Regardless, I waltzed into a China mobile shop and not only did they just give me sim card, they even let me pick my phone number. Sadly there were none with 1701 in, which would have been awesome.
The lies I've heard about this country are just stacked one atop another. Next step is to open a Chinese bank account because apparently I'm not allowed to do that either.
Actually, you can just lie about things you can trivially disprove on the basis that most people won't try to disprove it
Fortunately, nobody actually lives in China so nobody can call you out on it.