China is the one trip where the packing list that matters is not clothes, it is accounts. Paying for noodles, hailing a taxi, reading a museum label, getting through a metro gate and boarding a train all happen inside apps — and almost every one of them wants a verification code, an app store, or a setup page that is easier to reach from your sofa than from a Guangzhou pavement.
Here are the seven jobs, in the order you should do them. None takes long. All of them are harder after you land.
1. Check your phone, then install your VamosData eSIM
Start here, because everything else on this list needs data. Confirm your handset supports eSIM with the device checker — and check carefully if the phone was bought in mainland China, where eSIM support on domestically sold models has historically been limited.
Then buy and install the profile at home, on good Wi-Fi, following the iOS or Android guide. A VamosData eSIM for the mainland connects as international roaming, so your data enters the internet outside China and the apps you already use keep working. Browse what is available on the China plans page.
2. Set up the payment wallets
Alipay and Weixin Pay — known outside China as WeChat Pay — both let an international visitor link an ordinary foreign card after a passport identity check, with no Chinese bank account. Do the download, the registration and the card linking now; the verification step is the slow part and it needs a code.
Two practical notes: tell your bank you will be paying through a Chinese wallet, because a first charge routed from Hangzhou is a classic fraud flag; and read the current caps and fees inside the app rather than in anyone's blog post — this one included. Full walkthrough: how to use WeChat Pay and Alipay as a foreigner.
3. Install Amap and switch it to English
Amap (Gaode) is the map that actually knows Chinese cities — metro exits, bus times, ride-hailing. It has had an English interface since January 2025 and added more than a dozen more languages later that year, switchable from its own settings. Install it before you fly, because a Chinese app store is not where you want to be standing at 11pm.
Keep your usual map app too. It works fine on mobile data routed out of the mainland, and the comparison is covered in does Google Maps work in China.
4. Download the offline packs
Offline maps for each city, and a translation language pack for Chinese. These are your floor for the metro tunnel, the flat battery and the hour you forget to top up. Note the honest limit: a downloaded pack handles typed text and often the camera, while live conversation mode usually still needs a signal — see the translation app you think is offline.
5. Register the moving-around apps on your own number
Ride-hailing, rail and intercity tickets, and hotel bookings all sit in apps that want an account before they want your money. Reports on how smoothly each one accepts a foreign number vary, which is exactly why you do it at home, where a failed code is an annoyance rather than a crisis. The deeper account-by-account version is in everything to set up before you fly to China.
6. Sort the power
Your phone is now the wallet, the map, the ticket and the translator, so its battery is a trip-critical system. Pack two power banks in the cabin — the limit under the rules in force since March 2026 — keep them within reach, and check your airline, since several are stricter about using them onboard. Details in the new power bank rules. Add a plug adapter that handles Chinese sockets and one more cable than you think you need.
7. Build the paper-and-screenshot fallback
Screenshot your hotel address in Chinese characters, your flight details and your first day's tickets. Carry a modest amount of cash: rules in force since February 2026 require businesses to accept renminbi notes, and notes work when a battery does not.
If you want a VPN as a backup for hotel Wi-Fi, install and test it before departure — several are unreliable from inside the country and their own websites can be hard to reach. Do you need a VPN in China weighs that up. And the honest caveat for the whole list: the moment you join hotel or café Wi-Fi you are on a local connection again, whatever is in your phone. None of this is legal advice, and local rules are the local authorities' to state.
The ten-minute version
Device checked, VamosData eSIM installed, wallets verified, Amap in English, offline packs downloaded, travel apps registered, power banks packed, bookings screenshotted. Do it the evening before, not in arrivals.
Travelling on to Hong Kong or Macao, or somewhere else entirely? Check what each plan covers on destinations first.