Nine months after the same feature was first offered to Android users, Beijing commuters who own iPhones can finally use their devices to pay their fares when entering the Beijing Metro.

Phones are scanned for proximity, so the phone’s screen isn’t required to be facing in a particular direction

The new feature was implemented Friday in Apple’s latest iOS 11.3 update for its iPhones and Apple Watches that allow pre-installed hardware to be recognized by public transportation fare systems in Beijing as well as Shanghai.

Here’s how it works: After downloading the Beijing Metro Transport Card (一卡通) app from the Apple store (here), users will be given an option to bind their Beijing transport cards to their Apple Pay account, through which they can recharge their cards online with amounts between 10-500 RMB. After having their devices take on the identity of their transport cards by holding them physically next to each other (shown below), users can simply swipe their iPhones at subway gates to enter.

NFC technology was first introduced to the public in 1997

READ: Pay Beijing Metro Fares With Mobile Phone QR Codes Beginning in May

Using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, commuters need just to place the iPhone in close proximity to the fare scanner when crossing subway turnstiles. Although the iPhone does not to be online for it to work, it does have to be powered on.

Beijing and Shanghai (shown below) are the latest Chinese cities to allow subway commuters to pay for fares using their iPhones, joining the debut of Hangzhou and Guangzhou last year.

iPhone users can charge a maximum of 500 RMB to their virtual transport cards

As long awaited as the new iOS update will be to iPhone users, Apple’s latest announcement arrives days after the Beijing Metro said it will introduce QR phone code payment in May that will allow commuters to pay fares directly with e-payment systems and rid them of any need for transport cards.

As if to emphasize that Apple’s efforts are “too little, too late,” the Beijing Metro have said they will be phasing out NFC technology in favor of the new QR scanning technology at a later unspecified time.

More stories from this author here.

E-Mail: charlesliu1 (at) qq (dot) com
Twitter: @Sinopath

Images: Weibo (1, 2, 3)

His eyes lit up as he explained to me that Santa sent a personalized message last Christmas. Santa knew everything, he said. His message full of information on all the naughty and nice events of the year, he even knew the right names to say! Even though the person recommending Portable North Pole (PNP) was an adult father, not a little boy, nonetheless it was clear the online service and iPhone/Android app had worked it’s magic.

I understood his excitement. Santa is the MVP of Christmas; he is a busy guy, with billions of houses to visit. Getting a personalized message from him is a very big deal. PNP makes it simple to arrange a video message or call from Saint Nick.

PNP allows parents to create free, customized messages and calls online, or through the mobile app (on iOS and Android). You can customize the video with your child’s details including their name, photo, age, location, and what they want for Christmas. Choose from a selection of videos featuring Santa speaking direct from the North Pole. The apps also include cute festive activities.

You can create a free video message, but there are also extra in app purchases unlocking longer videos, and the answer to Christmas’s most important question: Have they been naughty or nice?

With five percent of web sales go to over 40 children’s hospitals around the world, I guess Santa is a man who just keeps on giving!

Images: Courtesy of Portable North Pole

‘Mum…?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Mum!……’

‘Mmhmm…’

‘Mum I can’t believe you are using your phone at the table…! Do you remember that you did not allow us to use our Game Boys during meal time when we were little?’

‘Oh…sorry…yes… but I am not playing here…I just need to check something…’

My daughter is right. When handheld video games appeared in the early 90’s children loved them but they were addictive and we had to set up rules. Rule number one was: no Game Boys at the table (well, except at the end of the meal at the restaurant – after paper, pencils and card games had lost the children’s interest). Game Boys have since been replaced by mobile phones and tablets and it is no longer only children who get totally engrossed by their electronic devices… I, for one, have realised that the challenge of addiction is stronger than I imagined and you may have recognised yourself in the above scenario.

