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Expat's Eye
Expat's Eye
UPDATED: July 2, 2012 NO. 27 JULY 5, 2012
The Guy
By Thomas Rippe
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(LI SHIGONG)

Getting things done in China can be a nightmare. Setting up a simple bank account can take hours, and requires a stack of documents you've either never heard of or haven't seen in months. It also requires an amazing number of official stamps in red ink. Setting up cell phone service requires another big stack of papers, a passport, and more stamps in red ink. Chinese bureaucracy runs not so much on red tape as it does on red ink.

But there are a lot of other things you can get done here, and you can do them easier, faster and cheaper, if you know the right guy. Knowing a guy is so important that one expat blogger wrote, "You know you're a Beijing expat when you know a guy, or you know a guy who knows a guy."

Many expats have a guy they go to for clothes. Hand-made shirts and suits are cheaper and better than stuff you buy at the store. These guys are all over the place, but it's important to have one you're comfortable with. It took me a while to find a guy who would make pants without a crease—I'm not sure why this was challenging, but it was. I also know a guy who makes furniture. Pick a model in the showroom and pick a color, and a week later the furniture gets delivered to your door. It costs only slightly more than IKEA, but it looks a lot better and lasts a lot longer. There's also a shoe guy down the street where I can get hand-made dress shoes for less than the price at the store. I'm still looking for a guy who makes leather jackets. I know he exists, I just have to find him.

My favorite guy is my electronics guy. He's the one I went to when I needed to get the iPhone 4 I bought in the United States to work in China. When I bought the phone it was still impossible to buy an "unlocked" phone, so it would only work in the United States, not in China. My guy got around the problem by inserting a thin chip next to the SIM card. Problem solved. This guy fixes and sells all things electronic. If he doesn't have it, he wanders around Beijing's massive Buy Now Hui electronics market until he finds someone who does.

Recently I switched to a different phone service provider. But after sorting through the documents and getting all the necessary red ink, the people at the phone company failed entirely to get my phone to work. The chip my guy had given me completely confused them, and their SIM cards were very slightly thicker than my old one, which meant the chip and SIM card wouldn't fit in the phone together. So I went back to the guy. He quickly took a razor blade and shaved the new card down until it fit. Again, problem solved. And this is why he's my favorite guy­—because a guy who can provide quality service and solve problems is a rare and wonderful thing.

The author is an American living in Beijing

Email us at: liuyunyun@bjreview.com



 
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