China survival card
One screen for the first hours: who to call, your hotel address in characters a driver can read, and what still works when no phone payment does. What you type stays in this browser.
Emergency
press 1 after dialling 110 or 122 for English.
+86-12367National Immigration Administration — entry and arrival-card questions- +86 186 1173 7488Romanian Embassy, Beijing
- +86 137 0194 9075Romanian Consulate General, Shanghai
- +852 9613 7370Romanian Consulate General, Hong Kong
Calling these numbers for routine questions gets no answer; general consular queries go to the mission's ordinary channels.
Source: Official body outside China (Romanian MFA travel conditions for China) ↗ verified 2026-09-14 · Official body outside China (Romanian MFA, citing the Chinese NIA) ↗ verified 2026-09-14
My hotel
A driver needs the address in Chinese characters. An English hotel name or its pinyin is not something you can rely on being understood, and several hotels in a city can share one English name. Paste the Chinese address here and show the phone.
Screenshot the Chinese address from the booking confirmation before you fly, and ask the front desk for the hotel’s card in Chinese when you check in.
Source: Editorial inference — no source document to link to verified 2026-09-14
Payment — 0 of 4 ready
Installed, registered and with a foreign card already added and tested. The linked official guide lists which card networks Alipay accepts.
Our note, not the source’s A network being on that list is not the same as your card binding. The record’s own caution — issuer risk controls, virtual or prepaid cards, a name that does not match the passport — is why this is worth testing at home, and no official list of accepted issuing banks exists.
Source: Chinese government body ↗ verified 2026-09-14
Installed, registered and with a card added inside the wallet. The linked help page has the exact menu path and the passport copy Weixin asks you to upload.
Our note, not the source’s Weixin publishes the steps, not a turnaround time. That the passport check is reviewed rather than instant — and so is a bad thing to start on your first morning in Beijing — is this site’s reading of the record, not a line on the help page.
Source: Operator or service provider, official channel ↗ verified 2026-09-14
A real card in your wallet for when an app will not load. Whether it is taken depends on the network logos shown at the till; the linked official guide sets out what is accepted where.
Source: Chinese government body ↗ verified 2026-09-14
Renminbi notes. PBC Announcement [2020] No.18 forbids refusing cash — that is the floor under this whole card, and the two rules at the bottom of it are the same announcement applied to transport.
Our note, not the source’s Bring them in small denominations. The announcement obliges the shop to take your cash; it does not oblige anyone to have change, and the record’s recorded fallback — carry 10s, 20s and 50s — is this site’s answer to that gap rather than a line in the announcement.
Source: Chinese government body ↗ verified 2026-09-14
Transport
The mainland-China ride-hailing app, registered before you fly. The official guide behind this line says it takes a foreign phone number and a foreign card at registration.
Our note, not the source’s Two warnings recorded against that record rather than published in it: searching “DiDi” in a European app store mostly returns DiDi-Rider, a different app for Latin America that will not hail a car in China; and the SMS code at registration may not arrive on roaming or on a freshly installed eSIM.
Source: Chinese government body ↗ verified 2026-09-14
The metro QR code inside Alipay, with the identity check already passed and your city selected. The source is explicit that the identity check comes before the code is issued, and that it covers some apps and some cities rather than all of them.
Our note, not the source’s Which is why the ticket gate is the wrong place to open this for the first time, and why your city may not be one of the covered ones. Neither conclusion is in the guide; both are this site’s reading of it.
Source: Chinese government body ↗ verified 2026-09-14
Both Alipay and Weixin can hail a car without the separate DiDi app, and the linked official guide gives both menu paths.
Our note, not the source’s Walk those paths once at home, so a failed DiDi registration on arrival is an inconvenience rather than a dead end. That advice is this site’s, and so is the reason behind it — though the record does note that these in-wallet screens carry more Chinese than the standalone app does.
Source: Chinese government body ↗ verified 2026-09-14
If every phone payment fails
These two are not tips. They are published rules with a document number behind them, which is why they are the floor under everything above.
China’s metro service rules require at least one working ticket machine that accepts cash in every group of machines in a station, and extra staffed windows when machines fail at scale.
Our note, not the source’s What it guarantees is a machine, not change for a 100-yuan note — the rule says nothing about denominations or foreign currency. Carry 10s and 20s, or break the note in a convenience store first. That is the caution and the fallback recorded against this record, not a line in the rule.
Source: Chinese government body ↗ verified 2026-09-14
PBOC Announcement [2020] No.18 names taxis, buses and rail among the services that must accept renminbi cash, so a street-hailed taxi cannot turn your notes down.
Our note, not the source’s A duty to accept cash is not a promise that the driver can break a large note, and the in-car terminal will usually not take a foreign-issued card. Both of those are the caution recorded against this record rather than anything the announcement says.
Source: Chinese government body ↗ verified 2026-09-14
Everything you type here is stored in this browser only, under the key chinastepbystep:survival-card:v1. It is never sent anywhere — this page makes no network request with it.
Decision support only. Recheck time-sensitive rules with the linked authority.