Living in China is like taking a flight on an airplane held together by invisible duct-tape. The flight may get to its destination and the airplane itself might look snappy from afar, but you’re definitely going to encounter a few unexpected surprises and patchwork along the way. One has to expect the unexpected, go with the flow, and be prepared for possible disaster at any moment. In a country that is developing at rocket-flight speed with the world’s largest population, you’re bound to encounter surprises during your stay. Some of the surprises are preventable, some are unavoidable, and others are just creepy. The best thing to do: turn possible disasters into positive situations and prepare for them early. Everyone has their own Chinese horror story. For those just boarding the duct-tape 757 bound for China, here are some things you might want to watch out for during your stay.

1) Hey! I Lost my Foreign ATM Card!
The problem itself is simple enough, and everyone’s done it. ATM cards are such little things; they’re almost made to be lost. It happened to me, or I should say, I made this careless mistake a couple of years ago when I was living in the Wudaokou area of Beijing’s Haidian District. I have a vague recollection of going to a dimly lit ATM after reaching into my pocket and realizing that I didn’t have enough money to purchase any alcoholic beverages for myself. I made the withdrawal, pocketed the play money, and went back to the bar to poison my liver. In the morning, I was surprised to find no Bank of America card anywhere.

After contacting my bank, canceling my old card, and having them send me a new card, I awaited its arrival. In order for security purposes, my bank sent the card and the card’s password in two separate envelopes. The envelope with the password arrived promptly within two weeks. The card never arrived. I waited an extra week, notified my bank, and then cancelled the new card. The process then repeated itself again. For the second time, I received the envelope with the password, but never the card itself. It seemed fishy to me that my bank card could have been “misplaced” twice in the mail. I envisioned someone along the way in the Philippines trying to crack my Bank of America code—impossible since I had not even activated the card itself.

The third time around I tried to be crafty. I had my bank send the card to my parents’ address. My parents then sent me a package with magazines and newspaper clippings.  They placed the card itself inside one of the magazines. Unbelievably, the package from my parents containing the card also never arrived. These Filipino postal workers were craftier than my parents! In the end, I ran out of cash, had to get my parents to send me money via Western Union, and had to personally return to the US and apply for a new Bank of America card.

The short on this one: if you do lose a foreign bank card, it might be more trouble than you think. Be prepared to travel in order to get a new one. Another suggestion is that you have the card mailed to a friend/relative who will be traveling to China in the near future. Finally, you could pay the extra money for your bank to mail you the card via FedEx, UPS, or a secure mailing system that you trust.

2) Your Home Just Got Burglarized
A good friend of mine recently relocated to the Beijing dream house—the hutong courtyard. In the daytime he’d be greeted by the alley cats lounging on the rooftops, the elderly woman bopping her head with the back of her hand in order to get the blood flowing through her meridians, and the empty beer bottle collector clanking through the street with his electronic 3-wheeled bicycle. It was the good life. Then one evening, he was greeted by a broken front door, a picked lock, two missing computers (his and his wife’s), and an empty cabinet where three months’ worth of cash had been stashed away.

The first thing to do in this situation is obvious: call the cops. “110” is the number you want to dial. It’s in times like these where a little bit of conversational Chinese comes in handy so you can tell them your address and what exactly happened. Detectives should arrive at your residence within an hour, possibly 30 minutes. Luckily for us, cops don’t like to fool around when a foreigner’s house has been burglarized. You’ll have to go to the police station to answer questions after the police/detectives arrive at your house. They’ll survey the scene looking for fingerprints and footprints. When you go to the police station, it’s best to take a bilingual Chinese friend.

