I’m guessing when Oscar Wilde wrote his play that he had not experienced purchasing electronics in China. After owning my China Mobile phone for only a few days it stopped working. Since the phones instructions were in Mandarin, I went to the front desk to see if they could figure out why my phone suddenly stopped working. They said that I ran out of credit and recommended that I purchase more. For a service charge, the front desk “kindly” offered to purchase the credit for me and at the time this sounded good. But 230 yuans of credit later my phone still did not work.
After class today, I asked our Peking University student advisor what she thought was wrong with the phone. Instantly she was able to tell that I purchased an expired sim card. Therefore, regardless of how much credit I added without a new sim card my phone would not work.
So, what did I learn about doing business in China? While you may not want to leave home without your American Express in the states, in China, unless you speak Mandarin, you don’t want to leave home without Eric Chen (photo, right)!
-Jen Solomon
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