As China’s fitness market is seeing rapid growth, these are some of the health & fitness apps that are popular among Chinese mobile users.
Ttracking psychical activities and sharing them with friends on social media is something that has become more popular in China, with other types of apps in the health and fitness categories also gaining in popularity.
In a series of five articles, What’s on Weibo is providing some insights into what apps are currently popular in mainland China. After the categories news apps, mobile gaming, and short video & livestreaming, we will now highlight some of the more popular apps in the category of health and fitness.
We made our selection based on the data from the Android app stores Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, and Zhushou360. We tried our best to give you a representative overview of a variety of apps that are currently most used in China, but want to remind you that these lists are by no official “top 5” charts.
Here we go!
#1 Keep 自由运动场
Keep (literally: Free Sportsground 自由运动场) is currently the most popular health and fitness app in the Chinese Apple store. Keep first appeared in 2015, and has since grown to become the country’s biggest online sports community. Following their success, Keep has also expanded its businesses outside of the online world and now have their own KeepLand Gyms.
Keep is a very all-round app. When first using the app, users have to answer a number of questions concerning their health, age, motivation to exercise, level of experience, and preferred sports. Once the user has answered all the required questions, the app is ready for use.
The app’s main page is called ‘workout’ and is divided into different workout categories. Per category, the user can find many different exercises, including (video) explanations and duration of the workout sessions. For certain endurance sports such as running and cycling, the app will also track the user’s route and speed.
Based on the measured activity, the app will recommend new exercises. Besides workouts, there are also classes you can follow and challenges to take on.
But becoming healthier takes more than exercising alone. Therefore, the app also incorporated a food page, providing its users with diet advice, recipes, and calorie info.
The app also has its own shop selling sports clothes and attributes, food supplements, and other trendy merchandise. For those who share their personal results on social media platforms, such as WeChat, get discounts in the app’s webshop.
Last but not least, the app also has a ‘community space’ where users can share their experiences and find support.
#2 Meet You 美柚月经期助手
Meet You is the English name of this app, that is literally called ‘Beautiful Pomelo Menstruation Tracker’ (美柚月经期助手), with the pomelo being a fruit that symbolizes prosperity, good luck, and positivity. The app is a multifunctional period tracker for all women but is mainly focused on women who are trying to get pregnant, who are pregnant, or who already have children. Meet You promotes its app as a way to “make Chinese women even more beautiful and healthier.”
The most important page of Meet You is the personal main page. On this page, users can keep a record of their menstruation cycle, their day-to-day mood, weight, possible illnesses, bowel movements, use of anticonception, eating habits, etc.
Based on all this data, the app will analyze their current state of health, and recommend certain news articles and other reads that match the user’s preferences.
Additionally, users can also share their experiences and knowledge through the in-app ‘communities.’ The app has a number of communities focused on specific topics, such as Make-up Time, Love To Travel and Skin Care Beauty Salon.
Of course, there is also a shopping page, which, without doubt, is an important part of the app’s revenue model.
Meet You was first launched in 2013 by the Meiyou Information Technology Company, based in Xiamen. Throughout the years, the company launched several other apps all focused on women. Currently, Meet You has over 200 million users, of which 7 million were daily active users according to their own website. And according to a report by Jiguang, Meet You was the second most favored app among female mobile users in 2018.
#3 Qin Baobao 亲宝宝
Qin Baobao is an app to provide childcare information for pregnant woman and families with children up to the age of six. The app was first launched in 2013 by Hangzhou Xingwang Technology. Five years later, in 2018, the app had succeeded in reaching more than 100 million registered users, according to the company’s website.
In March 2019, the app was the third most popular app in the category Health and Fitness in the Chinese Apple Stores.
Qin Baobao is mainly focused on using technology to help families to better care for their young children. The app’s functions can be divided roughly into two parts. One part is focused on the improvement of children’s health and general well-being, and the other part is about recording the child’s development and sharing joyful moments with friends and family.
To help parents in taking care of their young children, the app provides functions such as soothing music and a knowledge database of age-appropriate foods.
There are also recipes for baby food, tips on how to make your child eat well, advice on what to do when your child is sick, and a Q&A forum.
The other part is all about documenting the growth of the child. Through texts, pictures, and videos, the precious first years of a child’s life can be safely stored and shared with friends and family.
What makes the app more attractive than other social media, according to the company’s statement, is that the app respects its users’ privacy and allegedly won’t be using the uploaded data for other purposes.
