What you bring back

Well, we're back.

I brought home scarves, pearls, key chain bottle openers, ideas for articles, memories of good times with friends, several nasty computer viruses and various species of spyware. I've been running multiple scans, and while my netbook was unaffected, there were over 4,000 corrupted files on my portable hard drive, and over 6,000 on my flash draft. I'd been connecting these to a university computer on which I had Internet access, and it was apparently infected.

All my data was very well backed before I left the US; otherwise I'd have lost years of work. Dennis Cope is helping me salvage my pictures. Maddeningly, I may have erased some pictures myself as I was reconstracting my data. Moral: Back your data! Work slowly! Quit when you're tired.

Money Changers

To change our yuan back to dollars, we had to visit the Bank of China. Taxi drivers refused to take us because we weren't specifying which branch. Joe remembered that the bank we had gone to was across the street from a duck restaurant we'd visited, and they'd given us their card(above). The man saves everything! Sometimes, this is a very useful trait. We showed the card to a driver and were delivered to the bank right away.

It was not difficult to exchange our Chinese yuan for dollars. Rates are uniform, and the fees are low-- much lower than in the US. We did not have as good an experience redeeming the unused portion of the Visa Travel Debit Card we had purchased through the automobile club. Such cards offer ATM access in the currency of any country to which one travels using the going exchange rate. We've used these cards every time we've gone to China, and there's been no problem cashing in the balance until now. This time, we'd found that the rules had changed, and all kinds of fees and penalties were imposed for withdrawal.

Our credit union helped us through the process. The bank officer informed us that any bank or credit union can set up an international debit card, thus avoiding VISA's unreasonable surcharges. Contact me if you want more information.

Below: The Duck Restaurant and The Bank