The Journal of Pediatrics recently published an interesting study conducted by researchers at the Boston University Medical Centre about the ‘Patterns of Mobile Device Use by Caregivers and Children While Dining in Restaurants‘. The concern is a lack of attention given to children, the potential consequences on their well being and the long term impact on the parent-child relationship.  The responses of the children to the lack of interaction by the adult in charge showed that some were able to entertain themselves, some just remained passive and that some acted out and tested limits in order to attract attention. It also showed that when interrupted, the adults often lashed out more harshly than necessary.

Boston psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair explains: “When you’re texting or answering email, the part of your brain that is engaged is the ‘to do’ part, where there’s also a sense of urgency to get the task accomplished, a sense of time pressure. So we’re much more irritable when interrupted.”

Mobile devices are a new cultural phenomena. They are here to stay and we have to learn to live with them. We also have to be aware of the impact of the message we give when we use our phone in a social setting.  ”We are behaving in ways that certainly tell children they don’t matter, they’re not interesting to us, they’re not as compelling as anybody, anything, or any ping that may interrupt our time with them,” says Steiner-Adair.

I believe this message applies to children or adults alike. How often have you felt relegated to secondary degree importance when your friend, your spouse or your child answers the phone or sends a text in the middle of your conversation? Let’s be honest, it hurts, but we’re adults and we can understand the potential urgency of that incoming message.

Children, on the other hand, learn by imitation. By watching us they learn how to interact, how to have conversations, how to express their feelings and validate their emotions. They learn how to behave and how to conduct themselves in social situations. Based on the quality of the interaction with their parents they make decisions about themselves that will impact them for life:

‘When Dad stares at his smartphone while we are having dinner it probably means that I am boring and that I am not worthy of his interest’.

‘When Mum has a long conversation with her friend while she is pushing my pram she indicates that she would probably prefer to be with her friend and doesn’t really like spending time with me’.

The list of faux-pas is long, I am as guilty as anyone and we can all try to be more thoughtful when we use our devices around our children. Let’s ask ourselves: “Do I really need to look at that right now? Could it wait?” Use it briefly if it can’t wait, but explain what we are about to do and apologise to our children so they know we are not ignoring them for something better or that much more important than them.

Pediatrician Dr Claire McCarthy admits she is addicted to her smartphone but is trying to get the balance right with her family by making meal times phone-free zones.

We could all create a list of phone-free zones to display on our fridges: No phones allowed – be mindful of the present moment –

– feeding Baby:  babble with her, talk to her, comment on the food and on her new skills, they grow up so fast.

– taking Toddler to the park: show her the birds, teach her new words, help him interact with other children.

– pushing Son on the swing:  watch his happy face, the array of emotions he is experiencing. Laugh with him.

– listening to Child who has just come home from school and has so much to tell you right now (but nothing left to say later when you might be more available)!

– shopping with your teen: help him/her choose the all perfect outfit even if it takes longer than expected!

– eating in a restaurant: talk about food, life and the universe…

I recently discovered that the local Health Spa imposes a 10pm internet curfew to their overnight guests and I am pondering weather to install this in my own home!

Mobile devices are not all bad, on the contrary! My children are very savvy at finding fun facts, Apps and games and we have shared many great moments together as a family watching entertaining YouTube videos or looking at photos and updates from friends or even checking word definitions for that scrabble game we were playing.  All together around one device. Recommended!

Most importantly though we must work on being fully present in the moment when we spend time with our children and give them our full attention. It is that feeling of being the most important thing in their parents life (and they are!) that will give our children the self worth indispensable to developing self esteem, confidence, happiness and independence.

This post first appeared on Lyliane Stewart’s site parentingeastwest.com on April 28, 2014.

Lyliane Stewart is a teacher, a positive discipline parent educator and a mother of two young adults. Originally from Switzerland, she lives with her husband in Beijing where she has been very active with the school community over the years.  Her personal experience of living internationally in a cross-cultural family has given her a good understanding of the various challenges encountered by multi-cultural, multi-lingual expatriate families. Passionate about psychology and education, she founded Parenting East West to offer support to families around the world. Lyliane believes that by gaining a better understanding of ourselves, and of human relationships in general, we become better equipped for parenting.  She offers weekly interactive parenting classes through which she introduces positive parenting tools and strategies.

