yeah probably the most dramatic change from your time has been the shrinking window of where one can use cash :( 

Thanks for the advice. Plan is to go to Kunming and travel around Yunnan. Maybe also go up to Chengdu. 

"bad foreigner WeChat Pay" sounds horrible. I guess I need to do my research.  

Scoresby

I’m Roger Huang, Bitcoin journalist and author of “Would Mao Hold Bitcoin”. AMA

rogerh

To start with, they’re pretty desperate for tourists these days, so things have been a bit more lax.

Summing it up though in terms of advice and keeping it to a very long line? - 1- Bring clean devices, 2- Have VPN/connection to your home server set up to evade Great Firewall 3-Make friends with somebody who has WeChat Pay so you can pay them cash otherwise you’ll be stuck using bad foreigner WeChat Pay or e-CNY, 4- Try to go outside the “Tier 1” cities and enjoy cuisines that don’t come out in the West as much like Hubei food, 5- Adding a fifth here to avoid 4