| App | For | Language | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMap Global | Everything: driving, walking, transit, addresses | English + 14 others | Must be the Global build; catch the language prompt |
| DiDi Chuxing | Ride-hailing | English interface | Must be the China app, not DiDi Rider |
| MetroMan | Metro maps, route planning | 11 languages, offline | Ads unless you pay to remove them |
| 12306 / Trip.com | Train and flight tickets | English | 12306 is official; Trip.com is an agent |
With these four, I think you are covered for the overwhelming majority of what a trip will throw at you.
1. Amap (Gaode) — and it has to be the Global version
First: Amap is not Apple Maps
A lot of people assume "AMap" is short for "Apple Map." It is not. They are two completely different products from two completely different companies. Amap (高德地图, Gaode Ditu) is China's dominant navigation app, owned by Alibaba. Please keep them straight, because the rest of this section depends on it.
Download AMap Global, not the domestic app
This is the single most important setup step in this article. Search the App Store or Google Play for AMap Global and make sure that is what you are installing.
If your phone's region or app store country is not set to China, you will most likely be offered the Global version by default. Check anyway.
Do not tap straight through the pop-ups
When you open Amap for the first time it throws a series of dialogs at you — permissions, terms, prompts. Somewhere in that sequence is a language selection screen, and it is very easy to miss if you are tapping quickly to get through setup.
Choose English there.
If you blow past it, the language switch is buried deep in the settings — and the interface you now have to navigate to find it is in Chinese. If you do not read Chinese, the realistic fix is to delete the app and start over. Ten seconds of care here saves you a genuinely annoying twenty minutes later.
The two versions do not behave the same way
Tested: on the Global version, both English and Chinese addresses return accurate results. Paste in either one and you get the right place.
On the domestic Chinese version, an English address often returns nothing useful at all. That version also will not let you switch to English: the option is there in the settings menu, but it is restricted, and selecting it does not apply.
I cannot tell you what is going on under the hood, and I am not going to speculate. What I can tell you is that the two builds behave differently given the same input — which is the real reason the Global version matters. It is not just about the menu language.
Tested: pasting a real hotel address
I ran the same test with real English-language hotel addresses copied directly from Trip.com:
| Where I pasted the English address | Result |
|---|---|
| Amap (Global) | Recognised correctly, navigated to the right place |
| DiDi (China version) | Recognised correctly, took me to the right place |
| Apple Maps | Poor — multiple competing results, no clear correct match |
The practical rule: whether your address is in English or in Chinese, paste it into Amap and navigate from there.
2. DiDi — get the China version, not DiDi Rider
DiDi is China's Uber, and in most cities it is simply how you get a car.
There are two different DiDi apps, and this catches people out constantly. Download the China version (listed as DiDi Chuxing / 滴滴出行, sometimes shown as "DiDi China").
Why two apps exist: DiDi expanded internationally into markets including Australia, Japan, Mexico and Brazil, and those markets run on a separate product — DiDi Rider — with a separate driver network. It is not a translated version of the Chinese app; it is a different service sharing a brand. Open it in Beijing or Shanghai and you will see exactly zero available cars, with nothing on screen explaining why.
Tested: English addresses copied from Trip.com paste into the China version of DiDi and resolve correctly, the same way they do in Amap. Between these two apps you can go from "I have a hotel confirmation email" to "a car is taking me there" without a word of Chinese.
3. MetroMan — plus how you actually pay for the metro
MetroMan
I found this one by accident and it has become one of my favourite apps for China. It covers the metro networks of essentially every Chinese city that has one — 53 cities in the current version, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan — with an English interface, a clean route planner giving times, fares and transfers, and full offline operation. The design is genuinely attractive, which is not something you can say about most transit apps.
It supports 11 languages. It does have ads, which is the main complaint about it; a paid Pro version removes them.
Why bother when Amap also plans transit routes? Because MetroMan works with no signal at all, and coverage inside stations and tunnels is unreliable. Plan the route above ground and stop worrying about it.
How you actually pay
MetroMan tells you which train to take. It does not get you through the gate. For that you need a transit QR code (乘车码) in Alipay or WeChat Pay.
