The metro is the answer
Chinese city metros are fast, clean, cheap, signed in English, and go everywhere a visitor wants to go. In Beijing and Shanghai they are usually faster than a car between 4pm and 8pm.
You can pass the gate with a QR code from Alipay in every major city — Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shenzhen all work, funded by a foreign Visa or Mastercard. Alipay is the more reliable of the two wallets for transit and needs no Chinese bank account or phone number.
Open Alipay, find the transit code, set the city, and scan at the gate. That last step is the one people miss: the code is city-specific.
Fares are distance-based and small: from ¥2–3, with most journeys ¥2–6. Airport lines are priced separately — the Beijing Capital Airport Express is ¥25, Daxing ¥35.
### If the QR fails
It happens, usually on a flaky connection in a deep station.
- Buy a single-journey token from a station machine. They take cash — keep a couple of ¥5 and ¥10 notes for exactly this — and increasingly take Alipay too.
- Get a stored-value card (Beijing Yikatong, Shanghai Public Transport Card, Shenzhen Tong, Tianfu Tong). Buy it with cash at a station service window. Unglamorous, completely reliable, and the fallback worth having on a long trip.
### Two things to expect
- Security screening at every entrance. Bags go through a scanner. Allow a few minutes, more at rush hour and at stations near government buildings.
- Rush hour is genuinely crowded. Avoid 7:30–9:30 and 17:30–19:30 if you can, and be prepared to be more assertive than feels polite just to get off the train.
DiDi fills in the gaps
DiDi is China's ride-hailing platform and also dispatches licensed metered taxis. For a visitor its real value isn't price, it's that you never have to pronounce an address — you pin the destination and the app sends it to the driver in Chinese, with translated chat for the rest.
Use the DiDi mini-program inside Alipay. Search "DiDi" in Alipay. It inherits Alipay's payment rail and your already-verified identity, works without a Chinese phone number, offers English, and avoids the card rejections people hit on the standalone app. The international "DiDi Rider" app is the next best option; the mainland Chinese app is the one everyone complains about.
At airports and major stations, the pickup point is often a parking level rather than the kerb. Follow the in-app directions rather than standing outside arrivals.
Taxis
Fine, metered, and cheap — but the driver will not read Latin script and may not read your map pin. Show the destination in Chinese characters on your screen. Our survival kit has a card for exactly this, including one that holds your hotel address.
Avoid anyone who approaches you inside an airport or station building. Use the official rank.
Walking and crossing the road
Cities are more walkable than their size suggests, and the pavements are good. The hazard is traffic:
- Right turns on red are legal, so a green pedestrian light does not mean nothing is coming.
- Electric scooters are silent and use pavements, crossings and the wrong side of the road freely.
- Look both ways even on a one-way street, and don't step out reading your phone.
Bikes
Shared bikes (Meituan, HelloBike) are everywhere and unlock through Alipay or WeChat. In flat cities with proper bike lanes — Beijing, Chengdu, Xi'an within the walls — they are genuinely the nicest way to move between sights.