[3][4] The Japanese variety of this species is black and usually a dark green, moss-like alga covers the shell.

When the soft parts of the snail are fully retracted, the operculum seals the aperture of the shell, providing some protection against drying out and predation.

[citation needed] Taxonomy of the introduced populations of Oriental mystery snails is confusing and there are many scientific names in use.

[5] Species of the genus Cipangopaludina can be identified by their relatively large globose shells and concentrically marked opercula.

[5] The shell is conical and thin but solid, with a sharp apex and relatively higher spire and distant body whorl.

Though native to East Asia from the tropics of Indochina to northern China, this species has established itself in North America.

It is found in "any or all of the tributaries on Grand Island and on both sides of the Niagara River in the United States and Canada.

[5] Cipangopaludina chinensis malleata occurs in Lake Erie, where it was introduced some time prior to 1968.

[13] The Chinese mystery snail was first recorded in England from a ditch in the Pevensey Levels in Sussex in September 2018 and early in 2022 a second population was reported on iNaturalist from Southampton Common.

[14] This species prefers freshwater lakes with soft, muddy or silty bottoms,[5] reservoirs, slow-moving freshwater rivers, streams,[5] paddy fields, and ponds with aquatic grass, creeping at the bottom of the water or on aquatic grasses.

[7] It prefers lentic water bodies with silt, sand, and mud substrate in eastern North America, although it can survive in slower regions of streams as well.

[7] Cipangopaludina chinensis feeds non-selectively on organic and inorganic bottom material as well as benthic and epiphytic algae, mostly by scraping, but diatoms are probably the most nutritious food it ingests at sites in eastern North America.

[7] Its shells are abundant in archaeological sites in the Guanzhong Basin of Northwestern China from the Mid-Late Neolithic age.