What Apps Do You Need in China? The 2026 Download List

There is one piece of trip preparation that cannot be done on the plane, cannot be fixed at the airport, and cannot be worked around once you are standing at a taxi rank with a tired child. It is the phone in your pocket. In China, the phone is the wallet, the map, the menu and the taxi rank, and every one of those jobs runs through an app that has to be installed, verified and paid up before you leave home.

The catch is that the setup is not symmetrical with what you know. The apps that work best are Chinese apps most Americans have never opened, and the apps you already trust, among them Google Maps, Google Translate and WhatsApp, are the ones that stop working the moment your phone joins a Chinese network. Families who arrive without doing this work lose their first day to it, standing in a hotel lobby trying to download something from a store they can no longer reach.

What follows is the short list, grouped by the job each app does, with the setup steps that matter and the order to do them in. Twelve apps is the whole requirement for a two-week family trip, and four of them do almost all the work. Rates and limits below were checked in October 2026 and converted at about ¥6.7 to the US dollar, so ¥200 reads as about $30.

5 Key Takeaways

• Install everything before you fly, because you cannot install it afterwards. Google Play does not operate in mainland China, and Apple's mainland App Store is missing several apps you will want. Both the download and the identity verification need your home connection.

• Alipay and WeChat Pay both charge 3% on any single payment above about $30, and nothing at or below it. The threshold is per transaction, not per day, so splitting a hotel bill does not help, but a week of noodles, taxis and metro fares usually stays under it. A UnionPay card is exempt from the fee on Alipay.

• Apple Maps is already the best map app on an iPhone, and it needs no VPN and no download. It uses licensed Chinese map data on the mainland, so the pin lands where you are. Android users install Amap instead, which added an English interface in January 2025.

• Google Maps is the wrong tool twice over. It is blocked, and even through a VPN its street layer sits 50 to 500 metres off your real position because Google never received a Chinese mapping licence. Do not plan around it.

• A roaming eSIM solves the connectivity problem more cleanly than a VPN does. Roaming data is routed through your home carrier's gateway, so the blocked apps often simply work. VPNs still function, but reliability has fallen through 2026, and either way the app must be installed and tested at home.

Would you rather not do any of this on your own?

We send every family a phone setup sheet before departure, and a guide meets you at the airport with a working data connection already sorted. Tell us your phone models and we will tell you exactly what to install. Ask for the setup sheet →

Table of Contents

Ⅰ. Why the phone matters more here than anywhere else

Ⅱ. Payment apps: Alipay and WeChat Pay

Ⅲ. Map apps: Apple Maps, Amap and the Google problem

Ⅳ. Translation apps that work without a VPN

Ⅴ. Transport apps: Trip.com, DiDi and 12306

Ⅵ. Food delivery, and how it works from a hotel

Ⅶ. Connectivity: eSIM versus VPN

Ⅷ. The pre-flight checklist, in order

Ⅸ. Frequently asked questions

THE LIST AT A GLANCE

Every app on this list, what it replaces, and whether you actually need it.

Two wallets, one map app and a working data connection carry a family through the first three days. Everything else is refinement.

Ⅰ. Why Your Smartphone Is Essential in China (And How to Prepare)

China skipped the card reader. Where an American restaurant has a terminal and a signature line, a Chinese one has a printed square on the table, and the entire transaction happens on two screens. The same shift runs through everything else: the metro gate reads a QR code rather than a ticket, the taxi fare is settled in the app rather than at the kerb, and the museum you booked two weeks ago is stored against your passport number rather than on a piece of paper.

For a family this is mostly good news. Nobody has to carry cash, nobody has to find an ATM with a child in tow, and the per-person cost of getting around a city drops to about US$0.30 a ride. What it asks in return is that you solve the whole stack once, at home, while your usual internet works and your bank can still text you a verification code.

The failure mode is specific and worth naming. A family lands, switches on a phone that has no data, and discovers that the airport ATM queue is forty minutes long, that the taxi driver wants a QR code rather than a card, and that the translation app they planned to use needs a connection to translate anything. Every one of those problems traces back to the same ten minutes of setup that did not happen. The rest of this guide is that ten minutes, in the right order.

One structural point before the list. Chinese apps are built for people who read Chinese, and the English support varies from full (Trip.com) through usable (Amap, DiDi) to effectively absent (Meituan). That does not make the Chinese-only apps unusable, but it does mean the workaround matters: for anything you cannot read, Alipay's built-in scanner has a translation mode that overlays English on the screen, and WeChat will translate a received message with a long press. Both are already installed for other reasons.

