Here’s an illustrative anecdote of one on-the-ground service that can vary widely between China and Latin America: Moneygram.
Earlier this year when I was in Peru, I began using Moneygram, an international money transfer service similar to Western Union, to have money sent from the US in order to avoid exorbitant ATM charges. The service generally works well, but your results may vary.
This is how Moneygram worked in Lima, Peru. I would walk one block from my house, turn right at the corner and walk into a small shop that specialized in international wire transfers. I told the clerk an eight-digit number and handed over my passport. The clerk filled out a single Moneygram form, made a copy of my passport and asked if I wanted my cash in US dollars, Nuevo Soles or a combination of the two. The process took literally ten minutes.
This is how Moneygram works in Beijing, China. Before setting out this morning, I checked Moneygram’s website for locations. Ostensibly, there are 331 agents around Beijing that one can receive a transfer, according to the company’s website. Bank of China branches make up most of the list. So far so good. Armed with my transfer number and passport I set out on my bike looking for the nearest BOC branch on the list.
Four hours and five banks later, I had the RMB in my pocket. The first BOC bank referred me to their head Beijing City branch, saying that was the only place I could accept a transfer. Fine. I peddled to Chaoyangmen and waited an hour in that bank’s immense lobby waiting for my number to be called and studying the display of commemorative coins celebrating the upcoming 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
When I made it to counter, the teller had no idea what a Moneygram was. Luckily he called for help and, after some serious digging through drawers, came up with the requisite paperwork. He slid the paper to me and told me to fill it out. When I handed it back, he took the sheet and my passport and disappeared for 20 minutes.
“This is no good,” he told me when he returned, “the names are wrong.”
“Oh, here,” I tried to explain, “she must have written ‘Tom’ for ‘Thomas’” I wrote down T-O-M Pellman in my notebook and showed him.
“No, that’s not right. You need to telephone the sender to confirm the names.”
“How about ‘Thomas Pellman’ instead of ‘Thomas Eugene Pellman’? Sometimes in the US we don’t write our middle names.”
“That is right,” he said hesitantly but then walked off and talked on a phone for ten minutes. “Sorry, Moneygram will only let us transfer money if the name the sender writes matches the name you write. You need to tell the sender to add this word,” he pointed to my middle name, “and then we can finish it.”
“This is stupid. I don’t have time to call her; I’ve already wasted an hour here. Do you think I’m tricking you into getting this money because I wrote down my middle name and the sender didn’t?”
“Sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”
And so, back on the bike. The next bank had, miraculously, heard of Moneygram, but the computer system was down. I stopped next at an Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which referred me to another branch down the road. I bit more peddling and I found myself at another ICBC further down the road, waiting, again, for the better part of an hour. This time, I carefully filled out the form leaving out my middle name on the sheet and luckily the teller didn’t raise the issue. I signed my name at least five times to various papers. The teller stamped a red oval at least a dozen times. Suddenly he looked up.
“Wait, what’s your zip code in Beijing?”
“I’m not sure; it’s in Nanluoguxiang.”
He grimaced, turned and shouted to his manager down the row. He turned back and wrote “10000″ in the zip code box.
Finally, I had my cash.
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I know grinding bureaucracy in China is nothing new, so I hope this doesn’t come across as whiny. Truth be told, this banking episode is about on par with every other time I’ve stepped into a bank in China.
There are some fairly obvious reasons for why using international money services like Moneygram are so different between places like China and Peru. The RMB not being a fully convertible currency makes every international money move in and out of the country a major headache. Even having to step foot in a bank (versus going to a specialty shop like I dealt with in Lima) adds time and hassle. Also, I’m sure that the money remittance infrastructure around Latin America is much more sophisticated due to emigrants needing easy ways to send their pay from abroad back home.
Deeper though, there is something deeply defeating about how every time you step into a bank in China, you expect something (invariably for ridiculous reasons) to go wrong. Makes you yearn for that South American efficiency!
I was reading about the weird and intriguing (and for purposes of this blog, not so relevant) theory of geological hot spots in Al Gore’s great climate change primer Our Choice, and it got me thinking. The (still unproven) idea is that areas of the earth’s surface that are unusually hot, such as Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park in the US, can be explained by large asteroid strikes in the ocean at the corresponding place exactly on the opposite side of the world. This point, 180 degrees away, is called an antipode.
Hugo Chavez is a blogger’s world leader. 