Last Night in China

This is it - our last night in China. Tomorrow we sleep in Hong Kong, and then Friday morning we fly to Chicago. And although Dave and I expect to return to China in 9 months or so to pick up Mei Mei, we may never live here again. And Lilly, Sophia and Annika may never come here again.

We have finished well. We had a comfortable home, good friends and a strong school these past 6 months. We gave up the temporary attitudes, and fully lived in Shenzhen for the entire time we were here. It seems strange that it has only been 6 months, because I feel so fully at home here.

We sold or gave away everything we do not need. We packed the air freight and the sea shipment with exactly what I wanted, and we will leave with less than our luggage allotment tomorrow. The house is clean and the bags are packed. We had Chinese food for dinner, and the girls will have their good-bye parties in each of their classrooms tomorrow.

After much worrying, we managed to move all of our Chinese Yuan into dollars, and will be carrying about $8,000 in cash with us tomorrow. Keep that quiet, though.

I've been wanting to blog about the banking system here for quite some time, because it is absurd. We faced so many problems with the banks, and I could never bring myself to write about it. I could never bring the list of absurdities to a complete story, and I could never separate myself enough from the frustration of dealing with the bank to even attempt the story. But today, all went surprisingly well - as it only can in China.

China is a land of rules, and of people who love to enforce them. But people who are also just as eager to break these rules. We went to the bank on Monday to exchange our cash. Our understanding was that each individual can exchange $5,000 US with no questions asked. On this particular Monday, this was not the case. On this particular Monday, each individual can exchange only $500 US with no questions asked. By these rules, we would be leaving a large amount of money behind when we leave tomorrow, so we explored other options. According to the teller, Dave only needed an official copy of his contract to change as much money as he liked. He sent the request in to Uncle H--'s HR, and waited the two days for the document to arrive in the mail.

Today, the envelope arrived at our door, and we went straight to the Bank of China. We opened the contract, and noticed that they had sent a photocopy without the company chop. The chop makes the document valid - without it, these papers are of no use. According to the rules, we could not possibly change our money. But when Dave told them we will leave tomorrow, the chop was of little consequence. We were soon handed a very large pile of bills, and walked out without asking any questions.

This story is less crazy, and more typical China - and lucky for us. Absurdities include things like the number of forms being used for simple transactions - and the fact that a form must be completely redone if any corrections must be made, including crossing a "t" too darkly. They include things like the bank having a bill counting machine, because the largest bill of 100 RMB is equivalent to less than $15. They have a bill counting machine, but no change counting machines, and picked out by hand the change pile we delivered this afternoon. Absurd in that they have no list showing the Chinese and English names of the banks - so when I completed my form (without errors) and entered the official English name of the bank we needed to wire transfer money to, the teller had to call around a group of friends to try to guess which bank I referred to. Absurd in that I was allowed either a passbook or a debit card, but not both. Absurd in that although each teller has a computer, they only seem to use it to verify my identity (at least they do that much), and that most drawers are filled with scrap pieces of paper for making notes. Oh, I could keep going, but who would want me to?

I am happy we are going to D.C., and I am looking forward to living in America for a while. I have become accustomed to China, and so am excited more about the new destination than about leaving this one. But the banks? I am quite happy to leave the Bank of China behind, with all of my cash in my pocket.