taobao as wonderful as it is, isn't really a good place for China novices, you need to read Chinese, have a Chinese CC etc.

Those that are setup, it's amazing.

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You might consider to ask a Chinese friend or your Ayi (if you have one) to get it for you. I had no problem for them to get few for my friends. They were all free but with a lot of 4s -;)
Or check out some news stands as well.

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By the way, here are all the free 3G numbers: http://shop.10010.com/number/searchNumber.action
Good luck.

Just an update, I ended going to a China Unicom store across from the Ritz Carlton and got a SIM card with ¥200 prepaid. It cost me ¥300, which included the ¥200 amount on it. I was told that I can stop the service and pay ¥5/month to keep the number and the balance on it.

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Good deal, considering 15USD saved you a lot of hassles , plus, there are no roaming and LD fees for the minutes used in China. So I can call you now? -;)
Enjoy

I am in Shanghai right now and I am looking to get a PrePaid SIM that I can put into my unlocked MiFi-type device. Does such a card exist?

I want to use my MiFi to provide WiFi to multiple devices.

Help is appreciated.

In Beijing, I bought one at a stand set up on the corner of a road. Had a Chinese friend ask the questions, but it was remarkably cheap and worked fine throughout our time in China.

I activated this card in december 11 and used it till mid january 12. will be back in china in two weeks. will i be able to activate the card again? what to do to get the 1gb traffic again?

i bought off that chump and he sent me the sim card within 5 days, great service... except its a regular sim card not the mini that is required for an iphone...


any idea if i can just cut it using scissors or should i just bin it and look for another?

You can make it smaller yourself or pay someone else to perform the task at hand.

The seller wrote me he can activate the card again with 1gb traffic when i send him $20 and my phone number.
if he can activate it again it should be possible to get the same when I arrive in china for less money. anyone know about that?

As much as I love my Beijing China Mobile number, I finally threw in the towel today, and picked up a normal Unicom SIM (the Unicom data SIM that I bought a few weeks ago appears not to be usable in any of my phones). It was super easy to purchase (newspaper stand, and a grand total of one minute required to select the best number on offer). With the value of the number itself being a mere y10 (y60 fetches a phone number and y50 in credit), this seems like no brainer, even if Unicom is inferior to Mobile in terms of service quality (the free incoming calls will save me a ton of money when I'm in Shanghai). 3G is a different animal; I don't have it with this new card, and getting it appears to be annoying (i.e. I don't fancy doing the passport drill and/or giving anyone the right to draw down on my bank balance.)

China Mobile has all free incoming calls in SHA too.

Although you can't avoid the passport drill to get 3G, you don't need to give bank details. You can take a wad of cash and buy a tonne of top-up cards, which are put on your account immediately -- I did enough for about a year. And then top-up again as necessary. I also signed a two-year contract, since that came with a significant discount (but probably not as good as on the groupon style websites, which at the time, I knew nothing about).

tb

You can avoid the passport drill if you go to the right place (the electronics market near Chef Too in BJ comes to mind). BTW, today is my first day using this Unicom card in my building and now I know why I can never hear any of my Unicom toting colleagues when they're here and I'm not... reception is terrible.