I've thought more about choosing banks since my previous post. While I still think tourists should focus on finding banks that aren't super uptight, I forgot to mention that physical presence (of CDM machines, at least) is an important consideration if you fancy loading money into your account. Based on this criteria, ICBC is a clear leader in Shanghai (their CDMs are almost as ubiquitous as the Covid test kiosks were last year). Any physical branch can open an account for you, and I'm pretty sure that a Beijing-based account would work fine for the sake of restocking your account when you're out and about in other cities.

Switching topics, I haven't noticed ANY local cultural preferences for Alipay v WeChat Pay anywhere, but some of my friends have one and not the other. Therefore, people should obviously bind their bank accounts with both, if possible.

A word of warning on name syntax: WeChat Pay won't bind with several of my bank accounts because my name on file with them doesn't match closely enough with my names on file with the banks in question. When opening new accounts, you can potentially nip this problem in the bud...or, you can try to remedy it later, if you care. I've never experienced similar issues with Alipay.