The Mums2B group she started meets in Sanlitun weekly and welcomes new expectant parents.To get in touch, send a message to: parentingeastwest@gmail.com

Photo courtesy of Lyliane Stewart

According to Apple: Recent reports have suggested that some counterfeit and third party adapters may not be designed properly and could result in safety issues. While not all third party adapters have an issue, we are announcing a USB Power Adapter Takeback Program to enable customers to acquire properly designed adapters.

We’ve done our fair share of covering iPads and apps for kids on this site, and for good reason – there are now literally tens of thousands of titles aimed at young children and their insatiable appetites for playing games on smart devices.

As any parent with an iPad can attest the explosive growth of the this industry should come as no surprise – after all, what more justifiable way to keep your restless kids absorbed and entertained than with a touchscreen tablet filled with "educational" games? (And yes, I’m using the term "educational" loosely here).

So now that kids and apps have become as integral a part of modern childhood as TV was for generations past (and present, in many families), it’s also not surprising to see an article like Hanna Rosin’s piece in latest issue of The Atlantic ("The Touch Screen Generation," April 2013). It’s a long one, but very much worth reading. Among the insights:

"… Technological competence and sophistication have not, for parents, translated into comfort and ease. They have merely created yet another sphere that parents feel they have to navigate in exactly the right way. On the one hand, parents want their children to swim expertly in the digital stream that they will have to navigate all their lives; on the other hand, they fear that too much digital media, too early, will sink them. Parents end up treating tablets like precision surgical instruments, gadgets that might perform miracles for their child’s IQ and help him win some nifty robotics competition—but only if they are used just so. Otherwise, their child could end up one of those sad, pale creatures who can’t make eye contact and has an avatar for a girlfriend."

To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry—the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takes some academics to find funding and gather research subjects. So what’s a parent to do?

Despite these common misgivings, Rosin goes on to explain how in spite of the perceived intellectual passivity of electronic media consumption, the "cognitive interactivity" of many educational apps and even certain TV shows (i.e. " Blue’s Clues") can still be construed as "educational" for children – in other words, there’s more to that zombie-like expression your kids get when they’re absorbed in an app (or watching an educational TVshow, for that matter) than meets the eye. Research indicates that in many instances, kids are, in fact, learning from these programs and apps. But questions still remain as to how and why such learning is taking place.

I’ll be the first to admit that, for better or worse, I am as hooked on smart devices as they come – and no parent would wish a full-blown addiction on their children. But, as Rosin points out, I, too, want my children to "swim expertly in the digital stream that they will navigate for the rest of their lives" and if anything, I wish my daughter could actually use and learn from our iPad more.

To explain: Following doctor’s orders we strictly restricted my daughter’s iPad use after she was prescribed corrective lenses for her congenital far-sightedness. It seems that high resolution screens, especially ones with Apple’s much-touted Retina Display, is very bad for young eyes and we were warned against letting her watch TV or use iPads (Rosin’s article interestingly does not even touch on this issue).

This makes perfect sense and we have followed suit, but I can’t help but feel like she’s missing out on some fantastic learning experiences from truly well designed educational apps. Experience tells me that there are indeed a lot of great apps for kids out there and we have used some with our daughter in the past. Of course books and paper shouldn’t be discounted and we continue reading stories and drawing pictures with our daughter the old fashioned way, but the technogeek in me makes me yearn for the opportunity to have my daughter experience and learn from more apps and yes, even some TV shows (the quality ones like Leap Frog and Blues Clues, that is).

