So I did this process in 2015. It might be different now, just FYI. I did have to go to the consulate, it's huge and miserable and you wait in line for over an hour. You apply for a tourist visa with a long forum, attaching proof of airline ticket purchase both into and out of China as well as a hotel room, and have to give in your passpt as well. If all goes well, they'll shoot you an email in a few weeks and you have to go back to the consulate to pick up your passport with your new shiny 10 year 90 day multi-entey visa. They do have single use visas but usually even if you apply for that single use visa they just give you a 10 year multi entry visa to encourage more tourism. As long as your fill the forms out right, you'll be fine. It's just quite time consuming.

When you get to China it's pretty much a normal place with a different suite of apps, the only big difference being everything is reliant on Alipay and WeChat. Menus are QR codes only accessible through WeChat. All stores only take mobile payments. You are required to use these apps to function in urban Chinese society. So definitely download them. Getting money into Alipay as a foreigner without a Chinese bank account is not easy, so make sure to read up on how to do it! It also changes all the time so I don't know the current scheme of how to do it. Wonderful place though, incredible food, everybody is very helpful even if they don't speak English, get a jianbing for breakfast and go for dim sum the next.