The app list changes with the route, not the country. A two-week trip through five cities needs train booking and a lot of translation; a week in Shanghai needs almost none of it. If you are still deciding where to go, our itineraries show which cities demand which setup. See the 14-day Grand Tour →

Ⅱ. Digital Payments 101: Setting Up Alipay and WeChat Pay as a Foreigner

These two are not really apps so much as the operating system of the trip, and you want both rather than choosing between them. Together they cover the overwhelming majority of retail transactions in China, and their merchant networks overlap without being identical. Alipay is stronger for transport, e-commerce and train tickets; WeChat Pay is stronger at small shops, family restaurants and the ride-hailing mini-program. A QR code that fails on one usually works on the other, which is the whole reason to carry both.

Setting up Alipay with an American card

Alipay is the one to do first, because its foreign-card flow is the smoother of the two and it has a genuine English mode. The sequence is: install the app from your home App Store, register with your own mobile number and country code, then complete real-name verification under Me → Settings → Account and Security → Identity Information. That last step wants your name typed exactly as it appears on your passport, a clear photograph of the photo page, and a face scan. Most checks clear in minutes, though the worst case runs to about 72 hours, so do it days ahead rather than the night before you fly.

Then add the card under Me → Bank Cards → Add Card, enter the number, expiry and security code, approve whatever your bank sends, and set a six-digit payment PIN. Alipay accepts Visa, Mastercard, JCB, Discover, Diners Club and UnionPay International on international cards. American Express appears on some lists but links inconsistently, so carry a Visa or Mastercard as your main card and treat Amex as a bonus if it takes.

Two practical notes from the families we send. Keep your home number able to receive texts for the whole trip, because a data-only eSIM will not deliver the SMS codes either app may ask for. And buy a bottle of water at a convenience store as a test transaction on your first morning. It costs about US$0.80 and it confirms the whole chain works before you need it for something that matters.

The fee rule, which is the thing most guides get vague about

Both apps waive the service fee on any single transaction of ¥200 (about $30) or less, and charge 3% on the full amount above that. The threshold is per transaction, not per day or per merchant, and the 3% applies to the whole payment rather than the excess. A ¥500 restaurant bill of about $75 therefore costs ¥515 (about $77), not 3% of the ¥300 above the line. The fee is calculated at checkout and shown on the payment screen before you confirm, so there is never a surprise. Alipay sets the rule out in its published service charge schedule, which is worth reading once before you travel.

In practice a family week of noodles, taxis, metro fares and market snacks sits comfortably under the threshold. The transactions that do not are hotels, train tickets, theme-park tickets and any single restaurant meal for four. There are two clean ways to handle it. Keep individual payments under $30 where the bill allows, and for the large ones bind an international UnionPay card, which Alipay exempts from the service fee entirely. Your issuer may add its own cross-border fee of 1% to 3% on top of either platform's charge, which is worth checking before you leave.

Alipay also runs a dedicated tourist flow with bundles for ride-hailing and metro passes, and its scanner has a translate mode that reads a Chinese menu or sign and overlays English on your screen. That single feature replaces a separate translation app more often than you would expect.

WeChat, and why you need it even if you never message anyone

WeChat is China's super-app: messaging, payment, mini-programs, transit cards and restaurant menus all live inside it. For a visitor, the messaging is almost incidental. What matters is WeChat Pay as the backup wallet, the mini-programs that replace apps you would otherwise install, and the fact that hotels, guides and hosts will want to reach you on it. Several museums and attractions take reservations through a WeChat mini-program and nothing else.

The setup mirrors Alipay: register with your home number, verify with your passport, then add the card under Me → Services → Wallet → Bank Cards. Foreign cards work the same way, with the same ¥200 (about $30) threshold and 3% rule above it, and Tencent has periodically run promotions waiving fees on part of a first-time foreign card user's daily spending, which is worth a look at the banner in the Wallet section after you link. WeChat caps a single foreign-card transaction at about $900, with monthly and yearly ceilings well above normal trip spending.

Two limitations to know in advance. A foreign card pays merchants but cannot send money to another person or top up your WeChat balance, so personal transfer QR codes, the handwritten kind at some small stalls, will reject it. And WeChat Pay in mainland China is a separate product from WeChat Pay HK, so nothing carries across the border into Hong Kong, China. Where a card is rejected twice, pay cash rather than retrying; a stall that only accepts domestic transfers is not a technical problem you can solve from the phone.

