I have just returned from a work trip to China. In preparation, I purchased a new used Android phone and acquired a local SIM as soon as I landed. A main motivator for this configuration was to be able to pay for items. Though I was with a conference and most transportation and meals were provided, I nevertheless wanted the ability to explore independently, which I thought meant being able to pay digitally for services.

Digital payment means WeChat Pay or Alipay. While downloading both is easy, setting them up is not. Setting up WeChat required providing identification information — my passport –, asking a stranger — the hotel checkin clerk — to scan a QR code, and then CAPTCHA type work. When I tried providing a credit card, I had to provide passport information again. Already creeped out by the legal nosiness, I did not. Instead, I tried Alipay. To activate that account, I had to look at my phone’s camera and blink. Twice I did, and twice the validation failed. I therefore gave up on Alipay as well, leaving me without a digital payment option.

At a trendy shop in a high-end neighborhood, I tried paying with my US Visa card. The shopkeeper had a machine and tried accepting the card, but it would not read. Neither tapping nor inserting worked. I tried a second Visa and still failed.

Before that store, I had used cash at a bakery to buy bread and a drink. Wondering how much of a fluke that transaction was and having no other payment options, I started seeing how widely I could use cash. Quite widely, it turns out!

I used cash to pay for gifts at a mall store, coffee at a nice chain called Arabica, a taxi, a train ticket, and gifts at the airport. No one batted an eye. The only places cash may have been a problem would have been small vendors without stores, though even then I bet exact change would have been accepted.

I am sure I was helped by the fact that I do not look Chinese, so it was not weird to see me offer cash. Nonetheless, the narrative about cashless China is wrong and should be more widely known. It makes me wonder why more Chinese do not use cash, though at this point there is such a strong digital-first norm that a cash payment would likely look weird or suspicious.

Anyway, next time you go to China, do not hesitate to use cash!