Short answer: No. Tipping is not expected in mainland China, and in most everyday situations it is not practiced at all. The price on the menu, the figure on the taxi meter and the rate on the hotel bill are the total. Service staff are salaried and service is built into the price, so there is no tipped-wage system to top up, and a note left on a table is often assumed to be forgotten change. The one genuine exception is a private guide, and sometimes the driver. Everything else is optional.
Why tipping never took root here
Chinese diners treat a posted price as final. A restaurant that wants to charge more has to say so on the menu before you order, and local guests almost never leave anything on the table, so staff have no routine for handling a tip. The awkwardness runs both ways, since a server may hand the money back assuming you left it behind, and a small owner may read a large tip as a comment on their prices. Waiting staff are salaried rather than chasing a percentage, so the service you get in a busy noodle shop is the same either way.
Quick reference
| Situation | Tip expected | What locals do |
|---|---|---|
| Local restaurant, noodle shop, hotpot | No | Pay the bill exactly as printed |
| Hotel dining room or upscale restaurant with a service charge | No extra | The service charge replaces the tip |
| Taxi and ride-hailing | No | Meter or app fare, occasionally rounded up |
| Hotel porter and housekeeping | Rarely | Nothing, or a small note at an international chain |
| Private guide | Discretionary | Common among international visitors, not among Chinese ones |
| Driver on a multi-day trip | Discretionary | Usually handled together with the guide |
| Spa, salon, barber | No | Pay the posted price |
Restaurants: read the service charge line
Everyday restaurants do not levy a service charge and do not expect a tip. A hotel dining room or a higher-end restaurant sometimes does. The rate is set by the venue rather than by law, so the only reliable number is the one printed on the menu or the door, and it has to be there before you sit down.
That is a legal requirement, not a courtesy. Under the Rules on Clearly Marked Prices and the Prohibition of Price Fraud (State Administration for Market Regulation Order No. 56, in force since 1 July 2022), a business may not charge above the marked price and may not collect any fee it has not marked; where payment comes after the service, it must give you an itemised bill before you settle. The same rule covers tea, sauce and seat charges, which some regional restaurants do levy. So if a line appears on your bill that was nowhere on the menu, asking what it is for is a fair question, and asking for the itemised bill is your right.
If a service charge is already printed, you are done. Adding a tip on top of a disclosed charge is the one genuinely common mistake foreign visitors make.
Taxis and ride-hailing
Taxi fares are metered and the meter is the price. Ride-hailing apps such as DiDi quote a fixed fare before you accept, and the driver receives the same amount whoever is in the car. Nobody expects a tip, and rounding up to the next yuan is a courtesy rather than an obligation. If a driver hauls a heavy case up a flight of stairs, a note is welcome; refusal is also normal.
Hotels
Housekeeping and bell staff at domestic hotels are not tipped, and many will decline. At international chains in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou a modest cash note for luggage handling is accepted, sometimes after a pause, but it is never expected. Hotel restaurants follow the service charge logic above. Separately, expect an incidental deposit at check-in: that is a pre-authorisation against the room, released after checkout, not a charge for service.
Guides and drivers: the one real exception
A private guide who spends eight hours with you, translates a pharmacy visit and reshuffles a rainy day is the case where a gratuity is both welcome and normal among international visitors. There is no official rate and no standard percentage, and any figure you see online is someone else's habit rather than a rule. What matters is that the two of you agree on the ground: ask your operator before you travel whether gratuities are included in the package price, and a straight answer will tell you more about the operator than any blog post.
Practical form: cash in an envelope handed to the guide at the end, not a note pressed into a hand after each site. If a driver has been part of the trip for days, mention it to the guide and let them split it, which avoids the awkward business of ranking two people against each other. A written review is worth as much to a guide as the cash, and costs you nothing.
The legal limit: a guide may not ask
China's Tourism Law draws a hard line here. Article 41 provides that guides and tour leaders may not solicit tips from tourists, and Article 102 sets the penalty: a guide who solicits a tip is ordered to return the money, fined between RMB 1,000 and RMB 10,000, and in serious cases has their guide certificate suspended or revoked. A demand for a tip is therefore not local custom and not a grey area. Guides must carry their certificate during work, so a licence number plus a call to your operator, or to 12345, the unified local government hotline, is the practical response.
Note the scope: the rule covers guides and tour leaders, not hotel porters or drivers, so it is not a blanket ban on tipping.
How to tip in a country that barely uses cash
Mobile payment dominates daily life, and small notes are harder to come by than they were a decade ago. Two workable routes: keep a few RMB 10, 20 and 50 notes aside for the guide, or transfer the amount to the person's own payment QR code in Alipay or WeChat, which is how locals settle almost everything. Set up the wallet before you land, which is covered in our guide to Alipay and WeChat Pay for foreign visitors.
And if someone refuses, let it go. Insisting turns a gesture into a scene, and the refusal is not modesty.
Hong Kong, China and Macao, China work differently
Cross the border and the mainland rule stops applying. The Hong Kong Tourism Board advises that most restaurants add a 10 percent service charge, while cha chaan teng, the local tea restaurants, generally do not. Read the bill: if the 10 percent is already there, no further tip is needed. Macao sits closer to the Hong Kong model than to the mainland one, so check the bill rather than assuming.
Bottom line
Pay the stated price, and treat tipping as a discretionary extra for a guide or driver who earned it. That is the whole rule for the mainland. If you want the guide, driver, hotels and internal transport arranged so that nothing is left to improvisation, send us your dates and we will build the itinerary.
Last updated: October 31, 2026. Source: Tourism Law of the People's Republic of China, Articles 41 and 102, adopted 25 April 2013 and in force since 1 October 2013 (gov.cn); Rules on Clearly Marked Prices and the Prohibition of Price Fraud, State Administration for Market Regulation Order No. 56, Articles 8 and 15, in force since 1 July 2022 (samr.gov.cn); Hong Kong Tourism Board, Traveller Essentials, section on dining service charges.