Whatever the apps say about limits, carry some cash. Around about $75 to $150 in small notes covers a phone that has died, a rural bus station, a temple entry desk and the occasional older vendor who has never taken a QR code. It is insurance rather than a payment method, and it weighs almost nothing.

Payment setup is the step families most often leave too late. Real-name verification can take up to three days, and a card that will not bind is much easier to diagnose at home than in an arrivals hall. We walk our families through both wallets before departure and confirm the test transaction has cleared. Get your wallets checked before you fly →

Ⅲ. Navigating China: Apple Maps, Amap, and the Google Maps Problem

Getting from A to B is where the standard American setup fails hardest, and it fails in two separate ways that people often only half-solve. The first is the network block. The second is worse: China requires every licensed map to use a scrambled coordinate system known as GCJ-02, which deliberately offsets positions from the global GPS standard your phone reports. Apps built for China apply a correction so the map and your blue dot line up. Google never received a mainland mapping licence, so it cannot, and its street layer sits anywhere from 50 to 500 metres off your real position. A VPN fixes the block and not the offset.

On an iPhone, Apple Maps is already the answer

Inside mainland China, Apple licences its map data from AutoNavi, the company behind Amap, so Apple Maps runs on the same accurate local data the locals use with the coordinate offset handled automatically. The interface is fully in English, transit routing works, and there is nothing to install and no VPN involved. If your family travels on iPhones, this is the single easiest win on the whole list, and it is the main practical reason an iPhone is simpler than an Android phone for a China trip.

One note for a family sticking to the tourist trail: Apple Maps is excellent for streets, metro lines and landmark routing, and thinner than the local apps for neighbourhood restaurants and small shops. That is a job for a different app in the food section below, not a reason to change maps.

On Android, install Amap and switch it to English

Amap, also called Gaode Maps or AutoNavi, all three names being the same app, is what Chinese residents actually use for directions, and it added a full English interface in January 2025. It works in guest mode with no Chinese phone number, which matters for a short trip, and it does one thing better than anything else on this list: it tells you which metro exit to use. In a station with exits A through F, the difference between the right exit and the nearest one can be a twenty-minute walk above ground with a stroller.

Download it before you fly and set the language to English in settings. Be careful which version you take. There is a separate international build aimed at outbound travel, and for a mainland trip you want the standard Amap China app, whose China data is the complete set.

Baidu Maps, and what it is actually for

Baidu Maps is the most detailed mapping product in the country, with deeper coverage of small cities, alleys and tiny food shops than either of the others. Its weakness for a visitor is language: it is almost entirely in Chinese, and searching in English returns thin results. Treat it as the backup rather than the default. The honest setup for a family is Apple Maps or Amap as the daily driver, with Baidu Maps kept for the moment you are hunting a specific address in a smaller city and cannot find it anywhere else.

Two habits make any of these apps work better in practice. Save your hotel, your station and each day's main sight in the app while you are still on hotel Wi-Fi, since tunnels and crowded stations are where signal drops. And screenshot your hotel's name and full address in Chinese characters. A rideshare driver who does not read pinyin can be shown the characters directly, and this one screenshot saves more arguments than any app setting.

If your family is all on Android, budget more time for this section. It is the one part of the setup where an iPhone really is easier, and Android users need Amap installed and tested rather than assumed. Tell us your phone models and we will send the exact steps for your devices. Send us your phone models →

Ⅳ. Best Language and Translation Apps That Work Without a VPN

Here is the counterintuitive part: Google Translate's live features do not work in mainland China. Google retired its mainland translation service in October 2022, and every online feature fails the moment your phone joins a Chinese network, whether that is hotel Wi-Fi or a local SIM. That includes the three features people rely on most: camera translation pointed at a menu, conversation mode for speaking to someone face to face, and live voice interpretation. The offline Chinese pack is the exception, and it is still worth downloading, but it only covers text you type or paste, which covers a menu and not a conversation.

That leaves three apps that work on Chinese networks without any workaround, and a family travelling with children should carry two of them.

Pleco, for menus and signs

Pleco is a Chinese-English dictionary rather than a translation app, and it is the single best tool for the specific problem of standing in front of a menu you cannot read. The core app is free and works entirely offline once installed, because the dictionaries download once and live on the phone. The paid bundle, about $30 as a one-time purchase, adds camera recognition that reads characters straight off a menu, a sign or a package, including stylised restaurant fonts that trip up general-purpose apps, plus handwriting input for characters you cannot type.

