I've traveled to China about 2-3 times each year for the last few years. I strongly recommend that people who travel to China install WeChat. Not only is it guaranteed to work in China, but it gives you instant street cred when you're there.<p>It's very, very common for people to say to me, "Wow, you have WeChat? You are so Chinese!" (I don't look Chinese at all, and my Mandarin is still at an elementary level, so this is clearly a cultural compliment!) It's the easiest, fastest, and cheapest thing you can do to make a connection with any hosts, friends, or business colleagues you meet there.<p>WeChat does indeed have tons of features. I've used it for personal and group communication, but also for video chats (when Skype went crazy on me), and it was solid. My Chinese teacher and I use it to exchange messages and photos, either when I'm visiting China or when we're outside of class time. I'm on a few groups, and it's a surprisingly clean and easy-to-use program for group chat.<p>I also use WhatsApp, and while that has a much nicer interface, it's not obvious to me that it's superior to WeChat.