The Chinese bank that was supposed to open the minimum registered capital account for my WFOE opening a RMB account, freezing the capital until I got a dollar account opened, requesting a non-existent form from the originating bank so that the already accepted wire transfer could go into the correct account, followed by suggesting that I should somehow find a time during Chinese banking hours that were also East Coast banking hours (i.e. never) and spend my money to call the bank branch in the US and my time (as a translator) to translate because they were certain that my bank branch in the US was wrong about that form being non-existent, I finally suggested that maybe they should call my US bank’s China office. After all, my US bank is one of their major investors.

US bank’s China office confirms that the form is non-existent and talks them through the problem of sending my money bank to the US to start the transfer all over again (something they had attempted to do but had been unable to because it was already 6 weeks since they’d accepted the money and US bank refused to take the money back).

Meanwhile…

The Western Union transfer I got to pay for a airline ticket for a business trip took the better part of an hour in form filling and arguing that “about $620″ is the same as “$617.09″ and strangely enough when I’m being sent Thai Baht for the purposes of spending Chinese Yuan I might not know the exact number and if seven of the other eight ways of confirming that this really is my money transfer are my money transfer than the word “about” is critical to this conversation you MORON.

They’ve refused to accept a cash deposit (of dollars) into my dollar account because it hasn’t been authorized for cash deposits yet and I have to make the deposit into my personal account and transfer it over.

When I went to deposit the dollars to my personal account it was discovered to be old enough that it wasn’t a multi-currency account and all you need is your passbook to change that … but I haven’t seen my passbook since 2004 and the final solution was to open a new account (for 15rmb) because issuing a new passbook would take 9 days and cost 20rmb and it’s never a comfortable feeling carrying $6000 cash around in your bag.

AND My personal account can’t accept one of the hundred dollar bills (confirmed genuine by their machine) because it has a pen mark on it.

Hope it all works out one day with them.

Good Luck.

Good luck!!

1) Send me his card and bank book and tell me his password.
2) Go to Bank of China, withdraw the money using his book and password.
3) Meanwhile, he set up a new account wherever he was at the Agricultural Bank of China.
4) I took the money I withdrew and brought it to an Agricultural Bank in Xinjiang and transferred the money to his new account.

Voila! Everything is so easy in China.