Its limit is that it translates words and short phrases rather than sentences, which is exactly right for a menu and wrong for a conversation. Buy the basic bundle, not the premium dictionaries aimed at translators; the camera reader is the part that earns its keep on a family trip.

Baidu Translate or Youdao, for speaking to people

Both of these run on Chinese servers and work natively without a VPN, which is why they are the ones to use when you need to say something to a driver, a pharmacist or a hotel desk. Baidu Translate handles day-to-day text and voice well; Youdao Translate has the edge on camera translation of stylised and handwritten text. Both are free, and both offer offline packs you can download once you have any connection at all, including Chinese hotel Wi-Fi, which makes them a safer backup than Google Translate if your data drops. Microsoft Translator and Apple's built-in Translate also work on mainland networks, so there is no shortage of options here.

The most useful translation feature for a family, though, is already installed. WeChat's built-in translate works on any received message with a long press, and you can turn on auto-translate under Me → Settings → General → Translation so incoming messages from a hotel or a guide arrive in English without you asking. It also has a point-and-translate camera mode. Between Pleco for reading and WeChat for messages, most families find they rarely open a dedicated translation app at all.

One thing none of these apps handle well: dietary restrictions and allergies. A mistranslated peanut warning is not a language problem worth solving by machine alone. We keep a written Chinese allergy card format in our eating in China guide, and it is worth carrying as a physical card in a wallet rather than only on a phone.

On a guided trip, the translation problem largely disappears. Your guide handles the pharmacy counter, the restaurant order and the ticket office, and reads the menu to your children rather than over their heads. The apps stay in your pocket for the evenings. See how a guided day works →

Ⅴ. Getting Around: Essential Transport Apps (Trip.com, DiDi & 12306)

Three apps cover getting between cities and getting across town, and for a family the ranking is straightforward. Train and flight booking is one app. Ride-hailing is one app, or a mini-program inside one you already have. The official rail app is optional, and most visitors do not need it.

Trip.com: trains, flights, hotels and attraction tickets in English

Trip.com is the English-language front door to Chinese travel, and it is the single most useful app on this list for a family. You can book high-speed rail tickets, domestic flights, hotels and attraction tickets in English, pay with a normal foreign Visa or Mastercard in your home currency, and take a confirmation email rather than a paper ticket. It books real inventory at the same face fare the railway charges, with a small per-ticket service fee that usually lands around US$5 to US$6.

Two details worth knowing. Chinese rail inventory opens for sale exactly 15 days before departure, so a search for a date further out will simply show nothing. Plan around that rather than assuming the train is full. And the passport name you enter must match your passport exactly, since the e-ticket is bound to it and the gate reads that document. Families with children should note that children need their own real-name bookings too, at the reduced child fare.

DiDi: the ride-hailing app, with an English mode

DiDi is China's Uber, in the literal sense that Uber sold its Chinese operation to DiDi in 2016 and left. The app has an English interface, an in-app chat that auto-translates messages to and from the driver, and support for international cards. Uber will not get you a car anywhere in mainland China.

The most reliable setup for a visitor is not to install DiDi standalone at all. Open it as a mini-program inside Alipay instead, under Transport or Ride-hailing, and let it bill your Alipay-linked card. Linking a foreign card to DiDi directly works in the big cities but is occasionally refused by a bank's fraud checks, and the Alipay route avoids that entire class of problem. Two practical notes: drivers will often call on arrival even when the app says otherwise, so answer and stay at the pinned point rather than moving, and screenshot your hotel address in Chinese so you can show it in the chat.

12306, and when it is worth the setup

12306 is the official China Railway app, and it charges face value with no booking fee. Since late 2023 foreign passport holders have been able to complete real-name verification online, and the app now accepts international Visa and Mastercard alongside JCB. It has an English version, though the interface is rougher than Trip.com's and foreign-card payments occasionally time out on the bank's verification step.

For a family visiting for a week or two, Trip.com is enough and the $5 a ticket buys real convenience. Take the 12306 route if you are staying longer, booking many legs, or simply prefer not to pay a service fee. Either way the ticket is paperless and bound to a passport, and you board by scanning that passport at the gate, including at the staffed foreign-passenger lane in the larger stations.

