In a Sea of Apps, Which Ones Really Make Our Lives in BJ Better?

In today’s day and age, it seems like every week there’s a nifty new app that will gives you the lowest price on groceries, access to better shared cars and taxis, and translates languages more quickly and accurately. But there are some true essentials that lead the pack, which are pretty indispensable for maximising life here in Beijing.

JSS
Designed with expats in mind and focusing on high-quality English customer service, JSS offers same-day grocery and food delivery from expat-friendly restaurants and grocery stores like Jenny Wang’s. JSS truly tries to connect with its customers, which is why it launched its Brand Ambassador program.

Sherpa’s
Sherpa’s provides a food and grocery delivery service but only works with top-quality restaurants, which means a less wide range of options compared to its Chinese-language counterparts but mainly consists of western-friendly selections. Sherpa’s couriers are trained to ensure a quick, courteous, and correct delivery.

Meituan
Meituan is one of several local food and grocery delivery apps that gets the job done when you’re in a pinch. They generally deliver within the hour and offer a much wider range of restaurants and grocery stores than the earlier two expat-friendly English language apps, if you can navigate its Chinese interface. Plus, you can also rent the yellow Meituan shared bikes using this app!

JingDong (JD)
In the realm of shopping, JD is great for household products and groceries, where you can find almost everything from spinach to stereos. It’s a Chinese-language app but if you can figure it out, it could save you lots of time and effort searching for a brick-and-mortar store for what you need.

Weidian
This is WeChat’s answer to TaoBao, which offers listings by small local business owners with artisanal crafts, foodstuffs, or supplies. Sustainable brands started by expat entrepreneurs such as The Bulk House, KIYANI Botanics, Greeniche, Dancing Yak Handicrafts and The Green Room are some examples of stores you can find on it.

TaoBao
TaoBao is so ubiquitous that it needs no introduction. And if you were first introduced to BaoPals – the English language expat-friendly version of the local app – you really should try TaoBao because of its easy image search function, which we explain in this article here.

Xianyu
A sister to TaoBao, Xianyu is the secondhand version of the popular shopping app and offers plenty of gently-used, practically new clothes, furniture, and other goods. This is great for kids’ stuff which they tend to outgrow quickly. This article tells you all about it!

Dazhong Dianping
Dazhong Dianping or simply Dianping, is essentially what I call the Chinese Yelp, which offers guides for lifestyle and entertainment including restaurants, hotels, cinemas, through business listings, ratings system, and comments section. You can check the app for reviews and recommended specials before you choose a restaurant, helping you and your family to avoid unpleasant surprises. Additionally, paying through the app usually grants you a discount.

Dear Translate
This is editor Mina Yan’s pick of all the free translation apps that are out there right now, and there are a lot. It has a camera translate function that quickly translates the text in front of you and also has an awesome conversation translation function. Best of all, of course, it’s free!

Pleco Chinese Dictionary is probably the best offline Chinese – English dictionary. It integrates dictionaries with an amazing amount (over 110,000) of frequently-updated entries and example sentences with Pinyin, document reader, flashcard system with fullscreen handwriting input, and a live Optical Character Reader (OCR). It also includes audio to help your pronunciation and displays stroke order diagrams showing you how to draw each character.