Yes, during the open beta. The free tier stays generous forever — checklist, reminders, phrasebook, guide, and basic AI. Advanced features for long-term residents (unlimited AI, offline city packs, custom reminders) will live behind a small subscription later.

We send your onboarding answers (role, city, university, arrival date, Chinese level, priorities) to our AI service. It returns a trilingual guide, a 10–16 task checklist across 3 phases, and 3–6 deadline reminders. You can regenerate whenever your situation changes — anti-repeat logic ensures you don't get the same plan twice.

Places curated for newcomers — international student offices, foreigner-friendly banks (ICBC, BoC), 24h pharmacies, hospitals, canteens, and metro stops. Tap any pin for a photo, description, distance, and the place's Chinese name.

Yes — every day you complete a task or open the app counts. The streak sits on your dashboard alongside XP, level and achievements, and resets if you skip a full day. Daily 30 XP goal keeps it light.

Not at all. Pick "I don't know Chinese" in onboarding and Qiao adapts — simple phrases, English or Russian explanations, and audio to learn the basics at your pace. The phrasebook covers HSK 1–3 levels and 10 categories (daily, taxi, doctor, pharmacy, bank, café, gym, dorm, store, university).

40+ universities are mapped in detail for the open beta — campus, dorms, canteens, foreigner-facing offices — and 200+ more are planned for full coverage across China by the end of phase 1. Cities covered first: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an and Tianjin. New campuses land in every release.

Your onboarding answers and checklist progress travel with every question — the assistant sees your city, your Chinese level, and what you've already done, then tailors the reply. A semantic cache keeps answers fast.

The Qiao Community is the in-app chat layer where newcomers help newcomers — built right into the app, not bolted on through a Telegram link. You get one open chat per city (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc.) and one per university you're tied to, plus direct messages with other users and small private groups you create yourself. Messages support text, photos, voice notes and short video circles, and everything is trilingual (English, Russian, 简体中文).

Every message has a one-tap report flow that goes to the founder; users can be hidden or blocked from your view, and abusive accounts are removed. There are no ads and no third-party trackers in the chat surface. We keep the rooms welcoming on purpose — that is the entire point of building Community inside Qiao instead of pointing you at WeChat.

Yes. Tap any user in a city or university room to open a 1:1 direct message. To create a private group, tap New chat → New group, give it a title (up to 80 characters) and invite people by handle — useful for cohorts, dorm floors, study groups and small project teams.

The phrasebook, your checklist and TODOs, your profile and your latest personal guide are cached on device. The AI helper and live map need a connection; everything else works on the plane.

All three, plus new long-term residents. Pick your role in onboarding (Student, Tourist, Business, Resident) and Qiao tailors the checklist, reminders, guide, and phrasebook category mix to your situation. You can switch role any time from Profile.

Yes — those are the highest-impact tasks for newcomers. Qiao surfaces a step-by-step setup for WeChat Pay and Alipay (foreigner version), pins police-registration (24h) and residence-permit (30-day) reminders to your real arrival date, and gives Chinese phrases for the bank counter and the police station.

English, Russian (Русский) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文). Every screen, every AI answer and every phrase is localised in all three — pick one in onboarding or switch from Profile.

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xi'an, Wuhan, Nanjing, Tianjin and a growing list of tier-2 cities. The map and place catalogue scales to wherever your university is — if your city is missing, write us at support@qiaoguide.com and we'll prioritise it.