The China survival stack: what to install before you land

In China, your phone is your wallet, your metro ticket, your taxi hail and your menu translator. The catch: almost none of that runs on the apps you already have. Google's services don't work on local networks, Uber left years ago, and WhatsApp is unreliable at best. The travelers who struggle aren't unprepared people — they're people who prepared with the wrong stack.

Here's the short list that actually runs daily life, and — more important — what to set up before you board, because several of these verify your passport faster from your home country than from an arrivals hall.

The stack

The +86 problem (read this one)

A travel eSIM gives you data, but no Chinese phone number — and Chinese apps run on SMS codes sent to +86 numbers. Some visitors never hit the wall; some hit it on day one when a booking form refuses their foreign number. The full explanation is here: why your travel eSIM won't be enough. Short version: data from an eSIM, plus a real +86 SIM if you're staying more than a few days — that combination handles everything.

The order of operations

1. A week before flying: install Alipay and WeChat, complete passport verification on both (it can queue for a day — do not leave this for the airport), add your cards.
2. A few days before: sort your data plan (eSIM guide), download offline translation and offline maps for your first city.
3. On landing: nothing. That's the point. Your first hour in China should be a taxi, not tech support. If something breaks anyway, the fix sequence is here: Alipay foreign card not working.

What you don't need

• A Chinese bank account. Foreign cards inside Alipay cover visitors fine.
• A stack of cash. ¥200–300 as a backup is plenty; many places genuinely struggle to make change now.
• Twenty apps. The table above is the whole game. Everything else — food delivery, bike share, ticketing — either lives inside Alipay/WeChat as mini-programs or can wait until someone local (or KORA) sets it up with you.

First trip? Pair this with the 24-hour landing checklist — it walks through the same setup in arrival order.