I arrived in Shanghai from South Korea with my wife a few days ago. Now I am feeling like I have to apologize for my stupidity and ignorance about China, particularly Shanghai.
Yesterday I went to a bank called ICBC(中国工商银行) to set up a bank account. It is usually very tiring work to set an account up. I still remember waiting for 2 hours to set up a single account when I lived in Spain. But in Shanghai it only took 20 minutes for both my wife and I to complete, including the time it took to get internet banking permission. Regarding transferring money and making payments online, Korea’s internet banking system is very annoying to use due to Korea’s difficult certificate system, which barely allows foreigners to use online banking services. But in China, setting up a bank accountant only required that I visit a bank with my passport.
Do you know Alipay?
I was recommended many Chinese applications, so I downloaded them. There was a restaurant recommendation app similar to Tripadvisor, an online shopping app like Amazon, a SNS app similar to Facebook, etc. However, the app Alipay really caught my attention.
You can do literally everything on Alipay. I registered my ICBC card to Alipay, and a new world opened before me. When you open the app, you can see lots of buttons on the main page. After having lunch in a shopping mall, I wanted to try the application. So, we approached llaollao, a Spanish frozen yogurt shop, and showed the QR code to the cashier. I asked the clerk in llaollao how to use Alipay in my broken Chinese. She answered, but I couldn’t understand what she said. So I showed her my iPhone screen, and she touched the ‘scan button’. Then I scanned the QR code, input the amount of money, and pressed the red button. Boom!
I paid very easily and treated my wife :) I also wanted to test split-the-bill system in Alipay so I requested half of the amount of money I’d already paid and told my wife to accept the request by Alipay (half-forced). This was really easy to do. Look at the picture below.
Now I feel like I am in a new world. As a software developer, these different technologies I’d previously never experienced inspire me. I believe the more I experience, the bigger I dream. I am really looking forward to experiencing more things which will surprise me.
