Stone

I never carried my passport in my back pocket and very little cash either. Now hard to mingle in with the locals at my size!! So when you go to China and you have to stay in a hotel, do you insist on renting a room with a safe deposit box? I think very few people would leave their cash and passports to their hotel rooms.

This is one of the lessons that I learned from this incident. After telling my wife about what happened, my wife said I had so many easy "marks" to identify myself as a "non-local"/"visitor". I just never imagined this would have happened in downtown Beijing.

I agree that a small city in China is relatively safer. But you would put yourself further away from the protection of U.S. consulates/embassy which are generally located in large cities. It is definitely a good idea to register yourself with the U.S. consulates/embassy once you move to China and regularly contact your relatives in the States to keep them informed about your whereabouts, in case you disappeared in "mystery". You know in the eyes of ordinary Chinese citizens, Americans are "rich".

I recently came back from a short trip to Beijing. But I had a very unpleasant encounter there that I would like to share others who might visit there in the future. I am a Chinese American, so I speak both English and Chinese well. This happened in a large bookstore in downtown Beijing. When I was in the bookstore, a tall guy bumped into me, and dropped a disc onto the floor. When I walked outside the bookstore, the guy grabbed my shirt and demanded that we go to the police station nearby. During the ensuing brief struggle, my shirt was torn several holes and the some clear water was poured from plastic bottles in his plastic bag. We then walked to the police station and reported the incident to the police in charge. The guy claimed that he lost two bottle of ¡°medicine¡± which cost him 3000 Yuans ($400) and asked me for compensation. I know this is a common scheme of money extortion, so I refused to pay. The police told me that the guy, who was from rural Beijing, had some form of mental illness. The police asked us to discuss and ¡°settle¡± the issues by ourselves. I showed to the police my U.S. passport and said that I would call the U.S. embassy if they cannot resolve the issues themselves. After about 4 hours of back and forth negotiations in the police station, I left the station without paying anything. I talked with several of my Chinese friends afterwards and they told me the followings: (1) Try to avoid the tourist heavy spots in Beijing or any other big Chinese cities. There are money extortions and robberies happenings there (snap your bag and run away). If you have to be there, be especially vigilant of your surroundings. (2) In a situation like this, the police are generally ¡°sympathetic¡± to the destitute locals. And If I had paid the guy some 200-300 yuans, the problem may have been resolved more quickly. But I was stubborn at the time. The threat of calling U.S. embassy might also have helped. (I am not sure if anyone here has tried to contact U.S. embassy/consulate in an emergence situation, and what the Embassy/Consulate response would be.) I know a lot of the American members here are interested in retiring in China. I have never though crime would be an issue until something happened to me. But it is a good if you or your family members know some local government officials and be especially aware of crime rates there. The rapid economic growth in China has left some people behind and created huge income disparity. Crime of all sorts is definitely on the rise.

Someone told me that if you use American bank issued ATM cards to withdraw cash in China, you can get better exchange rate than using dollar cash or travellers' check. Is it true or not much of a difference?

Most American universities offer tuition scholorship to the most talented Chinese students. I personally know two young Chinese students who attended universities here in the States with full scholorship. One was origionally from Shanghai and he was the 2nd place winner in Shanghai High School Physics Competition. The other young student graduated from a well know high school in Beijing and scored perfect on his TOEFL exam. They also got their student visas easily.

Just tell them that you two met by "fate" or "yuan fen" in Chinese. If they really want to dig into this, then just say something like "If I tell you the secret (of how we met), it will cause a mass exodus of beautiful Chinese women." Period.

When my wife first arrived here, she multiplied every price by 8, and was very reluctant to spend money on anything. Now more than one year has passed since my wife arrived, and now she literally multiply every price by 1, and think of 100 dollars just like 100 yuans (RMB). Maybe prices have gone up a lot since she came here. Although my pay rate has risen a few times, it just can't keep up with the spendings. Food expenditure is up (including restaurants), so are laundry, transportation, education, health care spendings, etc. A lot of spendings have to do with the kid too. I am not complaining. We both understand that we need to mange our finance more effectively. My wife and I are now feeling the same thing: it is easy to spend and difficult to cut down spendings. How many of you have seen expenses rise significantly since your SO came here?

When I read the following, I found it so funny: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070626/ap_on_..._in_translation Do you have a good Chinese name? One thing that I know: Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, McDonald all have well thought and well crafted Chinese translations: Accord - nice attic, Camry - nice & beautiful, McDonad - wheat deserve work

Yes, I was talking with my wife the other day: many Chinese have difficulties in three area: (1) tenses; (2) articles (direct vs. indirect); (3) singular form vs plural form

And, the reason has to do with the subject. And, as pointed out in a previous post, the time. The subject, in this case is George Washington. The subject is not ...the first President of... that is some kind of other fancy thing whose name I have no clue. The time is in the past. Think of it in this way, I do- George Washington is what? He is long gone. So, everything about ole George is a was. Well, except, George Washington is famous, and he is long gone. Because he still is famous, so you see, it depends. Don't ya have to love English? If your wife had said, George Washington's name is the first name on the list of Presidents, what your wife suggested would be true. He still is first on the list. The rank on the list is current, it is now. Famous is current, it is also now. But having been President is in the past, regardless of where in the past. I can see you are or were an English teacher, so you have made the subject so clear. According to you, the following two sentences would be grammatically correct: (1) The first president of the United States is George Washington. (2) George Washington is famous. A million thanks

