Jabril [none/use name]

Yeah same, it’s easily the worst issue I have when in China. Technically people aren’t supposed to smoke indoors but many people don’t enforce the rules which is annoying. I’ve not noticed a smell in any rooms I stayed in but in the lobbies, halls, and especially bathrooms, you can often smell it. And outdoors every 5th person seems to be smoking

The only other issue I really have had is on long train rides people will be watching videos loudly on their phones, which is also against the rules. Train staff will sometimes tell them to turn it down but not as frequently as it should be.

Have fun, China is pretty great aside from all the cigarette smokers, but you might be used to that as a European

USian here, can’t speak to euro credit cards but US credit cards work fine. You 100% need alipay and/or WeChat, I would have both. You just put your credit card info on there and it works fine. Alipay also has some kind of travel card option I think but never needed it. I would get an Esim and then you don’t need a VPN, I used trip.com esim. I have mullvad VPN and it works fine in China.

Get a spot in Shanghai near Metro to make travel easier. Shanghai gets relatively cold in winter and very hot in summer.

The Chinese gov doesn’t care about you unless you are literally a spy or doing illegal things so I wasn’t really worried about privacy as I am when I am in the US.