Hopefully my daughter’s eyesight will improve over time and we won’t need to be so cautious about her screen time (even now, we do allow her a few minutes here and there) – I’m sure there will be a day when she will be able to swipe away as much as all the other kids. In these regards I fully agree with Rosin’s conclusion: We do indeed live in a screen age and iPads and tablets are here to stay, it’s really up to us adults to determine our own comfort zones when it comes to managing our kids and smart devices – how our kids work it into their own lives is ultimately best left up to them.

Bebot
(USD 1.99, iOS 3.0+, ages 4+)
Who doesn’t know Bebot by now? This synth app allows users to produce a wide variety of unique and versatile sound effects through the interface of a cute, tuxedo’ed, and retro-looking cartoon robot.    

Bloom HD
(USD 3.99, iOS 4.3+, ages 4+)
Bloom HD is a revolutionary app that gives you the ability to play music, compose a song, and make a work of art, all at the same time. And you don’t have to be a musician to use it; everyone can make something amazing simply by touching the screen. If that sounds like too much work for you, you can also just let the app run idle, randomly creating beautiful works of art for your enjoyment.

Falling Stars
(Free, iOS 4.2+, ages 4+)
Falling Stars is both a hybrid music/drawing app that allows you to trace lines onto the screen, after which notes fall from the sky and roll along the contours of your drawing. It’s a simple concept, but incredibly addictive and fascinating. 

LaDiDa
(USD 2.99, iOS 4.0+, ages 4+)
Let’s face it: Not everybody can sing. But luckily, with LaDiDa, talent doesn’t matter! LaDiDa provides auto-tune and professional vocal effects to make you the best singer you can be. And all with minimal effort: LaDiDa automatically changes the key and chords depending on your voice, so all you have to do is belt out your favorite song. 

Ocarina 2
(Free, iOS 5.0+, ages 4+)
Ocarina 2 gives you the power of pure music, right at your fingertips. Blow into your phone and play the notes to discover some of your favorite songs in an all new way, from Bieber to Bach (though hopefully Bach). Adjustable difficulty settings make this a game that anybody can play.

Sing Something
(Free, iOS 5.0+, ages 12+)
The concept of Sing Something is simple: Just sing a song from the category and have your friend guess what it is. If they guess right, you both get coins. Then it’s their turn. Hundreds of popular songs are available, going back as far as the 80s. Rock out!

Virtuoso Piano 3
(Free, iOS 4.0+, ages 4+)
Unfortunately, pianos aren’t portable. Virtuoso Piano 3 solves this problem by giving you the ability to practice on the fly. With incredible sound quality, this app would make Mozart proud. Choose from two pianos: a broken pub piano and a classic grand.

This post coincides with the release of beijingkids’ August issue, which is all about music. For features on music and development classes, private music lessons, buying instruments, and more, download your free PDF copy here.

You can never have enough books for a child, and if you own a smart phone or tablet computer, you can never have enough storybooks apps for the little ones. Here are six stories about mice, dogs, pandas, mermaids, a fairy, and a grandma that we’ve recently come across and that your children will enjoy.

The Three Pandas by Valerie Mih and developed by See Here Studios in association with Pandas International is one app that will make you feel good about owning it, as 10 percent of proceeds are donated to Pandas International (stunning photos of pandas on their website). The tale puts a panda spin on the story of Goldilocks and Three Bears. Although photos are used to illustrate the book, kids can tickle the pandas and Mei Mei to make them move. If your children love pandas, they will love this story. A huge plus to the Beijing crowd is the choice of English or Chinese text and narration and there is also an option to record your own voice for each page to personalize the narration. There are no external links on the title page, though there is one to an info page about pandas with links to Pandas International’s website, a review link, and email. The Three Pandas is available for the iPad or iPhone here for $2.99 and is suitable for kids ages 3 and up.

