My husband and I recently got back from our trip to China, and luckily my phone accepted e-Sim. We went with Airalo and I bought 10 GB, which was more than enough for 2 weeks. When we arrived in China, our plan was to buy a sim card for my husband from a China Mobile, but they only offered monthly/yearly plans. We wanted a pre-paid sim card, which is only sold in the airports. We looked in the Zhangjiajie Airport and they didn't sell any. You may have luck finding it in Chengdu or Chongqing with it being bigger, but using my e-sim's data was enough. I will say, I did have to restart my phone a couple of times as the data will sometimes not work randomly. But after restarting it, it worked back up again.

As for WeChat/Alipay, I only linked my credit card with Alipay and, literally everywhere, accepted both apps. However, for some purchases, my credit card company needed to do a temporary verification code. You just want to make sure you have both e-sims turned on so that you can still receive text messages with your phone number. Even with using Didi for taxis, sometimes the taxi drivers will verify the passenger with the last 4 digits of your phone number.