eSIM for China

The raw connectivity in mainland China is superb: your plan runs on China Mobile with 4G/LTE and 5G, and the network reaches into places that would be dead zones almost anywhere else. The complication is not signal, it is what that signal reaches. A number of international sites and services are not reachable from ordinary connections inside the mainland, and a travel eSIM is not sold as a fix for that. Whether any particular app behaves the way it does at home depends on how your traffic happens to be carried, which is outside your control and outside ours, so plan your trip as though the local way of doing things is the way you will do things.

Getting online when you land

Install the profile before departure, while you still have unrestricted access to whatever tools and accounts the setup might touch. This is the one country on this list where doing the install after arrival could genuinely leave you stuck.

Land, enable the line, allow data roaming for it, set it as your data default. Airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are enormous, and the walk from gate to immigration to the airport express is long enough that you will notice whether data is flowing. Keep your usual SIM in place for voice and for verification texts from your bank, which you will need more than you expect.

One boundary worth stating plainly: mainland China is not Hong Kong or Macau. Those are separately covered destinations, so check what you have bought if your itinerary crosses into them.

The networks you'll be on

China Mobile carries everything here, and it does so at a standard most travellers find better than home. Expect 5G in city centres and LTE more or less everywhere else that people live, including on high-speed trains, in metro tunnels and in the deep basements of shopping centres.

What you should not expect is for that speed to translate evenly into every service you use. Some things will be fast, some will be slow for reasons that have nothing to do with the network, and some will not load. Do not spend your trip diagnosing it; have a plan B ready before you go and get on with the holiday.

Where coverage holds, and where it thins

Signal holds almost everywhere east of the mountains. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi'an and the whole dense coastal corridor are blanketed. So are the tourist landscapes: Guilin and Yangshuo, Zhangjiajie's pillars, the Yellow Mountains, the sections of the Great Wall that visitors reach. Even remote-feeling spots often have a tower on the ridge.

It thins in the west and at altitude. Tibet has good service in Lhasa and Shigatse and much less on the high passes and the long roads between them. The Taklamakan and the deserts of Xinjiang, the Inner Mongolian grassland away from the tourist camps, the Yunnan gorges around Tiger Leaping Gorge, and the mountain trails generally will drop you. Long rail tunnels cut out for minutes at a time, which matters if you are mid-booking.

What you'll actually use data for here

Payment, first and foremost. Daily life runs through WeChat and Alipay to a degree that surprises visitors, covering everything from a metro gate to a noodle stall, so getting those working is the highest-value thing your data does. Set them up before you travel rather than at a counter with a queue behind you.

After that: ride-hailing, which removes the language problem from taxis; a mapping app that actually works locally, since the one you use at home may misplace you; translation, ideally with camera input for menus and signs; and rail booking, because trains here sell out and the app is where seats are. Save your hotel name and address in Chinese characters somewhere you can show a driver, since transliterated spellings often do not land.

Before you fly

Download offline maps and an offline translation pack at home. Install and log into every app you intend to rely on before departure, including payment apps, and confirm they work while you still have a familiar connection to fix them on.

Screenshot your hotel address in Chinese, your train and flight bookings, and any visa or entry documents. Bring a power bank, since QR codes for entry, payment and transit mean the phone is out constantly, and note that airlines restrict them in checked bags. Have a realistic backup for anything critical: an address written on paper, a booking reference saved offline, and someone at home who knows the plan.