Staying Connected in China: SIM Cards, eSIMs and Wi-Fi for Foreign Travellers

Published 2026-10-12 · 71Asia Tours

Your home SIM will not behave the way you expect

I have watched more than one traveller land at Beijing Capital, switch their phone on, and wait for a 4G icon that never appears. Foreign SIM cards do roam in mainland China, but the roaming can be painfully expensive, and a few things you rely on daily at home simply are not reachable from a Chinese network. So before you fly, spend one hour deciding how you will get online. It is the most useful hour of trip preparation you can do, and almost nobody does it.

The three realistic options

Most travellers end up choosing one of these. There is no perfect answer, only a trade-off between price, convenience and paperwork.

A local SIM from China Mobile, China Unicom or China Telecom. This is by far the cheapest data you will find, often 50 to 100 GB for under 150 yuan. Bring your passport, because registration takes ten or fifteen minutes: the staff scan it and photograph you at the counter.
A travel eSIM, bought before you leave home and switched on when you land. No queue, no counter, and your home number stays live for bank codes and calls from family. You pay more per gigabyte, but across a two-week trip that gap is a few euros.
Roaming on your own plan, if your carrier sells a China add-on. Fine for a long layover, grim for two weeks. Hotel wifi fills the gaps, but public wifi usually wants a Chinese phone number to log in, which you do not have yet.

Which one I would pick

For a first trip, take an eSIM and stop thinking about it. The ten minutes you save at an airport counter after a twelve-hour flight are worth more than the money you save on data. If you are staying a month or longer, or you plan to tether a laptop, buy the local SIM and put up with the registration queue once.

What does not work, and the workaround most people use

Several Western apps and news sites are not reachable from mainland networks. This catches people out more than anything else on this list. Most travel eSIMs route your data through servers outside the mainland, so the phone behaves roughly the way it does at home. That design detail is the real reason eSIMs have become the default for short trips. On a local SIM, plan for a different internet and adjust your habits. Either way, download offline maps for every city before you fly, because you will need them at the worst possible moment.

City by city, what the connection actually feels like

The big coastal cities

Beijing and Shanghai are fast, dense and dependable, including on the metro and inside most shopping malls. Xi'an is fine across the walled city and the Muslim Quarter; at the Terracotta Army site you get signal, but it crawls when a few thousand people upload photos at the same time. Chengdu and Chongqing are equally solid, though Chongqing's tunnels and older stairway streets have dead spots. If you are navigating those hills on foot, load the route before you start walking.

Where it gets patchy

Zhangjiajie is the one that surprises people. On the forest park trails, in the valleys and inside the Bailong elevator, expect long stretches with nothing at all. Honestly, that is part of the appeal. Download your ticket QR codes and your hotel address offline before you go up the mountain, and screenshot the park map. In Tibet, coverage is better than most visitors expect along the main roads and in Lhasa, Shigatse and Gyantse, but it thins out quickly on the drive to Namtso or Everest Base Camp. China Mobile has the widest reach at altitude, so if Tibet is on your route, favour a China Mobile SIM. An eSIM riding on Unicom or Telecom can drop out exactly where you want it most.

Hong Kong, Macao and Taipei run on different networks

This trips up almost every multi-stop itinerary. China's Hong Kong and Macao, and Taipei in Taiwan, China, are not on the mainland network. They have their own operators and the internet you are used to. A mainland SIM stops working or starts charging roaming the moment you cross into Hong Kong or Macao, and it stops entirely once you reach Taipei. If your trip runs from Beijing to Taipei, buy a regional eSIM that covers mainland China and the surrounding region, or accept that you will pick up a second local SIM after landing.

The apps to install before you fly

Amap or Baidu Maps, which know the pedestrian routes and bus numbers that foreign map apps miss.
Didi, the ride-hailing app that works in every city on this list, including with a foreign card.
A translation app with the Chinese offline pack downloaded. You will need it in a taxi at midnight.
WeChat and Alipay, both of which are also how you pay for things.
Trip.com or the official Railway 12306 app for trains, so you are not queueing at a station.

What it costs

A local SIM with 50 to 100 GB for a month runs 100 to 200 yuan. A travel eSIM with 10 to 20 GB for two weeks costs roughly 15 to 30 euros, and regional Asia plans that include mainland China land at the top of that range. Hotel wifi is free and usually good. Cafe wifi exists, but it is not worth planning around.

The short version

Buy an eSIM before you fly, keep your home number live, and download offline maps for every city you are visiting. Upgrade to a local SIM if you are staying a month or more or heading to Tibet. And treat spotty signal in Zhangjiajie and on the road to Everest Base Camp as a feature, not a fault. Some of the best parts of a China trip happen where the phone does not work.

Written by the team at 71Asia Tours, a China-based tour operator with licensed Spanish- and English-speaking guides. Browse all tours · About us · Our guides · Reviews · FAQ