Open Alipay, go to Transport, and pick up the transit card for the city you are in. Alipay usually detects your city and prompts you; it is one tap, and activated cities are remembered, so switching back later is instant.
That generates a QR code. Scan at the gate on the way in, and scan again on the way out — metro fares are distance-based.
Use the same app at both ends. Scan in with Alipay and you must scan out with Alipay. Mixing apps mid-journey does not work.
Screen brightness up. The readers are much happier with a bright screen.
Buses use the same code in most cities: scan the reader by the driver as you board. Fares are usually flat, so there is normally nothing to scan on the way out — but if you see readers at both the front and rear doors, that route charges by distance and you scan again as you get off. Watch what everyone else does.
4. Tickets: 12306 and Trip.com
For trains and flights, install both.
12306 is the official China Railway ticketing platform, and it is worth understanding what that means: 12306 is the only actual seller of train tickets in China. Every other platform, without exception, is an agent reselling on top of it. It handles trains only — no flights, no hotels.
Trip.com is China's mainstream travel platform and the equivalent of the big OTAs you already know. It sells train tickets, flights, hotels and attraction tickets in one place, and because it is a commercial operator that has deliberately optimised its flow for international travellers, it is usually the smoother experience.
On price, which people argue about: Trip.com is an agent, so a booking fee or small markup is a normal part of that business model — and sometimes there is none at all. Both are legitimate. Check the number in front of you rather than assuming.
Why both, and not just Trip.com: during peak periods, a high-speed rail booking made through Trip.com can fail to go through. You are buying through an intermediary, and when inventory is moving fast that extra layer can cost you the seat. Having 12306 installed and your account already verified means you can go straight to the source when it matters. Costs you nothing to have it sitting there.
In practice, Trip.com will handle very nearly all of your ticketing needs. 12306 is the backup that occasionally saves your trip.
What about Google Maps and Apple Maps?
Google Maps: not recommended. Two reasons, and the second is the one that matters. It is blocked — everybody knows this. But more importantly, Google has had no meaningful business presence in mainland China for well over a decade, so its database of Chinese addresses is thin and many places simply are not in it. (There is also the well-known coordinate offset: Chinese law requires published map data to use an offset system, so a foreign map's pin can sit a few hundred metres from the real location.) A map that cannot find your destination is useless whether or not it loads.
Apple Maps: usable, but not my recommendation. If you have an iPhone, Apple Maps does work in China, and there is a reason for that — its Chinese map data comes from Amap. But my testing turned up an inconsistency worth knowing about:
- Chinese address pasted in: works. It will generally find it.
- English address pasted in: messy — multiple competing results with no obvious correct answer.
So Apple Maps is fine if you are working with Chinese-language addresses. It is not what I would rely on.
Shared bikes: the last mile
Every Chinese city is carpeted in dockless shared bikes: blue Hellobike, yellow Meituan, green Didi Qingju. For a visitor they solve one problem extremely well — the 800 metres between the metro exit and where you are actually going.
You do not need a separate app, because all three run as mini-programs inside Alipay or WeChat using the card you have already linked. Scan the QR code on the handlebar to unlock. Pricing is around ¥1.5–2 for the first 15–30 minutes depending on brand and city, and deposits were dropped in 2024. The one thing to get right is parking: bikes must be left inside the marked electronic-fence zones shown in the app, and locking up outside one triggers a small relocation fee.
Putting it together: three scenarios
Airport to hotel. Copy the hotel address out of your booking confirmation. Then either:
- Taxi: paste it into DiDi, go to the ride-hailing pickup area, get in the car.
- Metro: paste the same address into Amap and ask for transit directions. Amap will give you the full route — which line, where to change, which station to get off at — and then you just follow the navigation, exactly as you would with Google Maps at home. For a specific destination this is more convenient than MetroMan, because you are navigating to an address rather than looking up a station-to-station route yourself.
Hotel to a sight across town. Plan it in MetroMan while you are still on hotel wi-fi if you want the route offline; otherwise paste the destination into Amap and follow it door to door. Ride using your Alipay transit code. A shared bike also covers the last stretch.
City to city. Book on Trip.com or 12306, ideally several days ahead. Get to the station by metro or DiDi and allow extra time — big Chinese stations are enormous and have airport-style security.
