Because English names always seem like such a hassle (what order? Capital? Punctuation? Spaces? Too long). It already seems like this is going to be worse with this card using English, since two banks have given me two different English names based on scanning the card. And I just noticed my updated police registration actually has a third slightly different version of my English name.

Also I thought it would be better to have everything in one name, and some things can only be Chinese (house, car). Like I would expect trouble if I want to use housing funds, but house is in Chinese, bank is in English, and housing fund is in ???. Or signing up for didi as a driver seems to at least first use driver's license, so Chinese name. It wouldn't surprise me if then it couldn't link to a bank account with an English name.I also just went through a whole six months long ordeal trying to get a car purchase subsidy all due to some documents having English and some having Chinese, with no way to prove we are the same person.

Separate from Chinese vs English name, I asked Alipay support about switching my ID to the PR card so that taobao could also use the card, but apparently that would cause my Alipay transport card to stop working 😭. It seems like switching the number to 18 digits didn't really help since it still has to be specifically supported.