> "We felt like little kids who couldn't do anything by ourselves," said Ms. Shortes, a junior at Clemson University in South Carolina. "We always had to say, '

> "We felt like little kids who couldn't do anything by ourselves," said Ms. Shortes, a junior at Clemson University in South Carolina. "We always had to say, 'Please help us!' " I travel to Harbin, a major Chinese city in the northeast Heilongjiang about once a year. My group always consists of member of my host country that is at least marginally conversational in Mandarin (this on the menu please, going to this area, Mr. Cab Driver), and a native or someone with Native level fluency (There must be a misunderstanding, I promise we didn't intend to trespass). Our group leader usually exchanges a few days worth of meals in cash at the hotel before we leave for the day, but instead of paying for meals, we just slide our native friend the cash while he/ she scans their WeChat/Alipay app. This past trip I decided to go rouge and just use my credit cards (unrelated: most of my credit card providers simply don't have an option to notify them of international travel "Their sophisticated algorithm detects when you're traveling"). Most places in the US let you know what digital payment forms they accept. Almost always Visa/Mastercard, Usually Amex/Discover, rarely ApplePay/SamsungPay/Google Pay, and - in tourist areas on the west coast and in Hawaii in my experience - UnionPay (China credit card) or JCB (Japan credit card). I expected something similar over in China. Nope - WeChat Pay, Alipay/ Union Pay or Yuan. Not in Kansas any more. I managed to install and link my credit card up to both the Alipay/ and WeChat iOS apps, but they declined my purchase at the counter. Not sure why the app would "accept" my CC info without doing a test transaction. It turns out you need a Chinese CC to use the Chinese payment apps, which requires a Chinese bank account. I'm sure you can easily get one if you have a Visa, but for some reason we never thought it out that far. Those same cards that were declined tested satisfactory for a ~20USD at a Starbucks the same day. I tried a 40USD gift card purchase right after that and was declined. Our native friend covered me. tl;dr first stop when visiting China should be a bank. you'll get an account, which will give you a card, which you can use for China's increasingly required digital payment systems