Chinaconomics

Hi all!

Back again to tell you more about my adventures in China. No. This post is not about the economic growth of China or about doing business here, but rather about the ordeal I and other students went through to get money out at a bank and exchanged at the hotel. Let's just say that Chinese banks don't like the American debit cards and that some banks only provide "non-cash" related services like balance inquiries and transfers. Let's also say that unless your money never committed one of the seven deadly sins, you can't exchange it in China. Those bills better be crisp, clean and pristine.

Outside the fact that there is a bank between every 10 stores, it's actually very hard to find one that will give you cash out of the ATM. We went to 3 different banks after we got to the hotel trying to find one that would give us money, because like the good 'ole Americans we are, we figured getting money out wouldn't be too challenging and that if we couldn't get money right away that we could always use our cards until we could stop and get some. Not so, my friends, not so. The first bank we tried only made balance inquiries. So we went ahead to the store, thinking that we could just buy the water we needed with our cards. Nope. So we went back to the hotel to ask where another one was, were pointed in the right direction and finally found a bank that would dispense money. On that note, typing in 200 to take out was really unnerving. The funny thing is: I only ended up taking out around $30.... Needless to say, I need to get more money. Real quick. The craziest thing about this was we could buy water for around $.40 a bottle. Let's hope everything else is that cheap...

Now, changing money is a whole other story. You may have thought I was just kidding when I said your money better not have committed a deadly sin, but I was being completely serious. One of our girls had to give Conrad her American money to trade for his because her's had a pen mark on it. Which is kind of funny since Conrad didn't have any problem at all (neither did I when I changed some of mine, which was really folded and wrinkled.)

Moral of the story: getting money around here is rough....

Phrase of the day: 银行在什么地方？ （yinghan zai shenme difang）
.... Where's the bank?

Whitney


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