you don't really need a card now, in the past a few years along, they loosed the requirement of a card, now you can just go there, and ask the reception people, they will show you a one time card or at the chceck out they will do the same.
@JR305,sorry for your experience in china about xenophobia. at the other hand, china is never the same, there is no "the same china". when i used to share beers in the hutong with friends from all over the world, i used to make this for helping understand china : vertically chinese society is at very differ stages of social developing, the differences between kashgar and beijing is far more than the differs between beijing and paris. kashgar is pretty much pre-industrilized and at the other hand, beijing is mostly towards post industrilized. and then,
have the south and the north china also typically very differ cultures. and look at the timeline, the unprecedented enconmic developing in recently a few decades even for chinese it is bit diffiuclt to catch up. kunming is a remote city in china, it is bit on the downside in the matter. generally, chinese people is not so friendly to black people that is quite a fact. i would say, kunming is not the fine choice.
if you wanna save some extra bucks on the paypal or xoom fees, you can just keep the chinese currency in your chinese bank account and instead transfer it, you can use it on ebay or amazon to buy items and have it delivered to your u.s address, the money will automatically exchange into u.s dollars without fees, but a small amount of exchange rates loss.
for your first question, there is a mini-apps within the ali-pay mess, you can try to locate it by check the apps list at the main UI. for travelling, airport or the rapid train will give you a QR code to scan using the ali-pay build in bar code scanner to proceed.
the latter question about the money. you can't just transfer the chinese bank balance to your u.s bank account. there is other way around that is paypal or xoom.
westerunion is the "old way" of transfer money. then it is bit of tricky to track the money. if your recipient has a chinese bank account that works with paypal
it is the easy way to go. the downside is paypal cost on both sides
nowadays.you have a fee on sending the money, and the recipient has no fee on recieving the money but a fee on cash it into the bank account. money land in recipetant paypal account is USD or the currency you choose to be.
the procedure is "send-recieve-withdraw." every step is trackable. and no intervene in the middle process. if your recipient has a bank account no association with paypal, it is fine. you can still use xoom from paypal. the total fee is slightly less and it soupposed to be instant transfer. however, the real process might takes up to 72 working hours. so if money sent in monday, money will be landed at thursday. xoom takes whatever currency with the options to transfer upon sending by your choice of local currency. the exchange rates slightly less than a bank offer. when the recipient is the first time get thru xoom transfer, he/she will get a msg when money landed in china to verify his/her identity at the chinese bank union's request. and that's all. the later transfer will just free to go.
good luck.
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