Living in Shanghai

I’m currently living in Shanghai, moving here was not part of my master plan, but I literally was not doing anything productive, so now I am here. Shanghai is big and noisy. Shanghai has pollution problems though perhaps not as bad as some other Chinese cities. It is still tough to see blue sky even on a sunny day, sometimes it is supposedly downright dangerous to be out breathing in the crap in the atmosphere.

I’ve lived abroad before. I’ve even lived in China before. A lot is still different from back home, but nowadays in a city as big as Shanghai you can get by very easily, the biggest single change is smart phones. If you don’t know a word in Chinese, look it up on your smart phone. You can’t find a post office, find the nearest one using your smart phone. Not sure what train to take, check on your smart phone. Need to know where to eat, get a recommendation on your smart phone.

Of course in China not every app works, many, many websites are blocked for the good of the average Chinese citizen or the good of the ruling elite however you want to look at it. The Great Firewall of China is much more elaborate than ten years ago, but you can get a VPN on your smart phone or laptop and assuming you can find a decent Internet connection, you can still use Facebook or YouTube. Vive le resistance.

The key app to have in China is WeChat, it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Fitocracy, just about the only social network it doesn’t replace is LinkedIn. I also use the SmartShanghai app, a dictionary called KTdict C-E. I tend to use the maps in SmartShanghai or Apple Maps rather than Baidu Maps, if you want to use anything Google you must run a VPN, the VPN I installed and paid for in Vancouver prior to leaving is ExpressVPN. Not all VPNs are created equal.

My iPhone is also my main camera, I post pictures on WeChat, so I guess it replaces Flickr too, but I put the best photos from my first few weeks in Shanghai on Flickr and assuming the upload goes alright I can include a few below.

Apparently everyone is suppose to live in China once, not sure why you’d want to live in China twice other than your life is not going well.

This entry was originaly posted on February 15th, 2015, it was last edited on October 13th, 2024 and is filed under: Technology and tagged: China, Expat, WeChat.