is surprisingly easy, efficient and cheap. In fact, I would gladly trade it for the one in any European city. Everything is centralized in an app, Alipay , which you can use to take public transpo

Beijing is a big city (or rather, a GIANT), with almost 22 million inhabitants. This can be overwhelming for anyone who lands there for the first time, especially those of us who are used to compact and walkable European cities. The distances are much greater than we imagine and, moreover, being the political center of China, there is a control that, for someone who is used to living in Europe, may seem excessive. But, at the same time, there are moments when it seems like a