How much to carry
¥500–1,500 per person for a one- to two-week trip, topped up from an ATM as you go.
Day-to-day spending in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Xi'an is overwhelmingly by QR code, and a foreign Visa or Mastercard now links to both Alipay and WeChat Pay. But cash is not optional, because it is your fallback for the things that actually go wrong.
### Where cash still matters
- Rural areas and small towns — the countryside around Yangshuo and Zhangjiajie in particular
- Street-food stalls and wet markets run by older vendors
- Temple donations and entrance booths at smaller sights
- Local buses outside the big cities, and taxi drivers who prefer it
- When your phone dies, when an app's identity check fails, or when a foreign card gets declined by Alipay's risk engine partway through a trip
That last one is the real argument. The failure modes are all simultaneous: no phone means no payment, no map, no translation and no way to call anyone.
Which ATMs work
Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay and usually Amex, JCB, Plus and Cirrus cards work at the big state banks, with an English menu.
Use, in order of reliability:
- Bank of China — the most consistently foreigner-friendly, clearest English, and present at every airport and in every tourist district
- ICBC
- China Construction Bank
- Agricultural Bank of China
- Bank of Communications
Avoid small city commercial banks, rural credit cooperatives and standalone machines in convenience stores. They reject foreign cards often. If a machine fails, try a different bank before concluding your card is blocked — that is the single most useful thing on this page.
Limits and fees
- Typically ¥2,500–3,000 per withdrawal (some Bank of China machines allow ¥5,000), and roughly ¥10,000 per card per day. Both your bank and the Chinese bank set limits, so confirm yours before you fly.
- Expect a Chinese bank surcharge of about ¥20–30 per withdrawal, plus your home bank's foreign-ATM fee and FX markup.
- Withdraw larger amounts less often. The surcharge is per transaction, not per yuan.
- Always decline the offer to be charged in your home currency. Dynamic currency conversion is a worse rate, every time.
These figures come from 2026 traveller-facing guides and bank documentation rather than a single official schedule — treat them as typical rather than guaranteed.
Practical notes on the notes
- Carry a mix. ¥100 notes are hard to break at small vendors. Keep ¥10s and ¥20s for street food, buses and metro machines.
- Counterfeit ¥100 notes still circulate. Take change from staffed counters rather than individuals where you can.
- Refusing cash is illegal. Under the People's Bank of China Law and a 2020 PBOC announcement, merchants must accept renminbi, with fines up to ¥2m. In practice this is unenforceable against an unstaffed machine or a vendor with no change — so it is a right you rarely want to spend time asserting.
Exchanging money
You can change foreign cash at Bank of China branches and airport counters, with your passport. Rates are regulated and roughly the same everywhere, so there is little to be gained shopping around.
Do not bring more than US$5,000 equivalent in banknotes without declaring it, and note that you may carry no more than ¥20,000 in renminbi across the border in either direction — that one is a hard limit, not a declaration threshold.