You'll almost always find UnionPay at hotels, larger restaurants, supermarkets, chain convenience stores, department stores, and similar more established places. The places on the street selling fruit, baozi and the like will take only Wechat/Alipay.
On a tourist visa, you'll find it takes much more than an hour to find a bank that will open an account for you, actually open the account, then get everything working with Wechat/Alipay. As I've said before, you have to be very committed and determined to go that route.
What’s the new system with WeChat that you could add a so-called family member. Could someone with a US account, get money from a friend whom you call uncle that has an Asian based account send you money and it will work?