Paul,

Thank you for the update. Any recommendations for vendors to go to? Apparently our hotel's address is No. 83A Jian Guo Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100025. Something nearby would be great.

Regards,
Mark

Mark,

Not too far from your hotel (5 minutes by taxi) is the silk market. On the 4th floor of the silk market there are a few electronics merchants that would likely have the sim cards. They will speak English. It is a very touristy location but is one option. While your hotel is in the greater CBD there will not be a lot of English spoken in that area in the shops.

You might want to see if the concierge at your hotel can help you and get the sim for you from a merchant in the area of your hotel. That will be the very simplest solution for you. Otherwise, the only place I can guarantee you can get one is the buy now market.

Good luck.
Paul

Paul,

Again, thank you for the information.

Regards,
Mark

How do you check credit when using china unicom prepaid internet for ipad?

Hi guys!

I've had a look on all yur previous messages and it was pretty interesting and useful.
But it didn't really answer to my questions.

Let me explain you my pb: I bought few weeks ago an ipad2 3G in San Francisco during a trip and came back to Tianjin (china) the place where I live. Yesterday I went to china unicom office store and ask for a 3G card for my iPad. Knowing that I won't spend my full days on it, I asked for the basic solution viz. 80元 a month for 4GB. The girl just cut a card and gave it to me for 115元. I put it into the iPad and it directly worked (no need any password and username).

But, what I got seems completely different than what I could have read into the previous discussion:
- it seems I got a prepaid card as there is no contract at all. But according to what I have read on your discussions, the price is about 1200元. Why this difference?
- When my credit is over, how to put some money again on it? Via Internet, phone call or shall I have to go to china unicom office store? The girl from the shop gave me the piece of the card from which the sim card has been cut and she showed me some numbers on it and especially one number starting by "145...". I guess it can be useful when I need to re-credit my card. If you can tell me your view on this, it would be helpful....

Thanks in advance for your replies!

Jokoko

in europe prepaid-global offers china data sims incl. 1000 mb just 40 euro

I will be traveling through China and staying at hotels in large cities. Can I use the wifi network at a hotel there as I would in the US with my IPAD?

Paul, I will be in China and staying in large cities in hotels. Will I be able to use their wifis?

The short answer is yes, but the long answer is that you might find the wifi locked and need to get an password from the front desk. I think you will find some hotels have free wifi and some don't. The larger foreign owned hotel chains will likely have free wifi in the lobby. Places like Starbucks usually have free wifi if you have a China Mobile SIM Card which you will want to get (if you don't already have). Even with a low cost prepaid China Mobile sim card you can get free wifi so it is worth having. And, the China Mobile (CMC) free wifi is nearly omnipresent - even in some hotel lobbies, and shopping malls.

The China Mobile wifi (usually tagged as Free-CMC or CMC-Free, or something like that) is available in a lot of places. When you see that wifi, connect to it, and a login / registration screen will pop up in your browser. You enter your local China Mobile phone number and a random number on the screen and China Mobile will send you a login password by text message to your phone. That password will work for 7 days and then you can request a new one. So I highly recommend having a CMC sim card even if it is just to get the free wifi.

Regards,
Paul.