Now that I am living here, I have had to deal with a few formalities. I had to open bank accounts. Many people have heard me recount the story of opening my first bank account in Singapore, an experience that involved letters of employment, letters of reference, and which can only be diagrammed on a Mobius strip. By contrast, I opened an account at the Bank of China in ten minutes with an initial deposit of 1RMB (12 US cents). Of course, the Bank of China is insolvent, but I try not to let that trouble me.

 

Of course, nothing is entirely simple. The ease of opening an account is more than compensated for by the fact that China’s domestic banking system doesn’t seem all that far removed from the town of Bedrock’s. Passbooks are all the rage (I had my last passbook account when I was fifteen); there is a vast amount of paperwork and identification required to execute any transaction involving foreigners or foreign currency; I have to keep separate accounts at separate banks for my paycheck and claims; and I have to navigate a linguistically challenging currency conversion process any time I want to turn some of my USD salary into locally useful renminbi.

 

But the bank is useful in China, the land of pre-payment. Credit is a novelty in China (unless, apparently, you’re a property developer, in which case it flows from the bathroom taps). “Credit” in this case doesn’t just mean credit cards and car loans, it also means things you probably don’t normally consider, like your utility bill, in which the power company bills you for power you have already used.

 

Not here, buddy. Not only is my mobile phone prepaid, but so is my electricity and piped cooking gas. Every now and then I have to check my electric meter. If it’s getting too low I have to take a smart card to the bank, buy some kilowatt hours, and then use the smart card to transfer them to my meter in order to guarantee uninterrupted access to the pleasures of civilization. At least power is cheap. I reckon I am spending about a third of what I did in Singapore. Surprising considering that China is a full-blown energy crisis.

 

My apartment complex is new, and when I first moved into the apartment it didn’t even have an electricity meter. I had two weeks of totally free juice. I should have taken up arc welding.

 

Cooking gas works similarly. There is a meter under my sink that reels off the cubic meters (actually, a cubic meter lasts a long time). When it gets too low, I’m off to the condo’s management office to put a few more cubic meters on the smart card.

 

But most interesting has been the sheer amount of documentation attached to me. As a foreign resident in Singapore, I had a one page stamp in my passport good for six years and an identity card that fit in my wallet. I was good to live, work and travel in and out of the country.

 

In two visits to China I now have three pages of Chinese visas, including my new multiple entry visa. But I also have a residence permit, which is a booklet about three-quarters the size of my passport, and an alien employment permit that is as big as my passport. I am solemnly advised by the instructions in the backs of all these documents to carry them at all times “in case of inspection”. Not likely.

 

The entire collection, all photographs, handwritten notes and giant red stamps, evokes images of guys in leather trench coats with darting eyes. I am quite sure that, sooner or later, someone, perhaps a bank teller, will demand of me, “your papers, please!” He’ll spend a few moments flipping through the pages and squinting at me over the tops of the documents. Then he’ll snap the booklet closed and bark, “Your papers are not in order!”

 

At that point I’ll have no choice but to bribe him with my pre-paid electricity card.