Romania → China essential apps
Which apps a visitor to China needs, what each is for, and which of them may be missing from the mainland China store are on Essential Apps for China and the pre-arrival checklist; which DiDi app to install is on DiDi and taxis. None of that is repeated here. What is specific to leaving from Romania is the store itself: the Romanian App Store is the one you can use without preparation, and switching your account to another region is an account operation with waiting periods rather than something done at an airport gate.
Should I do it before China?
The whole answer on this page is "before", and for an unusually concrete reason: the escape hatch people assume exists — switch the store region once you are there — is gated on clearing your account balance, cancelling subscriptions and waiting them out, and adding a payment method and billing address for the new country, and a Family Sharing member may not be able to switch at all. Installing is also not the same as being ready: open each app once and sign in, so a broken account surfaces while you can still fix it.
How
- Do before arrivalDownload and open every app you will need — messaging, maps, translation, banking, airline — from the Romanian store before departure, while that store and a working connection are both available.1
- Do before arrivalDo not plan on switching your App Store region as a fallback. Apple's support page states that before changing country or region you must spend any remaining Apple Account balance, cancel subscriptions that block the change and wait out the subscription period, and enter a payment method and billing address for the new country; members of a Family Sharing group may be unable to change region at all, and some content may not be available in the new region.1
- Do before arrivalHave a payment method attached before you need a ride. Romania's MFA states that DiDi is accessible to foreigners and available in English but that using the app requires having a bank account with a card attached to it beforehand, and that ride-hailing is also available inside WeChat and Alipay. The MFA's wording about a bank account is loose and was not cross-checked against DiDi's own terms, so whether a foreign card alone is enough is not established.2
What can go wrong
You plan to switch to the Chinese App Store at the airport to get an app you forgot.
What to do instead It is not a quick fix: the change requires clearing the account balance, cancelling blocking subscriptions and waiting out their period, and adding a local payment method and billing address. Install everything from the Romanian store before you leave.1
You are in a Family Sharing group and the region change is refused outright.
What to do instead Members of a Family Sharing group may be unable to change region at all, so do not build a plan on it; download from the Romanian store while you still can.1
The DiDi registration will not complete because no card is attached.
What to do instead Attach the card before the trip, and keep the ride-hailing entries inside WeChat and Alipay as the fallback, since they reuse the payment method already set up in those wallets.2
Last verified and sources
Each record below is shown as provenance: who published it, what kind of document it is, how far it reaches and when we last checked it. The source’s own wording is not reproduced here — most of these documents are published in Chinese, and a translation of ours would be a paraphrase standing where a citation should be. Follow the link to read any of them in the original.