My next quarter's rent is due today.
My new landlord has set up a separate bank account for the rent, and given me the pass book - for the ease and convenience of both of us. We don't have to meet up in person (he travels a lot in his work as a professional erhu player); I can just go down to the bank, and pay in the rent money over the counter. Nothing could be simpler - right?
Er, wrong. This is China. Triple-bypass surgery might be simpler.
First off, the banks don't talk to each other. So, I can't go to just any old bank; I have to go to the bank that my landlord set up the account with.
Second, banks are fairly thin on the ground, particularly in my part of town. The nearest bank I can use for paying my rent is nearly a mile away.
Third, well, I'm an idiot laowai who doesn't understand how things work in China.... so, obviously, it's not going to be easy for me. In fact, the first time I tried to pay money into someone else's bank account here, I was just told that it was flat-out impossible. The second time I tried, a year or so later, I was told that I could only do it at the branch where the account was set up (not just the same banking company, but the 'home branch' of my payee - which I didn't know, and couldn't readily ascertain). After that experience - some six years or so ago - I just sort of gave up on the idea.
I am happy to report that in the interim things have got much, much better. Oh yes. Now it is OK to make a payment into someone else's bank account, even as a laowai. And you can use any branch of the account-holder's bank to do so.
You just have to fill out a long and complicated form first. At least it's got bilingual instructions now, another huge advance on a year or two ago. But the print is tiny, virtually illegible. And there are parts of it - like the landlord's name - that you're expected to fill in in Chinese. Oh, come on! I can hardly speak any Chinese; I can't read it or write it for shit; if I do attempt to write it (and I'm attempting to copy the very fuzzy, dot-printed version on the pass book, which even the Chinese bank clerk is squinting uncertainly at), it's going to be a worthless, illegible scrawl (and my new landlord has some very complex characters in his name; my last landlord - or rather his Mrs, whose name was on all the utilties bills and so on - was a Wang; that I can write). Usually when I have to go to the bank for something, it's not too much of a problem to get the staff to fill out any required forms for you; or to dispense with the form-filling rigmarole altogether, since most of this paperwork is clearly inessential and likely to wind up in the bin at the end of the day. On this occasion, there was a very nice floorwalker guy who was doing his best to help me, despite his very limited English; but he was absolutely adamant that I had to fill out this form - including my landlord's name - myself. Oh, how we both laughed at my shoddy penmanship!
But I got it done. Out of the woods? I'd got my numbered ticket and waited in line (for only about 20 minutes or so; luckily this branch was pretty quiet when I looked in yesterday). I'd gone up to the window and handed my form to the clerk. He seemed to think it was OK - although he had to squint at the name in the pass book to verify the name of the intended payee. He took my rent money from me and put it through the counting machine twice.
And then he told me he needed to see my passport.
Now, I'd asked the floorwalker guy if I had all I needed to make the deposit. And I'd asked another supervisor (with rather better English) who came over to check on me. And I'd asked the clerk when I handed my form over. They'd all said - Fine. Just the transaction request form and the pass book and the money.
None of them had mentioned ID. It's so routine here, it simply doesn't register with them as worthy of mention. Well, of course you need to show ID! How could you possibly pay money into someone else's bank account without showing ID?? I wonder if China is the only country in the world to have such requirements? (I'd like to suppose that this is part of the mechanism for cracking down on corruption, but.... I don't think my ID information was transferred into a computer record; and the paper copy, even if it is filed somewhere, won't be easy to access, or to read. And fake IDs are pretty easy to come by; so, anyone who wants to pay off a Party official without leaving an easy trail to follow back to himself won't have too much trouble in doing so.)
My new landlord has set up a separate bank account for the rent, and given me the pass book - for the ease and convenience of both of us. We don't have to meet up in person (he travels a lot in his work as a professional erhu player); I can just go down to the bank, and pay in the rent money over the counter. Nothing could be simpler - right?
Er, wrong. This is China. Triple-bypass surgery might be simpler.
First off, the banks don't talk to each other. So, I can't go to just any old bank; I have to go to the bank that my landlord set up the account with.
Second, banks are fairly thin on the ground, particularly in my part of town. The nearest bank I can use for paying my rent is nearly a mile away.
Third, well, I'm an idiot laowai who doesn't understand how things work in China.... so, obviously, it's not going to be easy for me. In fact, the first time I tried to pay money into someone else's bank account here, I was just told that it was flat-out impossible. The second time I tried, a year or so later, I was told that I could only do it at the branch where the account was set up (not just the same banking company, but the 'home branch' of my payee - which I didn't know, and couldn't readily ascertain). After that experience - some six years or so ago - I just sort of gave up on the idea.
I am happy to report that in the interim things have got much, much better. Oh yes. Now it is OK to make a payment into someone else's bank account, even as a laowai. And you can use any branch of the account-holder's bank to do so.
