There are a bunch of complaints all from this year of foreign numbers being not accepted, taking over a month to verify, once verified, banned for security reasons. I'm hoping a SIM from China will work.

You have to search for Dianping or 大众点评 in the Android Playstore. It appears that they want you to sign in. I got into the Maps applications by pushing the button that didn't have 不 in the title, but registering is more difficult. It appears from that they want a Chinese number, so we can't sign up for this until we receive our SIM.

I did not expect to find anyone who could speak Japanese. In Korea, for unfortunate reasons, with older people I could speak Japanese with them if their English was bad. I don't expect to use Japanese outside of Japan, though, like I said, the kanji can be helpful in China.

That's cool.

reducing the salaries of each individual where everyone still has a job as a response to this impact

I wonder how long they will accept that? Productivity, therefore profits have improved, while their standard of living goes down. Being happy that they still have a job at all will only last a limited time. They're going to have to read up on their Marx.

Thanks for the great advice and info. She has native level English and Japanese and the Japanese really helps sometimes. Like with 薬, 道路, 産業, 食品, 酒店. We don't know how to say it, but we get the meaning. I'm American, BTW, not Japanese. We downloaded Baidu Maps and were able to use it pretty well despite no English and pretty bad coverage where we live. I just tried Gaode Map and they have zero coverage here at all, so I can't test it, but it looks pretty intuitive. I found 大众点评, but haven't registered yet.

I'm told WeChat is the app to use to communicate between China and Japan, but I suppose if she can use the VPN, we can continue to use Line and Signal.

I will make sure she gets the Forbidden City tickets in advance. Thanks.

Thanks for the thoughtful and open reply. It sounds like it is at a crossroads. The wealth of the elite of capitalism is very tempting and has a strong pull. Even if they are now fully capitalist, the values of Communism still appear to exist in China. I think when AI and automation become capable of taking a large portion of jobs away, China is poised to react to that better than is the US. To keep money moving through the economy when ??% of people have no job, when Americans are shown the solutions, they'll scream, "No, that's socialism!" We'll see.

My wife will be staying in central Beijing for 5 days. What apps is she going to want to have in order to get around and communicate with us back home? Normally when we travel, we'd use Google Maps to get around, and Line or Signal to communicate. She's planning on getting a SIM for her phone to have Internet access. Also, I've heard people use Google Maps through a VPN and it helps alongside the Chinese maps. Are VPNs legal for tourists to use for this purpose?

Why can I not see Chinese.lol from Lemmy.world?

Would it be correct to describe China as a country whose extended goal is Communism, but decided that a mixed economy is better suited to the current times, but plans to eventually eliminate the capitalist elements that have been adopted and continue to pursue Communism?