Train seats open 15 days out and the good departures go quickly in season. We hold your seats the moment inventory opens, which is the difference between a mid-morning train and a six o'clock start with two children. Let us hold your seats →

Ⅵ. Food Delivery Made Easy: How to Order Hotel Delivery in China

Food delivery is the one category a family can skip entirely, and the one that repays the effort most on a long trip. Meituan is the national leader, covering delivery, restaurant deals, attraction tickets and bike hire, and it is worth having if you are staying more than a few nights in one place. Ele.me, the Alibaba-owned competitor, was folded into Taobao in December 2025 and now appears as Taobao Flash Sale with an orange icon, so any guide still naming it as a separate blue app was written before the change. The practical route for both is as a mini-program inside Alipay or WeChat rather than a standalone download, which also means no extra install and no separate payment setup.

The workflow matters more than the app choice, because the difficulty is never picking a restaurant. It is the address. Delivery in China is precise to a building entrance, so the sequence that works is: ask the front desk for the hotel's delivery address written in Chinese, and ask where the hotel wants orders left, whether that is a lobby shelf, a front desk, a locker or a designated pickup point rather than the room. Save that Chinese address as text so you can paste it, set the delivery location first, then browse only the restaurants that actually deliver there.

Stay reachable after you order. The rider may call or message if the entrance is unclear, and WeChat's auto-translate covers a texted reply. Payment settles silently through the wallet you linked, there is no tip line and no cash, and a meal typically arrives in 15 to 30 minutes for roughly $2 to $8. On a late, wet or exhausted evening with jet-lagged children, this is the single highest-value app on the list.

Two extras in the same category, both optional. Dianping is China's review and restaurant-discovery app and is useful if you like digging for local places rather than tourist ones, though it is not a necessity on a short trip. And if you want to know what locals think is worth seeing, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) is where Chinese travellers share photo spots and food finds, searchable in English for famous places, with the caveat that reading the captions needs a screenshot and a translation app.

Delivery is the app that changes how a family eats, not where. On our trips, we book restaurants that already know your restrictions, so the delivery app becomes an evening backup rather than the plan. It is one less thing to solve on a day when everyone is tired. Ask which restaurants suit your family →

Ⅶ. Staying Connected: eSIM vs. VPN for Unrestricted Internet Access

Every app above needs data, and the way you get that data decides whether the blocked apps work. This is the section where the conventional advice has aged worst. For years the standard answer was a local SIM plus a VPN. In 2026 the cleaner answer for a short trip is a roaming eSIM, and the VPN has become the fallback rather than the plan.

The reason is architectural. An international roaming eSIM connects to a Chinese tower for signal only, but routes your data back through your home carrier's gateway under standard roaming agreements. Your traffic exits the internet abroad, so the filtering that applies to a mainland connection does not apply in the same way. Google services, WhatsApp and Instagram commonly load on a roaming eSIM with no VPN configured at all. A local Chinese SIM or hotel Wi-Fi does the opposite, putting you inside the firewall, and the blocked apps stay blocked.

A VPN still works, and some families want one as a second layer, but be realistic about it. China's filtering has grown more aggressive through 2025 and 2026, with inspection of the newer connection types many consumer VPNs relied on, and travellers report that services which worked for years now fail outright or drop repeatedly. Mainstream providers still connect in many cities, but it is no longer something to assume. If you do buy one, buy it, install it and test it at home, because every provider's website is itself blocked once you are inside China. Note too that Apple's mainland App Store has not carried VPN apps since 2017.

The legal position, plainly, since American families ask. China's regulations prohibit unauthorised VPNs for bypassing network supervision; licensed enterprise VPNs are permitted. Enforcement is aimed overwhelmingly at commercial VPN providers and domestic users, and there are no reported cases of foreign tourists being penalised for casual personal use, but it is not officially legal, and it is worth knowing that when you decide. A roaming eSIM, by contrast, is an ordinary international roaming service rather than a workaround, which is part of why it has become the default recommendation.

Whichever route you take, three setup rules apply. Install the eSIM by scanning the provider's QR code before you leave, set it as your data line while keeping your home SIM as the default voice line so identity verification texts still arrive, and test it at the airport before departure. Prices for a China data plan run roughly $10 to $25 for 5 to 15 GB over a week to a month. A pocket Wi-Fi device is the alternative for a larger family, at around $4.50 to$7.50 a day with a refundable deposit, and it keeps five to ten devices online at once from a single connection.

One warning that catches people out. The roaming trick works on the eSIM's mobile data only. The moment your phone hops onto hotel or café Wi-Fi, the ordinary mainland restrictions apply and the blocked apps go quiet again. Families who understand that in advance avoid the evening panic where WhatsApp stops working halfway through a call home.

