China life simulator

Daily life in China moves between modern business districts, neighborhood noodle shops, and public parks. People eat steamed buns for breakfast, pay with phone apps, and gather for shared family dinners. A life here can be a tech worker in Shenzhen or a student in Xi'an.

Standard office hours run from 8:30 AM or 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM or 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday. Workers often take a midday break for lunch and a brief rest called xiuxi. In technology and startup sectors, longer evening and weekend shifts are common.

People grab steamed buns called baozi, rice porridge called zhou, or crispy jianbing crepes for breakfast. For lunch, workers visit noodle shops for Lanzhou lamian or order delivery, called waimai. At dinner, families share dishes like mapo tofu, fanqie chao dan, or hotpot called huoguo.

Family ties are multi-generational, and grandparents often help raise young children. Adult children follow xiao, or filial piety, to care for aging parents. In the evenings, older residents gather in parks for synchronized square dancing called guangchangwu, tai chi, or chess.

In China, people pay for daily items by scanning QR codes with WeChat, called Weixin, or Alipay, called Zhifubao. Homes and restaurants serve warm or boiled water, called reshui, for good digestion. At restaurants, hosts and guests politely compete to pay the whole bill, called maidan.

During the Spring Festival and weddings, people gift money inside red envelopes called hongbao. People also travel during the Qingming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, and National Day Golden Week. At the table, people never stick chopsticks vertically into a bowl of rice.

You can use local words when you talk to people in LifeSim. Say ni hao for hello, xiexie for thank you, and jiayou to tell a friend to keep going. Call a taxi driver or chef shifu, and build guanxi, or personal networks, with your neighbors.

Lin, 22, moves to Shenzhen and works as a food delivery courier. Lin writes two life goals: save money and meet a software engineer in the tech district. You can also edit the cast to add a boss or a roommate.

In week one, Lin searches the 3D map for a noodle shop and an office tower. Lin talks to an office worker named Chen in Lin's own words, with no dialogue menus. Chen remembers the chat in a journal and texts Lin the next day.

On Saturday, Lin plans an outing, invites Chen and two neighbors, and picks a real park on the map. They walk there together and talk as a group. Later, a karaoke night appears on the map, and the day ends with a recap of its moments.

You do not have to live in Beijing or Shanghai. The 3D map covers all of Earth, so any named town or village in China works. Type a town in Zhejiang or a river village in Guilin into your character prompt.

You can play a high school student in a quiet provincial town preparing for the June Gaokao exam. You can also play an office worker who returns to a village to run a wooden teahouse. On desktop, you can use Build mode to draw a new building and place it in your town.