Mousey Howsee and the Rescuers was written by Jurga Sakalauskaite and Donatas Malinauskas, illustrated by Andrius Sliog, and developed by Realverus. On the one hand, it is difficult to say what this storybook app is about as the story changes depending on the time of day that you read it and depending on the season too. Frankly, I’d welcome spring right now to see what the story will be like; that and I’m tired of the cold weather. It’s a clever concept and I’d like to see more storybooks taking advantage of this kind of content possibilities with smart devices. There are lots of little interactive bits for small fingers to find and every few pages there is a brief video clip embedded in the story. After enjoying the storybook, there is also a game where kids can find the changes made to five of the story’s pictures. My biggest complaint about the app is the lack of volume or a mute control for the background music. There are also links on the homepage for social media (Facebook and email) that can take young children out of the app and frustrate their experience. Overall, it is a worthy storybook that teaches a good lesson about listening to others and thinking about safety first when it comes to recreational activities. Mousey Howsee is available for free at the App Store with in-app purchase for full content. Rated for ages 4 and up.

Alpo Finds Alma by Jukka Lemmetty is one of the latest titles developed by Tapisodes. In this latest adventure for Alpo, he gets hurt and his friend, Jimmy, takes him around to various animals at the zoo to try and get some help. Sean Connelly expertly narrates the story and conjures up delightful character voices. I really enjoy the quality that Tapisodes puts into their apps and that everything is kid friendly. For starters, there are no links on the homepage, though if you look carefully, you can find a hidden map detailing Alpo and Alma’s adventure. Personally, I would like to see text highlighting when the story is being narrated for a child, but for now, Alpo lacks that function. Alpo Finds Alma is available at the App Store or for Android for $2.99 and is rated 4+. I highly recommend anything else Tapisodes has made too.
 

For older children, The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen and illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger is a must-have storybook. It is no surprise that it won the Silver Medal 2011 Parent’s Choice Award. Once again, the publishing powerhouse Auryn has created another winner. The illustrations are beautiful, but the use of a touch feature that creates the movement of water when interacting with the screen makes the images really come alive; even the text appears to be submerged in water. This is the classic tale from Hans Christian Anderson, so there is no softening of the story and at times the text is rather graphic in the portrayal of violence, compared to modern children’s tales, so parents should definitely read through it once before handing it over to junior to make sure it is appropriate for little ones (my daughter would have to skip the last third of the story). Still, for those tired of the Disneyfication of classic tales (guilty), this is a great interpretation of the original. Auryn has also made the story available in a Mandarin version here for $0.99. You can download the lite version of The Little Mermaid at the App Store here for free to try it out before you purchase. I’d rate this one 5 and up.
 

Another great tale from Auryn is Miko, Mom, Wake Up and Play! by Brigitte Weninger and Stephanie Roehe. This is one of a series of Miko books, six in all, which are now available in app form thanks to Auryn. Auryn is always looking at ways to differentiate themselves from other developers and with the Miko stories, you not only can create your own recordings of the text, but parents and kids can also completely rewrite the text too. With straightforward, easy to use controls accessed from the title page, you can create a whole new story to the delight (or disappointment in my case) of your child. For those not familiar with the tale, Miko is a little mouse who awakes early and must occupy himself until his mom wakes up. It is a familiar experience for most parents, though in our home, Reina is not apt to let us sleep like Miko does for his mom. In this storybook, and all the other Miko titles, when you touch an item in the story, the name of it appears and is pronounced by the child narrator. There are no external links on the home page. Miko is available from the App Store for $0.99 and I think it is suitable for any age.
 

Our final story is Sarah, the Little Fairy: Grandma Gets Lost written by Marga M. Garriga, illustrated by Vanessa Linares, and developed by Sanoen. In this story, Sarah and her family are preparing their home for Grandma to come live with them. Her grandma has Alzheimer’s disease, so the family works hard to make the environment safe and comfortable for Grandma. All goes well until one day, Grandma cannot be found anywhere and they all must try to find her. Along the way, the story illustrates how Alzheimer’s damages the brain’s memory and Sarah realizes where her grandmother must be. Readers can choose between English, Spanish, French, German and Catalan. On the title page there are external links to Facebook, Twitter, and Email, so that can be a problem for smaller kids. There are easy-to-use controls at the bottom of each page to turn the background music and/or narration on and off (thank you very much), a link to the home page, and a clever twist on the standard memory game using the sound of musical instruments rather than pictures. At the end of the story, there is even a brief quiz to test readers’ memory of the information they have learned. Sarah, the Little Fairy: Grandma Gets Lost is available at the App Store and for the Kindle for $2.99 and is rated by the publisher for ages to 5-9.

