Money Transfers

"Okay, wait!" These are quite possibly the two most spoken English words in China. (In my experience anyways!) In so many ways life in China is so much more convenient and normal than my life in the United States was, but then there are the many ways in which it is unnecessarily complicated and time-consuming, or just plain impossible.

My impossibility of the week was transferring money back to North America. I have student loans I'm paying off and a couple of other things I decided to maintain while abroad, and so when my last paycheck was deposited to my bank account here in China earlier this month I decided I'd better transfer some of it back to my North American account. I went online, checked the Western Union website, and found that I could send money directly to my account and that there were 5 or 6 locations near where I work. Great, right?

...except that none of the locations on Western Union's website had Western Union. (Trust me, I spent nearly 3 hours traipsing about from one to the other and then to a few possible locations suggested to me by helpful bank tellers and none of them had Western Union.) Then I serendipitously stumbled across a bank with Western Union and started filling out the forms necessary to get the transfer to my account setup...and was told that of course I can't send money to my bank account abroad, only Chinese citizens can do that! Because, you know, expatriates living in China should have no need whatsoever to send money to a bank account abroad, right? Right! So why on earth should they be allowed to do such a ridiculous thing?

I'm not going to lie, I could have both cried and chewed the poor bank teller out at that point. She was only doing her job of course, but I wasn't feeling terribly rational after wasting so much time on a wild goose chase. (Thank goodness I did neither!) As it turns out I can't send my money to my bank account, but I can send it to someone else. (Go figure.) So, after two days of working on getting money sent home I've finally gotten it sorted, but instead of quickly and conveniently sending my money to my bank account in North America I've had to inconvenience a dear friend, who will be getting the money and then running it over to my bank. (Thank goodness I don't have one of those bizarre banks that doesn't let non-account holders deposit money!)

Since all of this went down I've chatted with different people here and been told that a Chinese citizen can often transfer money directly from their bank account in China to a bank account abroad, whereas foreigners have to deal with the situation above. So if you're considering a move to China I would suggest, firstly, talking to your potential employer here to see if there's any way they can deposit part or all of your paycheck in your bank account abroad. (I certainly wish my employer would!) You might have to deal with ATM withdrawal fees that way, but I've found those to generally be under $1 here (depending on the bank), whereas I had to pay $15 to use Western Union. If that's not an option I would recommend making friends here fast and going with a Chinese friend to their bank to transfer your money to your bank. (This obviously requires a lot of trust.) And lastly, if neither of the above is possible I would suggest trying to work something out with family or friends near your bank back home to be your Western Union/bank go between. (A pain to be sure, but less of one when it's set up and planned out ahead of time I'm sure!)

And be prepared, as always, to be told, "Okay, wait!" No matter how quick or routine you think something ought to be, there's always the chance that it'll take a couple of hours (or days!) here in China!