Whether you live here or are simply visiting, you will need money.
Back in the day, I was a BofA loyalist, due to its relationship with CCB, but I killed that account once it became no longer "free".
Moving on, anybody who's here for the long term requires a Chinese bank account. The problem I've encountered is that Chinese banks either suck or they charge insane fees. Sometimes they do both.
My company uses the Bank of Ningbo (extremely painful to deal with) because they are cheap. But, even for corporate clients like ourselves, we must earmark an hour of our time in order to perform the simplest of transactions.
In Beijing, I am impressed by Huaxia Bank; for some reason, those guys never have any lines... and, their ATMs are very nice. Merchants bank is also good, but I'm sure both charge high fees (based on their lack of customers).
In closing, I increasingly like Schwab. While wires can be a pain, their accounts entail no fees of any sort (i.e. withdrawing money from my Schwab account in Shanghai is cheaper than withdrawing money from my Beijing BankComm account).
http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/...ecking_account