The Yikatong, or One Card Pass
Upon arrival in Beijing, in October of 2008, I decided to purchase a subway pass, called Yikatong, or one card pass, in Mandarin, to make my subway journeys more convenient.
A Yikatong costs 40 yuan upfront–20 yuan of which is stored subway ticket credit (the equivalent of of 10 one way trips) and 20 yuan of which is a deposit. (I had read that you were supposed to be able to get the 20 yuan deposit back if you turned the card back in, but the lady I bought mine from did not think this was the case.) At any rate, once you have purchased a yikatong, you can add credit to it in 10 yuan (or 5 trip) increments. It is definitely a time savings to use a yikatong, rather than purchasing a one way ticket each time. However, one complaint about the yikatong is that it doesn’t have a map of the subway system on it, as the regular one-use subway tickets do. In fact, as far as I could tell, there are no paper subway maps available at the subway stations at all–just the large maps painted on the walls.
If you are going to be using the Beijing subway system, I would recommend printing out one of the maps available on the internet–I found some quite good ones available at the following links
Metro Map of Beijing (English (PinYin) and Chinese)
Another Beijing Subway Map (English Only)
Actually you can buy a map anywhere in the subway or the bus stop, just for 5RMB you get all the information you need.