Rye Studios’ trilingual story app

This blog comes to us courtesy of Hao Mama, an American woman who lives with her Chinese husband and their two children in San Francisco, where she is on "a never-ending quest to find and share resources that make learning Chinese a fun and organic part of our children’s lives."

Two years ago when I got my iPhone, I searched for decent educational apps that could support my kids’ Chinese learning. They were few and far between, and mostly developed by Westerners for non-Chinese speakers to teach basic vocabulary. In recent months, I have followed tips I read on Twitter (thanks @lantaumama!) or on blogs and, ever since the iPhone was introduced in China, it seems the market has expanded and improved. These are a few of our favorites so far (this post will be a work in progress so please send in any tips of programs I may have missed!):

– Rye Studio: A series of animated stories, with the option to switch between English, Japanese and Mandarin. By far, the best, most engaging and professional Chinese app I have seen. They are cheap, several are free, and my kids love them. Mulan and the Monkey King are favorites and can be downloaded here.

– Apple Tree Books: Illustrated books including classics like the Hare and the Tortoise, the Boy Who Cried Wolf, etc. They have an option to read it yourself or have it read to you, which is nice for beginning readers. Not quite as sophisticated as Rye Studio but good nonetheless.

– FeedMe Chinese: A favorite with my three-year-old, the program asks simple questions about colors, shapes, numbers, etc and the child must drag the correct answer into the mouth of a silly purple monster. If the answer is correct, the monster gives a happy whoop. If it’s wrong, he spits it out and looks dejected and sad. Very cute.

– Just as I was finishing this post, I received an email about a new Chinese reading app, Catch Me if You Can, which is a fun character recognition game, where students have to “catch” the correct characters to recreate a sentence. My six-year-old tried it and was hooked right away. The only downside (for us) is that the versions using simplified characters are very limited. (I emailed the developer and she said they are planning more versions with simplified characters soon.)

– 5Qchannel: A great storytelling website has just started creating iPhone apps. I haven’t tried them yet but the content on their site is quite good.

– Doodle Chinese teaches basic vocabulary in three categories: Animals, Numbers and Greetings then offers quizzes with cute drawings to test your knowledge and expands to more complicated conversations. Good for a new learner.

– ABC Chinese: A simple flashcard application to teach basic vocabulary。

For my six-year-old, the best writing practice is simply the Chinese character touchpad input screen on the iPhone 4, where he can draw a character with his finger and it magically converts it into type.

Some others I have seen but not yet tried:

– Chinese children’s songs. Frankly, I don’t dare download it since I know my daughter will want to listen to nothing else. But it looks good for those whose kids are learning the standard Chinese children’s songs. And it’s free.

Peter Rabbit … in Chinese!

I don’t have an iPad so haven’t included any apps that just work on tablets. Beatrix Potter storybooks, in English and Chinese, with the original illustrations, look great but are only for iPads.

For those without smart phones, Childroad is a nice Chinese story and reading website.

Got some pointers for Hao Mama? Add them to the comments section of her original post here.

Jesper Lodahl is a serial entrepreneur who has been working on mobile internet and education in China for more than 12 years. His latest project, SmarTots, recently won the seed award at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) and is also winning over parents, educators, and most importantly, children, with its innovative approach to education. Jennifer Thomé met up with Lodahl shortly after his success to learn about his inspiration for this project, and what he thinks the future of education will look like.

Read the entire interview on Agenda here.