Comment by geza | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geza | Hacker News Reader

Sites and apps in Chinese:

Baidu Wangpan (百度网盘): file-sync service like Dropbox, but gives you 2TB (terrabytes!) of free storage

Tengxun Ketang (腾讯课堂): similar to edX/coursera, they have a lot of free courses on programming, machine learning, and technical topics

Wanmen Daxue (万门大学): similar to edX/coursera, they have a lot of free foreign language classes and lectures on economics/social sciences

HKGolden (香港高登): Hong Kong forum on tech and software, similar to reddit

Huxiu (虎嗅): tech news site

Toutiao Xinwen (头条新闻): news aggregator site, has categories and comments

Zhihu (知乎): QA platform, similar to Quora

Zhihu Zhuanlan (知乎专栏): blogging platform, similar to Medium

Ximalaya FM (喜马拉雅 FM): podcasts app

Duokan (多看): ebooks app similar to Kindle

Douyin (抖音): Chinese version of Tiktok

iQiyi (爱奇艺): video site with tons of movies and dramas

JD (京东): amazon-like marketplace with same-day delivery

Taobao (淘宝): ebay-like peer-to-peer marketplace

Weibo (新浪微博): microblogging site like Twitter

Zhifubao (支付宝): peer-to-peer payments app that works by scanning QR codes, very widely accepted in China

Wechat (微信): messaging app that also has tons of micro-apps and payment functionality built in

Nice list :)

A few things to add about some of the items:

- Baidu Wangpan's sharing model is more like the file locker sites of the early 00s: when you share a file or folder, the recipient gets a 'copy'. It's not like Dropbox where you collaborate and sync changes with each other.

- Baidu wangpan can download torrents server-side.

- Toutiao is by Bytedance, which readers here will know for their popular Tiktok product.

- Readers here may know Tengxun by its international name Tencent

- Zhifubao's English name is Alipay.

- Taobao is more than a peer-to-peer marketplace. I'd guess that over 50% of e-commerce goods purchases in China (by volume, not value) are via Taobao/Tmall. There are many 'mom and pop' stores, but also many with 10s of employees.

- Tingting FM is another good one for audio content. e.g. it has Peppa Pig episodes in Mandarin, and each episode has some commentary at the end explaining the key lessons from the story. (You can watch Peppa Pig in Mandarin on YouTube for free, but there's no commentary at the end.)

Let me add a few more:

Bilibili Manhua (哔哩哔哩漫画): webcomic site adjacent to the Bilibili video platform https://manga.bilibili.com/

Qidian (起点): webnovels https://qidian.com/

Zhanse Nileyuan (战色逆乐园): discussion forum attached to another webnovel site with female-skewing readership, maybe slightly similar to r/twoXchromosomes https://bbs.jjwxc.net/board.php?board=20&page=1

SegmentFault: StackOverflow-like https://segmentfault.com/questions

V2EX: the closest thing to HN, except more like a traditional forum https://v2ex.com/

how does the p2p payment app work? No middle man?

Ah I meant P2P in the "from user to user with no transaction fees charged, doesn't go through Visa/Mastercard/Unionpay" sense (similar to Venmo, except that in China businesses accept it everywhere), not in the "fully decentralized and doesn't need a server" sense. For Zhifubao the servers are run by Ant Financial (it's a spin-off company of Alibaba), for WeChat the servers are run by Tencent. You can deposit/withdraw money to your bank account.

I'm assuming you're probably more interested in the new digital RMB wallet technology which supposedly works even if your phone doesn't have internet access, but I'm not familiar with how that is implemented (I'm guessing it uses blockchain and broadcasts the transactions later when you connect to the internet). There's some info about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renminbi#Digital_Renminbi

Zhifubao is better known as Alipay outside of China.

> Douyin (抖音): Chinese version of Tiktok

Tiktok is literally chinese??

Tiktok, the app, is made by the same Chinese firm that makes Douyin, but it is maintained separately and not available in China. The content is entirely separate.

It is not uncommon that Chinese firms have separate, parallel versions of their applications within / outside China.

So it is accurate to say that Douyin is a Chinese (meaning, available in China; not meaning made by a Chinese company) version of Tiktok.

Thanks for clarifying

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