#4 Ping An Good Doctor 平安好医生
Ping An Good Doctor is a health care and medical consultation platform and part of the Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company.
Ping An Good Doctor was launched in 2015 and has become more popular since. In 2018, the number of registered users reached 265 million, of which nearly 54.7 million were monthly active users, according to their own website.
The app is a portal for medical consultation, something which is not easily available to everyone in China. The app provides four types of services: the family doctor, the consultation hall, medical bibliography of the doctors, and a ‘health community.’
The so-called family doctor service provides a one-on-one, private, real-time (paid) consultation between a user and a doctor. Online ‘patients’ can also talk to doctors in the ‘consultation hall,’ but this service is not private nor one-on-one.
The app certainly cannot replace an actual doctor’s appointment; not only does the virtual environment make it impossible to do a physical checkup, but the doctors also can not give any prescriptions to their ‘patients.’ The app does allow users to make an appointment with a doctor at an actual hospital through its appointment booking service.
Besides the medical consultation functions, the app also includes a catalog of China’s top-notch doctors. Through the app, users can request (offline) consultation or other services from these doctors. The compiled list of doctors is also a way to get insight into the different specialisms of different hospitals and doctors throughout the country.
The last feature of the app is the health community. In this area, all users can read articles about how to keep healthy, how to treat diseases, etc.
To provide all of these services, Ping An Good Doctorallegedly employed 1196 medical personnel in its in-house medical team, signed contracts with an additional 5,203 renowned external doctors, and partnered with over 3000 hospitals and over 15.000 pharmacies by the end of 2018.
#5 Yodo Run 悦动圈
The final app in this list is Yodo Run by the Shenzhen-based Rejoice Sports Tech Company. Yodo Run is one of China’s leading social health and fitness recording apps that strives to stimulate users to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
Through Yodo Run‘s advanced automatic step counting and GPS algorithm, the app can record various exercise patterns such as walking, running, fitness, and cycling. This way, users can keep track of their day-to-day movements. But that is not all that the app provides. The app also includes exercise schedules, video tutorials and a list of music.
To make sure people keep using the app, Yodo Run gives away tens of thousands of money packages every day. There are awards for reaching small goals, such as making 500 steps on your first day as an app user. But there are also awards that are more difficult to earn, such as long-term goals or when you partake in competitions or challenges.
But for those who are not using the app as a way to earn something extra, the app found another way to stimulates its users to exercise. And this is where Yodo Run differentiates itself with many other sports apps.
Yodo Run has a strong focus on bringing people together to exercise. To enable this, Yodo Run has the right tools to actively stimulate people to go out and meet others with a shared passion for exercising. According to their own website, the app has enabled people to unite in more than 500,000 “sports groups”, of which 10,000 are actual real-time running groups, spread over more than 300 cities worldwide.
Gabi Verberg is a Business graduate from the University of Amsterdam who has worked and studied in Shanghai and Beijing. She now lives in Amsterdam and works as a part-time translator, with a particular interest in Chinese modern culture and politics.
Ren Xiaorong (任小融) joined the Chinese state media outlet People’s Daily as a virtual presenter/news anchor this week.
Ren Xiaorong is the AI-powered host of an app allowing users to ask questions related to the Two Sessions, the annual plenary sessions of the National People’s Congress and of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference that have been taking place this week.
Through the People’s Daily app, you can ask Ren Xiaorong to tell you more about various topics covered during the Two Sessions, including education, epidemic prevention, housing, employment, environmental protection, and many other issues.
According to the introduction video launched by People’s Daily, Ren is also available to discuss other news topics people would like to know more about.
Ren Xiaorong is interactive to a certain (very limited) extent; users can select the topics they want to learn more about, but the app does not yet allow to ask specific questions.
A related hashtag went viral on Weibo on Sunday (#人民日报AI虚拟主播#), triggering discussions on the use of virtual news presenters.
Ren Xiaorong is not the first People’s Daily virtual news anchor. In 2019, the very first AI-powered presenter was unveiled at the 2019 Big Data Expo (#人民日报首位AI虚拟主播#). Guo Guo (果果), aka Little Guo Guo (小果果), was based on the real-life Chinese reporter Guo Xinyu (果欣禹).
Guo Guo and Guo Xinyu
China’s state media outlets Xinhua, Beijing TV, Hunan TV, and CCTV previously also unveiled their own AI-powered virtual news anchors at a time when China’s virtual idol market started to explode.
During the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, there was also a virtual host and China’s first AI sign language presenter.
