CHINESE AS SECOND LANGUAGE, CLEVELAND OHIO - Travel in China July 2018

CHINESE AS SECOND LANGUAGE, CLEVELAND OHIO

How do I take a taxi in china?

7/11/2018

Have you ever experienced getting a Taxi by waving your hands to them on the street in Beijing? If you do, this article will hep you find an easier and more graceful to get a Taxi.

I arrived Beijing with my family on July 4th (9 days ago) and we tried to hail a Taxi in Beijing's street. Yes, after trying for many different spots, and having tried for a couple of times, you succeed. However, you can do better than this!

I installed DiDi (English version, available since May 2017) and added my credit card information there. I successfully get a Taxi when I was in my hotel in Shanghai even before I was out of the hotel. Although the Taxi driver did not accept credit card payment, and I paid him by RMB (cash), it still served my purpose.

how do i purchase train ticket in china?

7/11/2018

Thanks for the widely used information technology in China, now you are much easier to purchase a train ticket in a railway station in China. Why? Because most Chinese people can purchase their ticket using mobile apps or on the Internet, and then claim their tickets in railway station automatic machines by scanning their Chinese IDs.

As a foreigner in China, do you have to go to the railway station to purchase an airplane ticket?

Based on my experience in Beijing, the answer is NO! I purchased four train tickets online https://www.trip.com, Choose language as English, you can type English to see all the available tickets from your city to the destination city. And you can pay the fare using your credit card! And the best thing, you do not need to go to the railway station, line up, and purchase a ticket(s).

Although I had an unfortunate incident that I purchased wrong date train tickets and wasted lots of money (this may be an advantage to purchasing your tickets in the railway station, you will not buy wrong date train tickets because the ticket person knows precisely what days today and tomorrow are!), I still like the idea of buying tickets online and then go to the ticket claim window to get real train tickets.

Hope this helps you in purchasing train tickets in China! Right now I am on a train from Beijing to Shanghai, and I did notice there are tens of thousands of trees planted in suburban Beijing to help improve the environment of Beijing. Awesome!

HOW CAN I ACCESS GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK IN CHINA?

7/11/2018

I had been back to China in July 2016 to Xi'an with my husband, and we could not access Google and Facebook for the whole trip. The whole fun of sharing pictures to friends and family is discounted without the access to Facebook and Google immediately. After two years, we decided to go back to China and bring our two daughters, who are in the early 20s. I fully prepared the following strategies to guarantee the access to Internet and phone services.

Strategy 1:
Our phone service is with AT&T. AT&T has a 60 dollars monthly plan for 1G mobile data, unlimited text, and about $0.3 for each minute for phone calls. We enrolled in this service, and it helped a lot when I got lost in Beijing South Railway station.

Strategy 2:
I bought a GlocalMe smartphone in Amazon.com, and I got 20G free mobile data which can be used as a Wifi Hot Spot. My husband used this data to play his Facebook video game in Beijing South Railway station. Awesome!

I also bought a Mobile Wifi (I will attach picture soon after I go back to the hotel, right now I am on the train from Beijing to Shanghai).

Strategy 3:
With Mobile wifi, you can access Chinese websites such as baidu.com; however, you cannot access Facebook and Google. For phones, my step-daughter recommended me to use VPN Proxy Master (Free with ad), it works well in my smartphones. However, it does not have a desktop version. I paid about $13/month for ExpressVPN (I will attach a picture later), and it works much better without ads!

When I am in my hotel, I used the hotel wifi, combined with the ExpressVPN, and it worked perfectly to access my google emails and Facebook.

When I am outside, I used my mobile wifis, combined with the ExpressVPN, and it worked perfectly.

Hope it helps you!

如何在中国用地图？

7/11/2018

这篇文章适用于海外回国的朋友们。

写这篇文章的时候，我正在从北京开往上海的火车上。利用我的GlocalMe手机自带的免费 20G的数据，以及 ExpressVPN (大约13美金一个月），我能够用 weebly 发表这篇博客。

用惯了 Google Map,这次回国发现很不方便，所以下载了百度地图，哎呀，方便多了。不仅有地图，而且告诉你打的士大约会是多少钱。只可惜因为我没有携带身份证（只有护照），没有办到中国的银行卡，所以没有更方便地呼叫的士（后来我发现可以装Didi 英文版本，放我的美国信用卡。用这个方法我在上海成功地叫到了的士）。这个是我的教训。重要的事情说三遍：回国一定带身份证！身份证！身份证！我在游天安门的时候过安检就已经被教育了。

言归正传，用了百度地图后，可以方便地查到餐馆还有评分！找到了王府井的全聚德，真的不错！我们4个人仅仅点了2个人的鸭子量就够吃了。另外也找到了附近的火锅店，鱼是切得相当好，也是通过地图找到的。非常棒！

这当然归结于我用了中国的手机卡。有个中国手机卡是相当的方便，我买的是italkBB。看到网上评价不是太好，但是有个中国手机号还是感觉很方便的！

希望对即将回国的同学或者朋友们有帮助！