本文选自《华尔街日报》11月11日文章。中国无所不在的扫码支付困扰外国游客。在中国，无论是叫出租车、咨询医生、还是付餐费、预订机票，甚至是乞丐乞讨，都用二维码支付。二维码支付极大简化了中国14亿人的生活，但却让每年1.4亿到中国旅游的外国游客束手无策。无论是阿里的支付宝，还是腾讯的微信支付，都需要绑定中国的银行账号才能使用，这对外国游客来说，非常不便。虽然中国规定，不能拒收现金，但当外国游客支付现金时，会面临无零钱可找的困境；当外国游客使用信用卡支付时，又面临很多商家不会使用刷卡机、甚至没有刷卡机的问题。在移动支付方面，中国已经遥遥领先，但也要停一下，为那些来中国的外国游客解决实际支付的困难。
选文精讲
The Cashless Dream Is a Tourist NightmareChina’s ubiquitous mobile payment apps confound touristsBEIJING—On her first trip to China, 30-year-old Courtney Newnham from Portland, Ore., eagerly lined up at a street pushcart to buy a skewer of candied hawthorn berries, a traditional snack.
北京——来自俄勒冈州波特兰市30岁的考特尼·纽纳姆第一次来中国，她急切地在一辆街头手推车前排队购买一串传统小吃糖葫芦。
Then she realized nobody was giving the pushcart guy money. “Everyone was just scanning and walking away, and I was like, 'Wait, what?’ ” she said. She left empty-handed.
她意识到没有人给摊主钱。她说，“每个人都在扫一下，然后走开，我就想，'等等，什么?’”。（最后）她空手离开。
China was never an easy place for tourists, but lately just about everything seems to have gone square-shaped—as in the payment-app QR code needed to unlock much of the Middle Kingdom.
对游客来说，中国从来都不是一个容易呆的地方，但最近几乎所有的东西都变成了方形的支付二维码，只有用它才能解锁这个“中央王国”的大部分（事情）。
It’s how people hail taxis, consult doctors, pay for meals and book flights. Even beggars are asking for money via QR code. Not needing a wallet has simplified life for China’s 1.4 billion people, but it can leave the 140 million tourists arriving in the mainland each year helpless.
这就是人们叫出租车、咨询医生、付餐费和预订机票的方式。甚至连乞丐都用二维码讨钱。不需要钱包简化了中国14亿人的生活，但却让每年1.4亿来到大陆的游客束手无策。
The dominant payment platforms—Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat Pay and Ant Financial Services Group’s Alipay—have been nearly impossible to use without a Chinese bank account.
占主导地位的支付平台腾讯控股有限公司的微信支付和蚂蚁金服的支付宝在没有中国银行账户的情况下几乎无法使用。
Credit cards are no big help. On a family vacation, Alex Lee, 44, took his father and brother for massages at a spa in Hangzhou. When he handed over his credit card, the receptionist dug out a card reader and then stared at it like an alien artifact.
- dig out: 挖出，这个词在这里非常生动形象，当你要表达一个人翻箱倒柜，好不容易找到一个东西时，可以用这个词
信用卡也几乎没用。在一次家庭度假中，44岁的亚历克斯·李带着父亲和弟弟去杭州的一家水疗中心做按摩。当他递上信用卡时，接待员找出一个读卡器，然后像看外星人手工艺品一样盯着它。
“She was swiping it backward, forward, horizontally, vertically,” said Mr. Lee, the cofounder of a startup in Sunnyvale, Calif. He finally showed her how to run the thing.
“她不停地向前、向后、水平、垂直地滑动（信用卡），”这位李先生，加利福尼亚州森尼韦尔的一家初创公司的联合创始人说。
Susanna Sjogren, a 50-year-old teacher from Stockholm who has taken several vacations in China, said with each visit, the country has become harder to navigate.
来自斯德哥尔摩的50岁教师苏珊娜·肖格伦曾在中国度过几次假，她说每次来中国，都发现这个国家已经变得越来越难跟得上。
