January 9, 2007



While Jeff stayed at the hotel waiting for the "all clear" from Raymond that our paperwork at the consulate was OK, I went over to the Bank of China to cash some traveler's checks. Well, I thought I was going to. After standing in a long line, I was informed that the earthquake over 10 days ago in Taiwan had affected the phone lines for approving anything like traveler's checks and that they would not accept them.

We brought a large amount of money in traveler's checks hoping that we would receive a higher rate when we changed them to yuan, because that is what happened on our last trip to China. Boy was it a mistake...I'll never bring them again. Hotels refuse to cash them, the airport refused to cash them, and now even the Bank of China refused.

I went back to the room telling Jeff that we were quickly running out of money and didn't know what we were going to do. I guess after being away from home for 10 days I wasn't thinking clearly because Jeff suggested that we attempt to just get money from an ATM. Sure enough, the Bank of China had an ATM marked "for foreign visitors" that was for an American Bank and all of the directions were available on the screen in English.

Thankfully we had money in savings back home to draw from, and took our daily limit of cash from the ATM. We'll just cash in our traveler's checks when we get back home because I don't want to be bothered with them anymore.

After getting more cash, we were able to get some shopping done on the island of a few items I still wanted to purchase. One store that can't go without mention is A Gift from China. They have both an online store and a physical location on Shamian Island. All of their proceeds go to The Good Rock Foundation, which was founded by an adoptive parent. They provide medical care, orphanage projects, training for disabled children, and therapy centers for orphans in China. The wonderful thing about their store is their prices are set and they are not aggressive as many of the other store owners are on the island. No bargaining down from a ridiculously high price, and I found the quality of their items to be better as well. They have beautiful sterling silver charms, one of which I purchased shown here on the blog. I even found one that had the characters for Mother and Son, which is not easy to come by in the Chinese adoption world.

Continued...