Before You Fly

Why the order matters

Almost everything in China runs through a phone, and almost everything on that phone wants to verify who you are before it will work. Verification is the slow part. It needs a working internet connection, sometimes a friend, occasionally a day of waiting, and in one case a visit to a railway counter.

Do it at home and the country opens up on arrival. Do it at the airport and you will spend your first afternoon in a queue with no data, trying to receive an SMS code on a phone that cannot reach the internet.

The single most common mistake: arriving with no way to get online, which blocks every other step.

Identity and your passport

Chinese services are tied to real identity. Payment apps, train tickets and shared bikes all ask for passport details, and the name you enter must match your passport exactly — same spelling, same order, no middle name invented or omitted. A mismatch is rejected silently and is tedious to correct.

Photograph your passport's photo page before you travel and keep it somewhere you can reach offline. You will be asked for the number more often than you expect.

What a foreign card can do

Since 2023, Alipay and WeChat Pay both accept foreign Visa, Mastercard and a few other networks. This changed travel in China completely — you no longer need a Chinese bank account for daily spending.

It is not universal. Smaller transactions go through smoothly; a fee applies above roughly ¥200. Some services inside those apps — train booking, bike deposits, delivery — still reject foreign cards even when the wallet itself accepts them. Expect to be refused occasionally and have a second method ready.

Tell your bank you are travelling to China, or the first payment may be blocked as fraud.

Carry some cash. It is rarely needed, but it is the only thing that never fails.