HowToCN

Nobody warns you about the QR code on the restaurant table. You sit down in some little noodle place, hungry, and there's no menu — just a laminated code glued to the corner of the table. The waiter points at it. The table next to you has already ordered, paid, and gotten their food, all without talking to anyone. You open WeChat, scan... and hit a wall. That wall is what this post is about. WeChat is the app you'll open more than any other in China — for ordering food, adding the people you meet, paying, finding mini programs for everything from bikes to train tickets. But for foreigners it has a handful of specific, predictable problems. Almost everyone hits at least two of them. Here they all are, with the fixes that actually work. 1. The sign-up code that never arrives You enter your foreign phone number, tap "send code," and... nothing. Or worse, you try a few times  and get a message saying you've tried too frequently, come back later. This is the most commo...

The first time I watched a friend try to pay for dumplings in Shanghai with a Visa card, the cashier just smiled and pointed at the QR code taped to the counter. No card reader. No cash drawer open. That little square of pixels  is  the cash register in China — and the app behind it is Alipay. Good news: foreigners can absolutely set it up. Bad news: most guides skip the parts that actually trip people up. This one doesn't. Do it all before your flight, and you'll land ready to pay for anything. Your Phone Is Your Wallet Here Restaurants, subways, taxis, hotels, night markets — almost everything in China runs on QR code payments. Cash is still legal tender (shops can't legally refuse it), but apps are faster, and in many places they're simply what's expected. The app you need is called  Alipay . Think of it as a wallet, a metro card, and a taxi app rolled into one. And yes — you can set it up with a foreign passport and a foreign bank card. No Chinese phone num...