WeChat has become a true lifestyle in China. The platform that started with messages and sharing moments of your life, has now transformed into an essential app for every Chinese person. For the Chinese, daily life would become inconvenient without WeChat.
Last week we took a look at the life of An Di and how WeChat plays a role in her life. Today we’ll take a look at Hu Shuang.
For the Dutch version, please visit China 2025 for a fully translated version of our story!
Hu Shuang
Hu Shuang, male and 35 years old, is the father of a 3 year old daughter. He lives in Shanghai and works as a customer service manager. He has to pay mortgage every month for the house he lives in together with his daughter and wife.
Morning
At six o’clock in the morning, Hu Shuang is awakened by his daughter crying; she’s still young and sleeps with Hu and his wife in the same room. As a result, Hu isn’t able to sleep in even during the weekends. He takes out his phone from underneath his pillow, opens WeChat and selects a mini program for children’s stories with his daughter’s favorite stories. Then he plays a calming song through the mini program for his daughter. At this time, his wife also wakes up. She hugs their child and gently coaxes her to sleep again.
As their daughter slowly stops crying in the arms of his wife, Hu decides to get up and make breakfast. He opens his WeChat favorites list, searches for the recipes he collected before, and makes a healthy nutritious breakfast for him and his wife. After finishing, his wife praises him for the great meal.
Hu Shuang loves exercising. He goes out for a long run at 7 o’clock every morning. Today he goes out even earlier than usual. When he comes back home, he shares his running route and pictures of his homemade breakfast with his friends in WeChat moments and receives many likes in a few minutes. These likes motivates him to share more of his life.
Around 9 AM, Hu Shuang drives to the park with his children and wife. While walking in the park, he receives five to six WeChat calls from customers and his supervisors (figure 1). Because of his work, he also has to deal with business and handle customer requests on the weekends. Fortunately, most of his work can be solved by a few phone calls.
Figure 1: WeChat video call function 
Figure 2: WeChat waiting line mini program
Afternoon
Visiting the park is one of the favorite pastimes for Hu Shuang. He talks with his wife about work pressure and the financial pressure of their mortgage. In the big city of Shanghai, ordinary families are under great financial pressure. His wife’s job is not easy either, but she tells Hu optimistically: “As long as both of us work hard, our days will get better and better.”
The two looked at their daughter hand in hand and felt a sense of overwhelming love.
At noon, Hu Shuang takes his wife and children to a well-rated and recommended restaurant near the park. The restaurant turns out to be very popular, however, as it is overcrowded. They use WeChat to scan the QR code provided by the restaurant and receive their line number (figure 2). They sit in the rest area near the entrance and wait until one o’clock, after which they finally enter the restaurant.
At 3 o’clock in the afternoon, after Hu Shuang drove back home with his wife and daughter, he suddenly receives a phone call from his boss. His boss asks him to pick up a foreign client from the airport later during the day. The client arrives around five o’clock at Shanghai airport, where Hu Shuang has to pick him up. He had just returned home with his daughter and wife, but this meant he has to work overtime again and couldn’t even spend a weekend with his family. He looked at his wife, who looked back with a tiresome look, and felt guilty.
After leaving home, he opened WeChat and sends a red envelope to his wife; enough to buy a new purse (figure 3). He accompanies the gift with a message: “Darling, I always have to work overtime and leave you to take care of our child alone. I feel so guilty and I want you to know how much I appreciate you.”
Figure 3: WeChat red envelope with a hidden amount of money Figure 4: WeChat location sharing
Evening
Hu Shuang and the client agreed to meet outside of the airport. In order to facilitate the client, he uses WeChat to send a location to the client (figure 4). They find each other quickly and leave together to meet Hu’s boss.
It is almost 10 PM, when Hu drops off the client at his hotel. Hu hurries to get home, where his wife and daughter are waiting for him. When he gets home, everything is quiet already. Both his child and his wife had fallen asleep. He quietly cleans himself up and gets into bed. Hu opens WeChat in the dark and reads a few articles, before got a bit sleepy.
Just as he turned off his cell phone, his wife turned around and whispered to him: “Good night, husband. I love you.“
“Good night, let’s go to sleep quickly.” Hu replied with a smile on his face.
