Aemulo
Aemulo is an iOS app that works through TrollStore to bring NFC card emulation to the iPhone. It is still in beta, but it already works well enough to copy unencrypted access cards. At the moment, though, it still feels a bit awkward in daily use: if you want to open a door, you have to take out your phone, launch the app, open the saved card tag, tap the emulation button, and only then hold it up to the reader. Since it is still a test version, the hope is that later it will become as simple as just pulling out the phone and tapping directly.
Repository: https://github.com/Aemulo/Release
A lot of people still are not sure how to use it, so a visual step-by-step explanation is the easiest way to make it clear.
- Install the app and open it.
- Tap the “+” icon in the top right. A menu item called “>Read Tag” will appear. This is the option for reading an access card. Before tapping it, place the card you want to read near the rear camera area of the phone.
- After a successful read, the app will show a tag entry like the “0x754….” one in the image above. In the current beta, you cannot rename tags or delete them.
- When you want to use the copied card, open that tag, tap “Emulate” in the top right to enter card emulation mode, then place the phone against the access reader. If the swipe works, the phone will vibrate.
The access card in my residential community is not encrypted, so copying it worked and I could use it normally. The elevator card at my workplace is encrypted; it could be copied, but authentication failed when actually trying to use it.
One practical tip: if you save several access cards and cannot tell them apart because renaming is unavailable, you can at least mark individual ones with the star/favorite label.
Shared bikes that somehow turned into shared e-bikes
At some point, regular shared bicycles seemed to disappear from the streets. Now it is almost all shared electric scooters and e-bikes instead. Once in a while, I still spot a few of the blue bikes, but not often.
What really deserves a complaint is the pricing. I still cannot tell whether these things are charging by distance or by time. My commute from home to the office is roughly 7 or 8 kilometers. One time my own e-bike was out of power, so I scanned a shared one instead. The ride lasted 20 minutes and cost 4 yuan. If the platform charges in 15-minute blocks, then 4 yuan kind of makes sense. But if it is supposed to be distance-based, then it feels like it should have been closer to 2 yuan.
On the way home from work, I used one again and had even bought a three-ride pass, but somehow I still got charged twice by the time I reached home. That really felt like a rip-off. At that point, taking the bus seems more economical anyway.
Power Plant Beef Noodles
Anyone from Tongling probably knows the name “Power Plant Beef Noodles.” It is one of those very ordinary noodle shops you can find all over the city. I asked some local coworkers which branch is the truly authentic one, and they did not seem to know either. Their answer was basically that none of them are really the authentic original, which was honestly pretty funny.
(This photo is just a random match from my backlog. If I do not post it, it will probably end up deleted anyway.)
One day when I was off work, a relative came over from my hometown and brought several large watermelons for me to pick up. I was already planning to take my wife out to grab something to eat, and since we arrived early and were both getting hungry, we wandered around Phoenix City for a bit. That was when we came across one of those Power Plant Beef Noodles shops.
What made it even more amusing was that the same storefront had two signs: one for “Longjiang Pig Trotter Rice” and one for “Power Plant Beef Noodles.” We only went in with the simple goal of filling our stomachs, but the taste turned out to be surprisingly good. The two of us left pretty satisfied, so it is worth a casual recommendation.