Notes de terrain : vivre à Pékin comme étudiant international

The first week: one phone, zero cash

Almost every international student describes the same Beijing onboarding: the first purchase happens with cash and feels quaint; the second happens with a phone and never goes back. Alipay and WeChat Pay are not conveniences here, they are the operating layer of the city — canteen trays, subway gates, shared bicycles, fruit stalls, hospital registration, even the campus printing kiosk. A student who arrives with a passport, a Chinese SIM card and a linked payment app is functionally banked within a day.

The practical sequence that recurs in student accounts: register a local SIM at the airport or a carrier shop, verify a payment app with the passport, add a transit card inside the app, then ride. Beijing’s subway starts at CNY 3 and reaches most of the city; the airport express and the ever-expanding line network make a car unnecessary for the entire degree.

Where students actually live

Most universities house first-year international students in dormitories on or beside campus, commonly between CNY 750 and 1,500 per month for a shared room depending on the university and the building’s age. Dorm life is the fastest integration tool the city offers: Chinese roommates or corridor neighbours, study rooms that stay open late, and a canteen where a filling meal still costs CNY 12–20.

The second year is when many move out. A one-bedroom flat in Haidian or Chaoyang runs roughly CNY 4,000–6,500 per month; sharing with classmates is the norm. The decisive variables are the distance to the nearest subway entrance and the commute to campus — Beijing is enormous, and a wrong district choice can cost ninety minutes a day.

The app layer of the city

Student diaries converge on a small set of applications that run Beijing life: Alipay or WeChat Pay for everything; Meituan or Ele.me for food delivered in 25–40 minutes; Didi for rides; the railway app 12306 for high-speed trains; Amap or Baidu Maps for navigation; Cainao for tracking the parcels that arrive at the campus lockers, often the same day they are ordered.

What surprises most newcomers is how physical services dissolved into software. Shared power banks rent by scan; gym classes book by mini-program; the clinic visit starts in an app. For a student, the honest description is that Beijing is a cashless, app-mediated city where the main daily risk is a dead battery, not a lost wallet.

Study rhythm and the seasons

The academic year shapes the city. September and October are the pleasant months — 22 °C, blue skies, the campus full of orientation events. Winter is genuinely cold, commonly between −10 °C and 0 °C, but every interior is heated and life moves indoors: libraries, study cafés, museum weekends. Spring brings the famous sandstorm days that everyone checks the air-quality app for, then a fast, beautiful April.

Beijing’s weight as a capital shows up in weekend options that no other student city offers at the same density: the Forbidden City, the Great Wall at Mutianyu, the national museum, the opera house, plus lecture culture — public talks at Tsinghua, Peking University and the academies are regularly open to students who simply sign up.

What it costs, honestly

A realistic monthly budget for a Beijing student who lives in a dormitory, eats mostly in canteens and cooks sometimes: CNY 2,500–4,000 all-in. A student in a private flat runs CNY 5,500–8,000. The largest single variable is rent; the second is how often food arrives by delivery instead of by tray.

Every account ends with the same advice: prices, visa rules and dorm fees change every year, so treat any published number — including these — as a planning range and confirm the current figures with the university’s international student office before making decisions.