As others have already advised, get a basic unlocked quadband phone and you are all set. These can be had for $50 or less. Does anyone even sell triband phones these days? Then when you get to China get your sim card and pop it into the phone. How simple can it get!

I have not made up my mind to use Tracfone, I'm just curious why a quadband phone won't take any SIM card. I guess you believe a Chinese SIM card wouldn't work with a Tracone even though it's quadband. My next question would be, do you know a US brand that would work? I'd love to buy a China Mobile phone in the US but I'm surprised I haven't found them online anywhere, at least not yet.

Instead of being rude, you could politely answer my questions and help me figure out what it is I can use and not use.

Hey Bossman, yeah that's what I'm thinking of doing. I want to get as cheap a prepaid as possible. For example, I found a $18 Tracfone online that's quadband. I'm sure I could figure out how to unlock it too. The only thing else I need to be sure of is that it could read Chinese characters. I thought this might be a function of the SIM card (which will be Chinese) but possibly this has to do with the software of the phone? If it depends on the phone, then I might be out of luck cause I'm not sure that the Tracfone would have language capabilities besides English and Spanish.

First of all, I do not believe anyone here is being rude. The guys that post here are extremely knowledgeable about what they post.

Tracfones are firmware locked and will only work with a tracfone sim. So eliminate that quickly! Most world phones have an option where you can select your language of choice. Just select Chinese.

Also check ebay. However here -

Unlocked quadbands on amazon - Amazon.com: unlocked quad-band phone

Thanks Bossman, I was referring to this guy. He could have just told me about firmware locked, I didn't know there were different "lock" types. I assumed any locked phone could be unlocked.

Pretty much true. With the exception of a handful of phones of which Tracfone is one of them.

I see, well I looked at some of those phones on Amazon but I'm trying to find in the $20 or $30 range, if that's possible. Are there any cheap prepaid brands in the US I could unlock, or is everything going to be similar to Tracfone? Maybe I'll just have to suck it up and get an international phone?