Has anyone else tried to buy a new SIM card recently? My passport is no longer a good enough ID, it seems.

did you go to the main shop (China Mobile one is near Xiao xi men) or just one of the smaller ones?

I suspect that they are now vigorously enforcing real name registration, and some shop staff just cannot comprehend how to input foreign passport holder's information.

I went to 2 stores in Chenggong (University Town) and found flat refusal accept a passport. My waiban is perplexed, too. Do you think a Foreign Expert card would do?

Note janjal and debaser above. I long since always head for the big main/head office in downtown Kunming for all these type of things because there you have a better chance of finding someone who knows how to provide you with what you need. There is no policy or grounds to deny you a SIM it's just a case of finding someone with the know how and the means and they tend to be in the big main branch.

Staff don't know how to pad your passport number with leading zeroes to satisfy the 18 digit Chinese ID card requirement.

Now you know - and you can TRY to help them through the process. If your passport number is >18 digits...SOL.

@kongming try the

big china unicom office upstairs next to the square in old chenggong

For China Unicom you have to go to Liantong Dasha 联通大厦 downtown: map.baidu.com/[...]

For China Mobile you can go to this one: map.baidu.com/[...] (though I head they've been slow helping foreigners lately)

I had to get a replacement Sim card today as my old iPhone used a micro size and the new iPhone uses a nano size. An Apple shop tried to simply cut it to size, but it failed to work. The big China Mobile store at XiaoXiMen swapped the old sim for a new one without fuss - just needed a passport - and for free. They take photos of your passport, visa, face etc but it was a painless procedure.

For anyone in a similar situation, do make sure you backup your data to the iCloud before you try the cut/swap. I didn't and I have a lot of phone numbers to manually re-enter!

When I got my new iPhone i discovered that the contact list is not retained on the SIM card as it was with my old Samsung.
Now here's the good part. I have my email connected on the phone, which then picks up the contact list from my email. Same thing goes for my iPad, so when I update on any of the devices the contact list gets updated on the other two.