There are a lot of places in China that will not accept western credit cards, best thing to do is load your credit card up with extra cash at home then use it to draw cash from a teller machine, that way you don't pay the high interest charges for taking cash out, for some reason you can't use a mastercard/visa debit card to withdraw cash but you can use the credit side of it to withdraw cash from most large banks.
I was advised by my bank in Aus to do this and it worked perfectly though I didn't find out until I got back home that the charges were about 60rmb each time I used it........I would have taken 4,000rmb out each time instead of 2,000 had I known, but I've carried up to 20,000 cash for weeks from Provence to Provence by bus/train/plane and never had a worry or problem.