Must-do before the trip
Six things, all doable from your sofa, that decide whether your first days work. None of them takes long. All of them are miserable to discover on arrival.
1. Set up Alipay and WeChat Pay — on your home wifi
Both big apps now take foreign Visa and Mastercards with passport verification. Do it before you fly, on your sofa, on your home wifi. The verification can involve SMS or callback steps that are miserable on arrival, half-asleep, roaming, standing in a shop holding dinner. Two apps installed, both verified, both with a small balance: that's the whole job.
2. File the Digital Arrival Card
Mandatory for foreign nationals, free, and done online before you fly — the NIA website, the 12367 app, or the WeChat/Alipay mini-programs. It produces a QR code the immigration desk scans. Paper forms still exist as a fallback; don't plan on them.
3. Check your hotel can actually take your passport
Not every hotel in China can legally check in a foreign guest — it's licensing, not prejudice, and the desk staff have no discretion. The big booking apps carry a foreign-guest filter in their search options; use it before you sort by price. A great rate on a small hotel with no foreign-guest filing is how you end up walking at 11pm with your luggage. The full story is in Must-know before the trip.
4. Put the 15-day train window in your calendar
China's high-speed tickets go on sale 15 days before departure at 14:00 local — and popular routes sell out that same afternoon. If a specific train matters to your trip, the date it goes on sale matters more. Set a phone alarm for it; nothing should quietly expire while you're at dinner.
5. Carry ¥500–1,000 in small notes
Cash is not dead here — it's the backup that makes the difference between a snack and a standoff. Small vendors, older terminals, the woman selling fruit off a cart: cards and phones fail at the edges, and the edges are where the good food is.
6. Pack the boring things
Your actual passport (real-name checks at sights and hotels), a power bank, and shoes you can walk a metro day in. One more that visitors forget: a small gift if you're meeting a business contact — card exchange is still the ritual, and it's covered in Cultural adjustment.
Every item above is a one-time action except the train window — and the train window is the one with a clock on it. Do items 1–5 now; put item 4 in the calendar the moment your dates are fixed.
Want this list turned into your dates, with the windows marked?
See how trip planning works →Day-by-day plans, hotels checked for foreign passports, trains timed to the minute — quoted before you commit.