First thing after class on Monday, we needed to get down to the Agricultural Bank of China. According to the university, all (foreign) instructors were required to open bank accounts at this financial institution. It made sense after the school told us that it's rare for anyone in China to cut checks. So to receive our monthly pay we would have to go the direct deposit route. Lucky for us the bank is located just about 3/4 of a mile outside the North Gate of BISU.Upon arriving at the bank we noticed that for 2:30pm it was incredibly busy. So busy in fact that as we entered we were advised to grab a ticket with our call number for meeting with a teller. As we looked at our number--1590, we searched for a some sort of visual number counter hoping that our number would be called soon. Yeah right! According to a large screen on the wall they were on number 1480! We were over a hundred number away. Then we realized why every single seat in the bank was occupied. And we are talking 50+ seats!
To our relief a gentleman appearing to work in customer service for the bank noticed how lost we were. He came our way and helped us fill out all the required paperwork. Then he motioned for us to follow him. As we passed a partition that read "VIP Area," it sunk in that this guy was going to help us expedite the process for opening accounts! Within twenty minutes we were walking out the door with accounts lined up and debit cards to boot. Phew, that bank rep. really saved our bacon!
Residence Permits and Buddhist Monks?
Another task for us to take care of was turning in our residence permit applications to the government. China allows most individuals into the country for only thirty days before requiring them to either apply for an extension or residency. If you are attempting to tackle this task on your own without what is referred to as a "sponsor," you're in for a battle. Luckily for use BISU is our "sponsor" and prepared for us all the pertinent material. It was merely up to us to take it down to the Public Security Bureau Building of Beijing. As we have said before, the subway system makes traveling around Beijing a breeze and this trip was no exception. It took us a couple of rail transfers but all in all it was a thirty minute trip. We were advised to arrive at the bureau as early as possible to avoid the mad rush of college students that typically back up the lines for application. Sometimes the wait can be several hours if you don't time it just right. We must have arrived at the most ideal time because within 20 minutes after walking in the front doors, we were done. And with lots of time to kill since it was just after 1:00pm.
Interestingly enough, one block over from the bureau building sits the most important Buddhist Temple outside of Tibet--Lama Temple or Yonghegong. We had read up on this in our guide books so it was already on our list of places to visit. It just happened to be an opportune time for us to go check it out. The cost was 25RMB (about $3.50) to enter the temple grounds. This was definitely a modest price especially when our guide books told us to expect over an hour of the visit.
The temple itself dates back to 1694 when it was built for the fourth son of Emperor Kangxi. After his succession, work began on transforming this palace into a monastery around 1735. Since 1774 the temple has been used as lamasery for Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhist monks.
It was amazing to see the attention to detail in this attraction. Statutes of dragons, carved lions, incense burners, murals and unique tapestries fill each one of the five main prayer halls. But the highlight of our tour had to have been visiting the Wanfu Pavillion which houses a 55 foot statue of Maitreya (Future Buddha). This magnificent piece of artwork is actually made it into the Guinness Book of World Records in 1990 for being considered the largest Buddha ever carved from a single block of wood! Unfortunately, monks strictly enforce a no photo policy and we were unable to get a snapshot of it. Oh well, guess that means you just have to come and see it for yourself!
*We will work on getting photo albums posted online very soon!