You just have to fill out a long and complicated form first. At least it's got bilingual instructions now, another huge advance on a year or two ago. But the print is tiny, virtually illegible. And there are parts of it - like the landlord's name - that you're expected to fill in in Chinese. Oh, come on! I can hardly speak any Chinese; I can't read it or write it for shit; if I do attempt to write it (and I'm attempting to copy the very fuzzy, dot-printed version on the pass book, which even the Chinese bank clerk is squinting uncertainly at), it's going to be a worthless, illegible scrawl (and my new landlord has some very complex characters in his name; my last landlord - or rather his Mrs, whose name was on all the utilties bills and so on - was a Wang; that I can write). Usually when I have to go to the bank for something, it's not too much of a problem to get the staff to fill out any required forms for you; or to dispense with the form-filling rigmarole altogether, since most of this paperwork is clearly inessential and likely to wind up in the bin at the end of the day. On this occasion, there was a very nice floorwalker guy who was doing his best to help me, despite his very limited English; but he was absolutely adamant that I had to fill out this form - including my landlord's name - myself. Oh, how we both laughed at my shoddy penmanship!
But I got it done. Out of the woods? I'd got my numbered ticket and waited in line (for only about 20 minutes or so; luckily this branch was pretty quiet when I looked in yesterday). I'd gone up to the window and handed my form to the clerk. He seemed to think it was OK - although he had to squint at the name in the pass book to verify the name of the intended payee. He took my rent money from me and put it through the counting machine twice.
And then he told me he needed to see my passport.
Now, I'd asked the floorwalker guy if I had all I needed to make the deposit. And I'd asked another supervisor (with rather better English) who came over to check on me. And I'd asked the clerk when I handed my form over. They'd all said - Fine. Just the transaction request form and the pass book and the money.
None of them had mentioned ID. It's so routine here, it simply doesn't register with them as worthy of mention. Well, of course you need to show ID! How could you possibly pay money into someone else's bank account without showing ID?? I wonder if China is the only country in the world to have such requirements? (I'd like to suppose that this is part of the mechanism for cracking down on corruption, but.... I don't think my ID information was transferred into a computer record; and the paper copy, even if it is filed somewhere, won't be easy to access, or to read. And fake IDs are pretty easy to come by; so, anyone who wants to pay off a Party official without leaving an easy trail to follow back to himself won't have too much trouble in doing so.)
Well, I blamed myself. It's the kind of problem that - after all these years here - I really should have foreseen. I was doing my best to be calm and unflappable and good-natured about it (although I was just a mite pissed off that the clerk hadn't told me this until after he'd taken the money from me and laboriously counted it). But when they told me I had to go to another window (get another ticket, go to the back of the line again) to pay my phone bill..... well, I'm afraid I did flip out a little.
Luckily, my letting agent lives very nearby, and has a moped (and a car) - so I made an apologetic call to her, to ask if she happened to be free and could help out. She was happy to come to my rescue, and was there within five minutes to pay the money in on my behalf, flashing her Chinese ID card (although they made her fill out the form again, and gave her a lot more hassle about it than they had me; the Chinese service industry doesn't yet seem to have developed a culture of trying to make things easy for people, especially not their fellow citizens).
While waiting for her to show up, I explained to the floorwalker chap that this was what I was going to do. "Oh," he said. "I could do that for you."
It hadn't occurred to him earlier! Well, it hadn't occurred to me earlier, either. I figured if he wasn't allowed to help me fill out the form, it sure as hell wouldn't be appropriate for him to pay in the money for me. I imagined there were probably bank rules against that kind of thing, and I didn't want him to risk getting into trouble on my account. Although, if my letting agent hadn't shown up..... I would have been mighty tempted to take him up on the offer.
Ah, China! It just never seems to get any less crazy.
3 comments:
"My new landlord has set up a separate bank account for the rent...(he travels a lot in his work as a professional erhu player)"
Perhaps he could play for once a fortnight and you could call it square.
For what it's worth, I pay money into the Minsheng Bank every month and I've never had them ask for any ID, even though the name on the account clearly isn't mine. And they print out a form that already has the account details filled in when I give them the book. All I have to do is sign it.
So it's probably your landlord's bank in particular that sucks, rather than Chinese banks in general.
Thanks, Kevin, good to know - although damn all consolation to me!
I am having to endure ICBC, which is, I think notoriously one of the least user-friendly of all the major Chinese banks.
Although the Bank of China (to which I imprudently transferred my main account from ICBC last year) may be running it a close second. A friend of mine recently tried to apply for a credit card there, and was immediately told by the (surprisingly honest, surprisingly helpful clerk) that, as a laowai, he had no chance of getting approval and would do better to try his luck with China Merchants Bank.
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