Christina XuInterview
Ethnographer, organizational designer
Adapted from Christina Xu's interview on Uses This, published 12 November 2015. The kit is drawn from their answers and each reason is an excerpt, lightly edited. Shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full interview ↗
Is this you? Claim this kit →Hardware
In addition to the phones, I also rarely leave the house without my camera bag, which is a normal tote bag fitted with a "Any Bag Camera Insert" from PhotoJojo cradling my trusty Canon T2I, and both a standard 18-55m kit lens and the 15mm/f1.8 pancake lens.
I spend my nights and mornings reviewing notes and writing, mostly on my 12" Retina Macbook.
Communication
If I made a list of my 10 most used apps while in China, #1-5 would probably all be WeChat, China's most popular chat app.
As Gmail is blocked, I've taken to composing long emails in Simplenote on my laptop, then opening it up on my phone and copy/pasting the text over into the mobile Gmail client.
Media
Storage
Simplenote - my barebones writing app of choice for at least the last 3 years, which I use to take notes, keep track of tasks, and compose longer things.
Other
Pleco - a really great Chinese-English dictionary app.
Dianping - The Chinese equivalent of Yelp/Foursquare + Groupon + Square is useful for finding a restaurant or venue, figuring out what to order there, and even paying for the meal at a discount.
Didi Dache - Uber's much bigger competitor in China has wider coverage and more options, including the option to hire a nearby certified driver to drive your own vehicle home if you're drunk.
In the morning, I add some rambling reflections about the day before, something I also do at home using 750 Words.