yes and no. you needed regular testing and in most cases you only needed to show that you had a clean test. you could get that on paper, it just wasn't practica

yes and no. you needed regular testing and in most cases you only needed to show that you had a clean test. you could get that on paper, it just wasn't practical. i had the issue that sometimes the test station was not able to enter my data because i don't have a chinese ID. in that case they had to print out the test results and i would use those. when i travelled that sometimes meant that they sent me a photo of the results because i did a test in the morning in one city, but the results were not available until i arrived in the other city. to get your digital travel status there was an app you could download (actually each province hat their own app) and you registered on that with your phone number and passport details (or chinese ID). no wechat or alipay required. if you didn't have a working phone then you could log in to that app on any other phone at see your status there. in theory it was possible to travel without a phone and not have the fact that you travelled reflect in the app, but in practice it was not worth the trouble.