China Entry Pack 2.0 － Banking, Phone Carrier and Other Living Tips
Wandering on the street, with your hands grabing a long list of things on how you should spend your first day in China, you are so excited that you do not even know where to start. Don’t you worry; we got you covered. In China Entry Pack 2.0, you will be provided with a bucket of suggestions on banking, phone carrier choices, dining, shopping and Chinese social networking. Let me tell you one thing: Cash is so important in China that it can be called as a ‘habit’ of payment. Bringing cash with you is essential but bringing too much is not a wise choice. Therefore, you need a bank account to store all the rest of your money. In China, credit cards from foreign countries are not acceptable in most of the time. Therefore, you might wonder how to get a Chinese credit card. The answer is, if you are visiting China for the first time, you might not be eligible for applying for a credit card. A foreign resident needs to have at least two years of living experience in China in order to apply for credit card. Thus, it would be nice to get a debit card first. Remember to bring your PASSPORT with you in order to open your bank account. Speaking of banks, you are going to see tons of banks on the street. But the question is, which one should you choose? I personally recommend Bank of China, China Merchants Bank and Industrial And Commercial Bank of China. Different banks have different policies and services, so you can check their websites for further information. For phone carriers, there are three main ones that are popular around. China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom. Based on what you need and their current plans, the customer service will help you to choose the plan that suits you best.In China, we do not use Yelp as our 'Dining Guide'. We’ve got 美团(Mei Tuan) and 大众点评(Da Zhong Dian Ping) which I personally favors much more than Yelp. Those two apps give you great suggestions on dining, entertainment and even traveling. They also include infinite COUPONs that can save you a large amount of money, which is totally awesome. However, there is a bad news: the English version of the apps has not came out yet. Thus, in order to use the apps, either you are already a Chinese expert or you should make more Chinese friends!For online shopping, 淘宝(www.taobao.com) and 天猫(www.tmall.com) are the two best options. A quick reminder, just do not stick onto these two websites for too long; because they might get you addicted :P By the way, we also run Amazon in China and it is pretty nice too. Because Facebook and Google do not have stable network connections in China and Chinese does not always use email for daily communication, it is suggested that you create a Wechat account. It is the most commonly used social networking app here. It also has a sea of features like Wechat Quickpay (which is similar to paypal and you can link it with your bank account) and Moments (checking what your friends are doing). Also, a friendly reminder, go ahead and explore other features of Wechat because they will surprise you :PTips: Does the unstable net connections of Facebook and Google make you disconnect with your old friends? Of course not! There are free VPN apps that you can download. I am currently using Betternet and VPN Master and I found them quite useful !你现在有空吗（ni xian zai you kong ma?）I am sorry (or) Excuse me