Two more apps belong in the utility drawer rather than the main list. XE Currency gives you live rates for the mental arithmetic of a market stall, and AirVisual, the IQAir app that also ships in China as IQAir with data from official Chinese monitoring stations, shows real-time air quality and a seven-day forecast. It is worth having if you have a child with asthma or you are planning a heavy outdoor day in a winter city. Neither is load-bearing, and both work on Chinese networks.

Connectivity is the one thing we cannot fix after you land. Tell us your carrier and your phone models before you book and we will tell you whether roaming, an eSIM or a pocket device suits your family better, and what it will cost. Plan your connectivity with us →

Ⅷ. The Ultimate Pre-Flight Tech Checklist (Step-by-Step)

Order matters here, because a couple of these steps depend on the ones before them. Do the list at home, over a stable connection, at least three days before departure to allow for a slow identity check.

If you only do four of these, do the first four. A verified Alipay, a bound card, a working WeChat wallet and tested data will get a family through the first three days of a China trip without any further preparation. Everything after that is refinement.

Ten steps, and none of them are hard on their own. The families who struggle are the ones who start the list in the arrivals hall. Send us your departure date and we will send the checklist back with your own dates on it. Get the checklist dated to your trip →

Ⅸ. Frequently Asked Questions About Tech & Apps in China

Q1: Can I link an American credit card to Alipay or WeChat Pay?

Yes, on both, with a passport and no Chinese bank account or phone number required. Alipay accepts Visa, Mastercard, JCB, Discover, Diners Club and UnionPay International, and WeChat Pay accepts the major networks through the same real-name process. American Express is unreliable on both, so make a Visa or Mastercard your primary card and carry a second card from a different network as a backup in case one issuer's fraud system declines the first transaction.

Q2: What are the fees and limits on a foreign card?

Both platforms waive the service fee on any single transaction of about $30 or less and charge 3% of the full amount above that threshold, calculated at checkout and shown before you confirm. Alipay exempts international UnionPay cards from the fee entirely, which is the cheapest way to handle hotel and train payments. On limits, a passport-verified account can generally settle transactions up to roughly $5,000 with an annual ceiling around $50,000, though WeChat caps most foreign-card users nearer $898.5 per transaction; your own app shows your limit.

Q3: Do I need a VPN in China, or is an eSIM enough?

For most families on a two-week trip a roaming eSIM is enough, because it routes your data through your home carrier and the blocked apps commonly work without any VPN at all. A VPN is worth adding if you need guaranteed access to work systems or you want a second layer on hotel Wi-Fi, but its reliability has fallen through 2026 and it must be installed and tested before you fly. Neither option is needed for Alipay, WeChat, Amap, DiDi or Trip.com, which all work normally on any Chinese connection.

Q4: Does Google Maps work in China?

No, and it is the wrong tool even if you force it to load. It sits behind the firewall, and because Google has no mainland mapping licence its street layer cannot apply the coordinate correction every licensed Chinese map uses, which leaves your blue dot 50 to 500 metres from where you actually are. On an iPhone, Apple Maps already runs on licensed Chinese data in English with nothing to install. On Android, install Amap and switch it to English.

Q5: Will my children need their own phones for this to work?

No. Everything on this list runs on one phone per adult, and the metro rule of one QR code per traveller is the only place a second device or a different method helps. Buy single-journey tokens from the machine for the children rather than trying to issue two codes from one handset. If your children do carry phones, note that the same app setup applies to them, and that a booking made under a nickname rather than a passport name will be refused at the gate.

Q6: What happens if my phone dies or gets lost?

A dead phone is a serious disruption in China, because it is also your wallet and your tickets. Carry a power bank in your day bag, and know that rentable power banks are everywhere, since convenience stores, malls and attractions all have them, rented by scanning a QR code for a small hourly fee. Keep a physical backup: some cash in small notes, a printed copy of your hotel address in Chinese, and paper copies of your bookings, so that a lost phone costs you convenience rather than the day.

Every family asks at least one question that is not answered here. Send it over with your phone models and your dates and you will get a straight answer, including where the honest reply is that an app is not worth the setup for your itinerary. Ask us about your setup →

Arrive with your phone already sorted

Tell us your dates, your cities, your carrier and your phone models. We will send back the exact setup for your family, hold your train seats when inventory opens, and have a guide meet you with a working connection at the airport. Create My Trip