My colleagues and I have been doing the pre-paid thing for a very long time, in part due to laziness and in part due to a fear of the post paid application process.

But, several days ago, a friend sent me the following link, which explains the benefits of post paid (not that I didn't already know), but I needed some prodding.

http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/...nghaiist_6.php

So yesterday, I marched into the China Mobile office near my house with the goal of inquiring only (I was prepared to be given a check list of 10+ difficult to obtain documents).

But, much to my surprise, I left with a new SIM card in hand 40 minutes later.

The ONLY documentation you need is a passport. You also need y550 (50 for the card and 500 for the deposit). They accept ATM cards and maybe credit cards as well.

Here's how it works:

-You enter your passport number into an terminal that looks like an ATM.
-The you get to choose from around 500 numbers. Interestingly, none of them had any 8's. On the flip side, they were also devoid of the dreaded 4.
-The numbers are roughly in sequence so it wasn't that hard to find a good one. For those that are curious, I settled on 139110792927.
-Then the machine spits out a piece of paper with the new number.
-Then you need to take a number and wait in line (it would have speeded things up if I had taken the number before selecting a phone number).
-Once it's your turn, you step up to the counter and a China Mobile employee does the rest. I'm not sure exactly what the employee was doing at his computer, but the process took around 30 minutes and there were many forms to sign.

The good news is that the savings have already begun. For y168 per month, I get 700 minutes and minutes beyond that are 60% cheaper than Shenzhouxing minutes.

What's more, if I know I'm going to be gone for 1 month or more, I can suspend service.

I think post paid makes sense for anyone that spends more than 15 days per year in China, assuming your phone usage is relatively heavy. To elaborate further, in 15 days, I spend y500 on air time. Now, I'm looking at ~y3000 per year (I'm factoring in long distance calls here). But, the 15-day visitor would spend considerably less, of course.

In any case, I think the 45 minutes of waiting was well worth it.