Although news media outlets have started experimenting with virtual presenters for some time now, some netizens are still not convinced about the actual purpose of having virtual TV hosts and news anchors, especially when their AI-driven interactive functions are still limited.
Weibo blogging account ‘Media People Online’ (@传媒人在线) writes: “I’ve never really understood this, is there a shortage of broadcasting talent, or are AI anchors better at it? Why would you use a robot to broadcast the news? Are you spending so much money on an AI presenter just to show technological progress?”
But other bloggers (@夏日之阳新闻传播考研) think that virtual anchors could improve the quality and availability of news, since they could broadcast around the clock while saving on manpower, alleviating the pressure on newsrooms.
Whether people approve of virtual news readers or not, most agree Ren Xiaorong, along with her virtual colleagues, is a harbinger of the digitalization of the media at a time when artificial intelligence has already come to play a pivotal role in everyday activities.
Want to see Ren Xiaorong at work? Click this link on mobile.
Get the story behind the hashtag. Subscribe to What’s on Weibo here to receive our newsletter and get access to our latest articles:
Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. First-time commenters, please be patient – we will have to manually approve your comment before it appears.
On January 30, the American Embassy in China announced the launch of its very own series of social media gifs, a special ’emoticon collection’ (表情包), featuring a little, somewhat silly cartoon eagle.
The U.S. Embassy launched the eagle series on WeChat and also announced the series on their Weibo account, writing that the eagle made its first public appearance in light of the festivities surrounding the Chinese New Year.
The eagle is called “Xiaomei” or “Little Mei” (鹰小美). The ‘mei’ is part of 美国 Měiguó, Chinese for the ‘United States,’ but měi also means beautiful and pretty.
The American embassy issued a total of 16 different animated stickers, and they’re intended to be used on Tencent’s WeChat, where users can download all kinds of different emoticons or stickers to use in conversations.
WeChat users often use many different animated stickers in conversations to express emotions, make jokes, or increase the festive mood (by sending out celebratory New Year’s or birthday etc gifs). Users can download new and preferred sticker packages through the app’s sticker section.
One sticker shows Xiaomei with a festive decoration with 福 (fú) for blessing and prosperity, wishing everyone a happy start to the Chinese Lunar New Year. There are also stickers showing the texts “happy winter,” “hi,” and “thank you.”
Another sticker in the series that has triggered some online responses is one that shows the eagle with a surprised look, wiping its eyes, with the words “wait and see” written above. The Chinese expression used is 拭目以待 shìmù yǐdài, to eagerly wait for something to happen, literally meaning to wipe one’s eyes and wait.
This same expression was often used by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian (赵立坚) during press conferences, and he also used it in 2022 when responding to questions related to Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan and how the Chinese military would respond (e.g. he first used “wait and see” in the context of waiting to see if Pelosi would actually dare to go to Taiwan or not). But Zhao also used “please wait and see” (请大家拭目以待) when foreign reporters asked him how China would respond to the announced U.S. boycott of the Winter Olympics in 2021.
The Little Mei emoji triggered the most responses as some netizens felt it was meant as a sneer to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
One of Little Mei’s quotes is also “remain calm” (保持冷静 bǎochí lěngjìng), which was – perhaps coincidentally – also often used by Zhao in the context of the war in Ukraine and to refer to other international conflicts or tensions (“all parties should remain calm”). The animated sticker also has olive branches growing behind the eagle.
It recently became known that Zhao, who became known as the ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomat, was removed as the Foreign Ministry spokesperson and was moved to the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs.
Especially in the context of Zhao leaving his post, some wondered why the U.S. Embassy would use phrases related to his press conferences for their new emoticons.
Although some people suggested the WeChat stickers were not launched in China with good intentions, others appreciated the humorous visuals and felt it was funny. Some also joked that America was infiltrating Chinese social media with its cultural export (“文化输出”), and others wondered if they could not also introduce some other stickers with more Chinese Foreign Ministry popular phrases on them.
A hashtag related to the topic made its rounds on Weibo on Tuesday (#美驻华大使馆上线鹰小美表情包#), but the topic suddenly was taken offline on Tuesday evening local time, along with some of the media reports about the remarkable WeChat series.
The WeChat stickers are still available for downloading by scanning the QR code below through WeChat.
Get the story behind the hashtag. Subscribe to What’s on Weibo here to receive our newsletter and get access to our latest articles:
Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. First-time commenters, please be patient – we will have to manually approve your comment before it appears.