Travel to CHN

Preparations before traveling to CHN

The Network situation in CHN is thoroughly different from others. The most knowing one is the existance of Great FireWall.

So, some network preparations have to be done before going to CHN mainland.

Maintain the access to the global internet

Since the existance of GFW, it is impossible to visit https://www.google.com normally in China without any technique.

There are several methods listed following:

Have a roaming SIM/eSIM card

This is the only legal way to access global network freely in CHN.

The easiest way is using the roaming service provided by your Mobile ISP in Canada while the roaming may charges a lot about 5$/day I guess.

Another method is have an esim subscription for travellers. You could get some recommends from https://esimdb.com. 3GiB per day would be a propriate traffic amount and $1 to $1.5 would be a normal price.

Have some proxies

Though it is not legal to Chinese citizens, foreign visitors are allowed to do that with the acquiescence of the authority.

However, most proxy software have been banned in or unable to establish connection with the overseas server in China Mainland.

Payment methods

Most offline merchants accept the Debit/Credit card through VISA/MasterCard. But some services only accept e-payment methods such as Alipay or Wechat, like bike renting, taxi booking or ele.me food express.

E-Maps

The China geology coordinate system is thoroughly different to the Global One. To have a better navigation experience, a Chinese Map software is must.

Though google maps is available to use as long as you are able to visit https://www.google.com, it lacks some important info such as bus, metro even the traffic status.

I recommend to use the Amap in China. You could click the following link to check whether it is available to you.

App Store on iOS

Google Play

Taxi Booking

Just check the DIDI Rider in advance!

Google Play

App Store on iOS

Public transport

If you have registered the Alipay or Wechat, you could use the Transport QrCode provided within the app to take bus or metro even the Maglev.

Otherwise, buying onetime ticket at any metro station is also welcome but not quite convenient since the vendor machine sometimes only accept the coins.

Cash Exchange

Actually, I do not recommend to exchange more than 200￥ cash.

Details about Roaming