Banking in Shijiazhuang, China

I arrive in Shijiazhuang and Sam is right there waiting for me with a bottle of water. That is nice and thoughtful. Sam tells me one of his former students works at this bank and he should be able to help us. We exit the railway station and attempt to catch a taxicab but the traffic is so heavy that we cannot manage to get an open cab.  Sam says that's okay we can walk there it's only about a 15 minute walk. We arrive at the bank and Sam's student is there but he is busy with another customer so we had to wait a little. He finishes with the other customer and we can begin my bank transfer. Sam's student speaks English fairly well so this is going to be easy. I take out my passport and my bank information. ALERT About every bank transaction in China you will need your passport. I also hand him all the other information he needs my bank's swift code, account number, routing number and bank's main office address.

As a foreigner the largest amount you can transfer in a single day is 500.00 U.S. dollars. Chinese citizens other the hand can transfer 1000.00 U.S. dollars that is why it is important to have a Chinese friend assist you but they are also important for translation purposes. That day I only I was only transferring 500 so I did not need Sam's assistance with that. That process works like this. You deposit the amount of money you want to transfer into their account then change it to U.S. dollars. After this the bank clerk will transfer that amount from your friend's bank account to your bank account in America.  There is also a transaction fee for all of this of course and Bank of China charges 200 RMB for this which is about 32 dollars. Not too bad the money gets there over night. When we finished which was quite fast since Sam's student was such a great clerk we had time for Dairy Queen!!! Yes there is a Dairy Queen Shijiazhuang. I had a hot fudge sundae Sam had a large chocolate dipped cone and it was great! Sam showed me the city a little bit and then I headed back to Handan. Here are some nice photos. By the way dong means east in Chinese. I just had to have the picture of one of my cutest students of all in my blog today and the photo of my front door in Handan. If you would like to be a link on my blog or if you would like information on teaching jobs in China contact me at tanukichamptranslation@gmail.com