Panda Cares: China Expat Guide

An App help expat to find the English-Friendly spot in China

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I have lived and worked in the UAE for over five years. When I first arrived, I only knew a few scattered words of broken English—let alone being able to understand the Arabic written all over the streets. I remember being afraid to get sick, afraid to go out and explore. When I ate out, I had to rely on hand gestures. My entire life was confined to a small circle of colleagues, and I felt very lonely. Later, due to work reasons, I returned to China. I then realized that many foreigners living in China face the same kind of problems—and I know that for some, it's even harder than what I went through. I can at least read some English, but all they see is Chinese, or very tiny English text. How hard their lives must be—perhaps only someone who has gone through a similar experience can truly understand. Given that I now have some foundation in English, and that I am Chinese, I started wondering whether there's something I can do. I believe that making China more English-friendly depends not only on the government accelerating upgrades and improvements, but also on the millions of foreigners living in China—they need to help themselves as well. So what can I do? For example, I could build a platform to help foreigners in China share English-friendly restaurants, hospitals, tourist attractions, and so on. That's why I recently released a very rough app on the App Store called Panda Cares. The idea is to tell foreign friends: when you run into problems and feel like no one cares—"Who cares?"—you'll discover that there is an app trying to make a difference: Panda Cares. What do you think of this idea? Should I keep working on it and improve it? I would really appreciate any feedback you have. Thank you.