In order to obtain a Chinese green card, you need: * married with a Chinese citizen or Chinese Permanent Resident * married over 5 years and have lived in China for at least 5 years (9 months of each year during the five year qualifying period must be in China) * Has stable income and permanent abode (in China) * Passed the Chinese medical exam * No criminal record

It's OK to have some divergent views on the topic. But I am sure every ESL speaker will appreciate everyone's responses when reading those. If I just want to state a matter of fact, is "George Washington is the first President of the United States" grammatically correct or should the "is" be replaced by "was"? Thanks again.

Neither sentence is grammatically sound. Try: I had a blood test done last week. The results, which came back today, show that my blood is normal. Your response just highlighted the pitfalls that we ESL speakers encounter on a daily basis. Thank you both, Carl and Curt.

So do you prefer Choice A "I had blood test done last week. The result came back today, which shows that I am OK and healthy."?

My wife took an ESL class and wrote something like :"George Washington is the first President of United States.", which was later corrected by her ESL teacher as "George Washington was the first President of United States.". My wife's argument is: as a matter of stated fact, George Washington still is the first President of United States, though he was elected many years ago. I told her that since George Washington is no longer alive, that is why we should use the past tense here. Make sense?

I have a question about the English tense. Maybe someone here can point me in the right direction. Look at the following example, which is better English: A. I had blood test done last week. The result came back today, which shows that I am OK and healthy. B. I had blood test done last week. The result came back today, which showed that I was OK and healthy. Is A or B better? My wife thinks B is better, because every verb in the sentence is consistent, i.e. all in past tense. But my argument is that can "it showed me that I was OK" suggest that "the test can no longer show that I am still OK and healthy"? Since they are in past tense, it kind of saying: everything was past and I am no longer healthy and OK? What do you think? Thank you for your elucidation.

If you have six figure AGI on your most recent tax returns, the chance of your SO passing the interview is very very high, from my past observations. You need to show to the Visa Officer the tax returns.

One alternative is that you can intentionally delay the immigration filing process until you are 100% confident that she is the right one for you. You don't have to rush return those required immigration documents. Some people here have tried to provide the innocent justifications for something they aren't sure about, but may have overlooked the pain it could inflict upon the petitioner once he found out that he is being cheated.

That MIT visiting scholar had 4 or 5 laptop computers. Before he left for China, he had taken away those laptops and other expensive items to his lab at MIT and safely locked them up in his lab.

In my opinion, this is WAY TOO MUCH complicated! If I were you, I would back out and cancel the sublease, then find another one with more reasonable terms. Maybe you can try one of the Chinese scholars in your area. In 2004, I subleased a furnished room from an MIT visiting scholar (a Chinese man) for 4 months. In our corresponding emails, we discussed about the length of the sublease and prices including utilities. In the email, he kindly offered me to use all of his furniture. Although we never mentioned about liability of damaging/thefts to his furniture, DVD players, discs, TVs, etc, we both presumed I would be liable for NOTHING, because all of those items were JUNK. Yes, they were all literally worth very little money if nothing. Except for TVs and DVD players which probably had been bought used, all furniture were likely inherited from the prior tenants, donated by friends or even picked up from the street after someone had moved. I did not want ANY liabilities. I believe you set yourself up with too much trouble. This guy is very difficult to deal with.

I know exactly what you are talking about. I came across a couple of them even in the late 80's. Everything was fine on the phone until they saw me in person! How about moving to a blue state? Would that help?

I have exactly the same issues: poor accent coupled with poor writing styles. Many Chinese have trouble with singular vs. plural forms, articles, etc. Language is a life time endeavor, I guess, in that we need to constantly work on it. But we should never get frustrated in the process. There are a lot of native speakers who lack good communications skills too. Some Chinese immigrants can speak or write better than native speakers sometimes. You just have to work on it. As time goes by, I find language becomes less of an issue in one's success as compared with your professional skill levels. The only serious issue is if you encounter an employer/manager who is very stereotypical and discriminatory in nature. But that is becoming uncommon now.

That is true if you live near HK or Macau. Remember (1) multi-entry visa costs a lot more than a single entry visa; (2) If you want to get your China visa the same day, you have to pay additional fees for expedited service. If you live very close to the border, the total costs for the multiple entry one-year visa within the same day plus the cost of transportion ("walking") could be around $500/year. If you live further inland, you will have to fly to HK or Macau and fly back the same day or the next day, and will probably cost you a $1000/year just for the visa. That is not a problem if you are actively working and making money. But if you are retired with limited income, then it is a different story. The headache that I encounted in China was when I was trying to renew my work visa ("Z" visa) and changed from one job to another. Renewing a Z visa should be a lot cheaper than getting another multi-entry one-year L visa through the above route. But I encounted red tape and real headache.

A USC travelling to China needs a China visa. If the USC needs to extend his/her stay in China, there is going to be A LOT OF HEADACHE extending Chinese visa, from my pesonal experience.