First arrival

What to prepare before the trip

Half the problems of your first days in China are solved in an hour at home — if you know what to prepare.

6 min readUpdated: 26 August 2026

photo: an open suitcase, documents and a phone on a table

A week before you fly

Check your visa and passport
Your passport must remain valid comfortably beyond the trip. Check the visa type against what you are actually going to do: business and tourist visas grant different rights.
Install the apps
Install WeChat, Alipay and a translation app before you fly. App stores work differently inside China, and that first install takes noticeably longer.
Warn your bank
Some banks block transactions from China as suspicious. Telling them about the trip removes that risk.
Collect the addresses in Chinese characters
The hotel, your partner’s office, the exhibition centre — as screenshots. These are the things you cannot obtain on the spot without internet and without the language.

Worth knowing

Download the city maps for offline use. Your first hours in the country are exactly when you have no internet yet and need to find your bearings.

What to bring

A little cash in yuan for the first day: your card may not go through, and you need a taxi and water straight away.

An adapter for Chinese sockets and a power bank — there are fewer sockets on the road than you would think.

Copies of your documents kept apart from the originals: on paper and in the cloud.

Tip

Write your medicines out as active ingredients rather than brand names: the local equivalents are called something else, and at a pharmacy this is the only way to make yourself understood.

Checked: 26 August 2026

Editor: The PANDA editorial team