You’re tired, stressed out, and you’ve just been robbed. When the police are asking you a barrage of questions it’s easy to phase out, glaze over, and just say, “dui, dui, dui.” But remember, these questions are important! Odds are, it’s the first time you’ve been in this situation, and you don’t want to miss any details. It’s not like a Chinese business meeting and you just have to be a foreign face; you actually have to understand everything that’s going on. Finally, here are four things to take care of within 24 hours of a burglary:

1. Tell your neighbors what happened. Maybe they saw something.
2. Call your embassy. They will inform you of any fraud agencies. Your computers are gone, which means that any personal information may have been compromised.
3. Change your locks
4. You might want to think about purchasing a recording device near your gate, just for future would-be burglars

3) You’re in Inner Mongolia Surrounded by Aggressive Black Taxi Drivers
The door to the bus opens. What was supposed to be a 7 hour bus ride turns out to be a 14 hour bus ride due to deteriorating road conditions. You sit on the bus and let the other Chinese passengers exit first. Despite the late hour, the parking lot outside the bus is filled with black taxi drivers. They swarm around each exiting passenger like vultures around a carcass. As one passenger enters into the throng, you almost lose site of him in the darkness and mass of drivers’ keys. You don’t know this town. You don’t know these people. The dialect sounds like kitchen utensils clattering on the floor. The ticket-taker on the bus turns around towards you.

“Don’t get off now. Wait a couple of minutes. I’ll get someone for you. These guys will eat you alive.”

It would be easy enough to do as this guy says. The only thing is that you also think HE wants to eat you alive. Remember, he works for a bus company, and you are a foreigner. He knows that you know nothing about the surroundings. Underneath his skin may also be the beak of a vulture.

In this situation it’s best to go with your gut instinct and make strong choices.  There’s no need to rush. You are the one in control of this situation. Get off the bus, and enjoy the attention, because the vultures are going to give it to you whether you want it or not. Act like you know EXACTLY where you are going. Trust no one but yourself in this situation (unless you’ve made friends with a local who was on the bus). Tell the drivers that you have already called a hotel or if you cannot speak any Chinese look around you, locate a hotel next to the bus station and go to the front desk. The main thing you want to do is get out of the crowd, and get to a place where you can think without being pecked to death in a throng of keys and steering wheel hands. Remember you have the power, and use it.

4) You Find a Corpse (or at least part of a dead body)
The probability of encountering a dead body is, while not great, definitely greater than in any other country. When I was teaching in Southern China, I personally encountered this problem. It occurred when two of my students met me in front of my teaching building and told me that they had found part of a human body in the grass near one of the student cafeterias. I, of course, believed that they were playing some practical joke on me. I wanted proof. They showed me a poorly photographed picture on their mobile phones. In the center of the picture was a brown face that looked like a mask. I needed more proof. They took me to the cafeteria.

When we arrived at the cafeteria, they pointed in the direction of the object they had found but dared not continue to walk through the grass due to their fear of the object.  I approached the area that they gestured towards and found, to my horror, a human face staring up at me in the grass. The face was the size of an infant’s face. On the upper lip there were remnants of a poorly grown mustache. It seemed too small for an actual adult. I weighed my next course of action. 

First step: Discern if the body (or part of the body) is real or not. We live in a land of fakes. If someone can produce fake milk and yoghurt, surely manufacturing a fake face is not too difficult. I approached the face even closer and leaned down towards it so that my face was only centimeters from “his” face. Luckily in my past, I had joined a human dissection course and could smell the faint odor of formalin. Using my logic, I discerned that this face had somehow escaped from the biology labs at the school. I had seen where they kept the cadavers and knew that the building itself was not nearly as secure as it would be in a Western country. Dogs ran in and out freely and often.

Next step: Decide whether or not to inform the police or authorities. After noticing the smell of formalin on the face, I came to the logical conclusion that the reason for the face being in the grass probably had nothing to do with foul play. I didn’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill, so instead decided against informing the police or even the school authorities. Instead, I communicated the information to the Biology and Anatomy department and returned the face to them later on that day.

Get Ready for the Landing
Be it a monetary issue, getting swallowed by a hungry crowd of business-thirsty vultures, or encountering the face of death, the most important thing to prepare for while living in China is the unexpected. Buckle up, and take precautions. At the same time, you may have to balance when it’s appropriate to play it safe and when it’s best to take a risk. When the wing of the plane is falling off, sometimes you have to get yourself out there and tape it together by yourself.
 

Related links
Adventures in China: Strange Expat Jobs
Turning Chinese: 8 Signs You're an Expat Veteran
6 Things Foreigners Often Get Wrong about Chinese People

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: dealing with worst case scenarios China lost ATM card China burglarised in China advice in China