Telephones
手机 shǒujī mobile/cell phone
手机卡 shǒujī kǎ SIM card
移动 Yídòng China Mobile
联通 Liántōng Unicom
充值卡 chōngzhí kǎ recharge card
Update: Despite the advice given below, changes in China’s regulations for mobile phones in late 2019 may make acquisition of a local SIM card difficult or something to be reconsidered, or both. Sight of a passport to make sure that the SIM card is registered to a particular true name is now difficult to avoid, and in addition facial recognition scans are now compulsory, making you entirely trackable. Roaming, despite the comparative (and often considerable) expense, may now be the better option, or simply installing a VPN on the phone and relying on communications via data in hotels and cafés with wi-fi.
Anyone with a GSM mobile phone from just about anywhere on the planet except North America should take it to China. Most phones around the world work on both 900 Mhz and 1800 Mhz, with 1800 Mhz the most common frequency globally, and 900 MHz used in China and much of Asia. North Americans with ancient handsets are stuck on 1900 MHz with some 850MHz coverage, neither of any use in China. However those with with tri-band phones (900/1800/1900 MHz), quad-band ones receiving all four frequencies, or just about any any ‘smart’ phone, should also take their phones. You may need to ask your phone company to unlock your phone if you are bound by contract to a certain service, or take it in to a chain electrical store or small-scale specialist shop where it can be freed to work with any system for a small sum.
Roaming charges from mobile carriers at home are daylight robbery and with the quick, cheap purchase of a local SIM card in China you can be on the Chinese system very quickly, and pay a tiny fraction of foreign company charges. If you’re desperate to have a number before you go there are on-line services that will sell you a Chinese SIM card and have it couriered to you, but charges are usually sky high — at least 2.5 times what you need to pay once in Běijīng and often much more. A few texts or emails will get everyone your number.
Also consider that mobile phones are one of China’s better bargains. Models by big-name foreign manufacturers made for the China market can often be bought for low prices, and all come with bi-lingual menus. Again, North Americans need to be sure to buy tri-band (三频, sān pín) models if they plan to use them back at home, but even these are available for around ¥800; simpler phones for considerably less. Even a familiar foreign brand phone can be under ¥400. Lively second-hand markets offer refurbished phones for as little as ¥100. These may die after a couple of weeks, but then a couple of weeks is all most visitors need. The second-hand markets (see Shopping) and many other locations also have people who will fix common phone maladies, such as partly blank screens, for small fees. So don’t throw away that wonky phone, bring it with you.
The principal mobile service suppliers for now are China Mobile and China Unicom, with China Telecom rather trailing. China Mobile has slightly wider coverage and 4G service but in a format incompatible with most foreign phones. Unicom has foreign-compatible 3G service but is still waiting to be allowed to offer foreign-compatible 4G. Just who offers the better rates varies over time and from province to province, but for now in Běijīng Unicom seems to have the best deal, with a pay-as-you-go SIM card that includes text and data.
These SIM cards can be bought at innumerable mobile phone shops and many small stores and magazine kiosks, as well as at counters in supermarkets and department stores. At official mobile phone shops you may be asked to present ID and register, as well as to pay a much higher price for your card. SIM cards bought at the airport will cost at least ¥180 and as much as ¥1000, whereas down town away from tourist areas they may cost as little as ¥60. ¥100 including ¥50 of credit from a newspaper kiosk is fairly standard. The cost depends not only on where you buy the card (on Wángfǔ Jǐng they cost more than in some ordinary phone shops in a regular street) but even more on numerological issues. For instance, numbers with fours in are cheaper, because the word for four, sì (四) is homophonous with sì (死) ‘to die’. Numbers with eights are more expensive because the sound for eight, bā, is vaguely similar to the sound fā, a shortened form of a phrase meaning ‘to get rich’. This may sound unconvincing, but it’s persuasive even to the strictly anti-superstition Communist Party of China: the opening ceremony of the Běijīng Olympics was timed to start at eight minutes and eight seconds past eight in the evening of the eighth day of the eighth month, two thousand and eight.
Some vendors have books with lists of numbers, mostly 11 digits beginning with 13, and prices written alongside them. As with everything else, haggle for a lower price.
A Unicom SIM card from a kiosk with an unexciting number typically costs ¥100 for a version that does data, and ¥60 for one that merely handles calls and text. Each includes ¥30 of credit. China Mobile cards are respectively ¥100 incluiding ¥50 credit, or ¥80 including ¥20 credit. But these offers change all the time.
At a China Mobile shop the cheapest card is ¥260 including 160 mins of on-line time. And a card with 3G or better capability requires paperwork and sight of a passport.
Call costs are very modest, and typically incoming calls are free until you leave Běijīng, after which both caller and receiver are charged. Still, Chinese spend much more time on still cheaper texting than on calls, and those with ‘smart’ phones are using apps that turn voice messages into data, especially WeChat, and making VOIP calls.
Adding stored value is merely a matter of picking up a scratch card or printed receipt at innumerable mobile phone or corner shops or newspaper kiosks. You’ll need to ask for a chōngzhí kǎ (充值卡), and the first question you’ll be asked in reply is which system you are on, Yídòng (China Mobile) or Liántōng (China Unicom). Card values are typically ¥50 or ¥100, and often the person who sells you the card will offer to dial up the system and enter the card number to add the value. But there are English instructions on the card, and an option to select English on the voice menus when you dial-up to recharge. You should do this before you leave the counter and in sight of the vendor. There are fake recharge cards just as there is fake everything else. Your initial credit is typically valid for 90 days, but adding value typically increases expiry by a further 180 days, up to a maximum of about 18 months. There are warning messages in something approaching English when your stored credit is getting low: ‘Your balance has little money.’
SIM cards can, for the most part, be just as easily topped up elsewhere in China, with the exception of awkward Zhējiāng Province, where a trip to a local China Mobile main office is necessary. In general you may as well stick with your Běijīng number all the way, but note that mainland SIM cards of any kind will mostly not work in Hong Kong or Macau, which have their own systems, nor anywhere overseas.
Kiosks and many shops also sell IP cards (IP卡) which allow calls on mobiles and landlines to be redirected over the Internet by dialling a prefix (e.g. 17950) and then a password number from beneath a scratch-off panel on the back of the card. This significantly cuts the cost of international telephony. Street vendors often offer deep discounts off the face value. If you’ve a ‘smart’ phone, tablet, or laptop with you, Skype and other VOIP applications supersede these.
You may also see IC cards advertised, which are needed to use public phones, although these are increasingly hard to find. Chinese mobile phone users are now numbered in the hundreds of millions. Some smaller shops still have phones on an outside counter and you pay cash to make a call. If you call from your hotel room it is only permitted to charge you standard rates plus a service charge. Use an IP card for long distance and you’ll still be charged for a local call unless, as in some hotels, local calls are free.
To call overseas from China the format is: prefix + 00 (international access code) + country code (1 for US/Canada, 44 for UK, etc.) + dialing code/area code (less any leading zero) + number. Dialling internationally from a landline using an IP phone card will be considerably cheaper. Those calling China from overseas need to dial their international access code (00 in the UK, 011 in Canada and the US, for instance) + 86 (China country code) and then the 11-digit mobile number, or for landlines 10 for Běijīng followed by the 8-digit landline number.
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