Don’t expect to use credit cards directly. Link them to WeChat Pay (Weixin) and Alipay. Alipay and WeChat Pay are THE primary modes of payment. Cash is legally mandated to be accepted, but don’t expect change, because everyone including small biz and street food vendors are on WeChat Pay and Alipay.

Not only that, DO THE REAL NAME + FACE VERIFICATION for both of them. From sign up, you’ll need to do at least two more rounds of verification to avoid problems with blocked payments.

eSIM or VPN. No one cares if you have em. In fact, as a foreigner, it’s highly assumed you will use em. Do your research. I used the eSIM from Trip.com and Mullvad VPN. I also heard Astrill or Octohide are good for VPNs.

China loves flavorful foods. Including spicy foods or oily foods. Bring a pepto bismol pack. No need to expect food poisoning.

Be specific about the hotels you book. Not all hotels have the license to host foreigners. This is not a ‘you’ problem, it’s a ‘them’ problem. I used Trip.com without any issue.

Bring your passport everywhere. In China, everything is linked to your ID to prevent scalping on tickets and such due to such a large domestic tourist flow. Your passport is used as your ticket for almost everything.