At Beijing's Capital Airport there are smiling ladies at little kiosks on the way to immigration and in the arrivals halls who will sell you SIM cards for between three and twenty times what you actually need to pay. Just go into town and buy a SIM card at any of myriad phone shops, but preferably those not so handy to five-star hotels or expat shopping ghettos that inexperienced foreigners wander in every five minutes.

The kind of card that will suit you best is this one:

神州行零月租卡

This has no monthly fee. Use the prefix 17950 to dial overseas and calling the US and Canada, for instance, is about ¥3 per minute, a little more if you use your Beijing-bought SIM card from elsewhere in mainland China.

Any shop you visit will offer a variety of numbers whose price will depend on numerological considerations. The more fours the cheaper. The more eights the more expensive. Just choose the cheapest and bargain the price a little lower. About ¥60.

You can add value at just about any street corner shop as well as at phone stores, malls, etc., and although menus and instructions are in English, typically the person selling you the top-up will add the value for you.

But your Hong Kong number, if you haven't used it for a year, is dead, and its remaining stored value lost. If you top-up frequently in China you can easily push your expiry date to 18 months or so ahead, but in Hong Kong cards expire more quickly.

Peter N-H
China