Getting Around and Paying in China: Trains, Apps, Alipay and Cash

China has the largest high-speed rail network on earth, cities that run on two apps, and a payments system that has largely skipped cash. It is all excellent once set up and mildly baffling for the first two hours. Here is the setup, in the order you need it.

Getting around China: the short version

China moves on rail. The high-speed network now runs to roughly 45,000 kilometres and connects almost every city worth visiting, at speeds of 250–350 km/h, with a punctuality record that shames most of Europe. Beijing to Xi'an is about four and a half hours. Xi'an to Lanzhou is three. Lanzhou to Xining is under two.

For distances under about 1,200 km, take the train. It is faster door-to-door than flying once you count airport time, it is comfortable, you can walk around, and — usefully for us — you can pray in the vestibule at the end of a carriage without anybody commenting. Fly only for the genuinely long legs: Beijing to Kashgar, Shanghai to Urumqi, anything crossing the whole country.

Within cities, use the metro. It is cheap, signposted in English, spotlessly clean and, in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Guangzhou and Chengdu, faster than any car. Taxis and Didi fill the gaps. That is the whole transport system, and it is a good one.

High-speed rail: how to actually book

There are three ways, and they are not equal.

• Through us. We hold your passport details, book seats together, pick the better side of the train, and rebook if your plans change. On a private tour this costs nothing extra and removes every failure mode below.
• 12306, the official railway site. It has an English interface, it sells every seat, and it requires an account with passport verification that can take a day or two to approve. Do this two weeks before travel, not the night before.
• Third-party apps. Convenient, English-language, small service fee, and occasionally out of sync with 12306 inventory. Fine for a simple point-to-point, risky for a tight connection.

Three practical details. Tickets are tied to your passport, and the name must match exactly, including the order of given and family names — this is the single most common reason a traveller gets stopped at the gate. Arrive at the station thirty to forty minutes early, because security and the passport gates take time at big stations. And seats sell out days ahead on popular routes and around Chinese holidays, so book early or accept a later departure.

Luggage limits are generous — roughly 20 kg for adults on high-speed rail — and there is space at the carriage ends plus overhead racks. Porters and lifts exist at major stations; small county stations may only have stairs.

Domestic flights: when they are worth it

Fly when the train would take more than about eight hours, or when you are crossing the country: Beijing to Urumqi, Shanghai to Kashgar, Chengdu to Guangzhou in a hurry. Chinese domestic airlines are punctual enough, aircraft are modern, and the fares are reasonable if booked three to six weeks out.

Two things to plan for. Domestic terminals are large and security is thorough, so allow two hours. And delays happen in summer and around holidays — we never book a tight same-day connection, and we always keep your guide's number in case a pickup needs to slide.

Baggage allowance on domestic flights is usually 20 kg checked plus 5–7 kg cabin, but low-fare tickets sometimes include less. Check before you buy, because excess baggage at a Chinese domestic counter is priced per kilogram and not cheap.

Taxis, Didi and the metro

Metro first. Every city we operate in has one, fares run from about ¥3 to ¥10 a journey, English signage is complete, and stations have toilets and lifts. You buy a token from a machine or tap your phone if Alipay or WeChat Pay is set up.

Taxis are metered, cheap by Western standards and plentiful in cities — but drivers rarely speak English, which is where a Chinese address card saves the day. Every hotel provides them; keep two in your pocket.

Didi is China's Uber and it now has an English interface inside the Alipay and WeChat mini-programs, which means you can book and pay without speaking to anybody. It is the single most useful app to have working before you land. Licensed hotel taxis are the safe fallback at airports; ignore the touts inside the terminal and queue at the official rank.

The apps to install before you land

Install these on home Wi-Fi. Setting them up on Chinese hotel Wi-Fi at midnight is the most common frustration we hear about.

• Alipay — payments, Didi, train tickets, metro codes. Register with your passport and a Visa or Mastercard before you fly.
• WeChat — messaging, WeChat Pay, and how your guide will contact you. Add your guide the day before departure.
• Amaps or Baidu Maps / — better in China than Google Maps, which does not work reliably here.
• Didi — reachable through Alipay or WeChat, no separate install needed.
• 12306 — official rail booking, if you are buying tickets yourself.
• A translation app with camera mode — for menus. Photo translation of a Chinese menu is genuinely the difference between ordering and guessing.

WhatsApp and Instagram do not work reliably on Chinese networks without a workaround. If you need to reach family at home, plan a roaming eSIM that routes outside China, or accept that WeChat and hotel Wi-Fi will be your channels. We send a connectivity note with every itinerary so nobody discovers this at midnight.

Alipay, WeChat Pay and cash

China is effectively cashless. Street vendors, taxis, temples, noodle stalls and even some beggars take QR payments. You can survive on cards and cash, but you will be slow and occasionally stuck — set up a payment app and the whole country gets easier.

The setup, which takes about fifteen minutes: install Alipay, choose the "Tourist" or foreign-card path, photograph your passport, add a Visa or Mastercard, and verify with an SMS. Alipay has a built-in "TourPay" top-up that works with foreign cards and avoids the old problem of needing a Chinese bank account. Do the same in WeChat Pay if you want a second channel. Both now accept international cards directly, and both work offline for small tap payments.

Carry cash anyway — around ¥500 to ¥1,000 per person for a week — for small halal stalls, tips, rural areas and the occasional app failure. Foreign cards work in international hotels and large malls; they do not work in most restaurants. ATMs that accept Visa, Mastercard and Plus are common in cities, and the Bank of China is the safest bet.

Internet, eSIM and staying reachable

Two workable options. A Chinese SIM, bought at the airport on arrival with your passport, is cheap and fast, gives you a Chinese number that hotels and delivery apps want, and takes about fifteen minutes. A roaming eSIM bought before you fly is more expensive but routes traffic outside China, which is the only way to keep WhatsApp, Instagram and Google services working without a separate tool.

Most travellers do both: eSIM for keeping in touch with home, Chinese SIM for speed and local numbers. Hotel Wi-Fi is universal and usually good, though it can be slow in the far northwest.

Be aware that some Western sites and news services are not reachable on Chinese networks. Download offline maps, save your itinerary as a PDF, and keep our office number written on paper as well as in your phone — the low-tech backup is the one that works when everything else does not.

How we handle all of it for you

On a private HalalTravelChina itinerary, most of the above disappears. We book every train and domestic flight, hold seats together, and hand you the tickets with the gate and carriage numbers marked. We pick you up at every station and airport with a name board, in a vehicle stocked with water for wudu. We choose hotels you can walk to a mosque from, and we brief the driver each morning on where the prayer stops fall.

We also set you up on arrival: your guide helps install Alipay or WeChat Pay if it failed at home, adds you to a WeChat group with our office, and hands you a card with the hotel address and our number in Chinese. If a train is delayed, we re-track it and move the pickup without being asked.

What we ask from you is small: passport details early, your dates, and a working WhatsApp or WeChat number. Everything else is ours to handle, and it is included in the price rather than billed as an extra.