But shortly after arriving, there was  death in the family that required making major changes in our travel plans. That’s when I discovered that my phone could not make calls to 800 numbers or 888 numbers in the US, though my wife’s phone on the same plan could. Her phone is a cheaper SE iPhone, while I have an iPhone 11. I also discovered that my iPhone could not provide a hotspot for my computer to use, though my wife’s phone could. I tried many steps to tweak my phone, restart it, change settings, etc., but nothing worked (though there was one time when my 800 call worked, just as it always has done for my wife while we were in Mexico). I really needed to call the airlines and other business but could not. Looking for non-toll-free numbers for these companies was not fruitful — though I later found a number that I could have used. But after using my wife’s phone and resolving our emergency, I still wanted to get my phone service working properly. That was a mistake.

I tried reaching Verizon’s customer service for help, and was surprised at just how bad their app is. The chat function uses extremely small fonts and typing information is constantly interrupted by any actions being taken on the other end. Worse of all, I found that the information I had entered about my problem just to initiate a chat was not visible to agents and I had to enter it again, and when anything went wrong with the call — a signal glitch, taking too long to respond, etc. — the chat was interrupted and when I resumed it, I had to start all over again explaining the most basic things like which line I was calling about, what the problem was, etc. It took so many tries and so much time to just begin getting answers, and then they were wrong.

After efforts over two days to get support, I finally reached a Tier 2 tech support representative without the call being booted, and then they simply told me that there is no way to call an 800 number from Mexico. Absolutely impossible. I explained that I had done so with my wife’s phone — and their response was “then just use your wife’s phone.” Brilliant.  But we both needed these features and there will be times when I may be on my own and won’t be able to rely on her phone. The agent refused to believe that it was possible to make 800 calls and that I was wrong to even be attempting to do that. End of story.

I should never have wasted time trying to reach Verizon customer service. Their app is bad, their chat system is bad, and their call-back service was also a problem. Maybe for easy questions their customer service might be helpful, but my question was too hard.

Fortunately, I found others had had the same question (and found some people who complained bitterly about Verizon’s poor service in Mexico). Here is what I think is the answer:

You can call toll-free numbers in the US, as my wife can do, but if there is a problem, change the country code from “+1” to “001” and also change the “800” to “880. ” Thus to call Delta Airlines at +1 800 323-2323, dial 001 880 323-2323. For and 888 number, change the “888” to “881”. For an 977 number, change the “877” to “882” and for and 866 number, change the “866” to “883”. Suddenly my phone is working fine in terms of calling toll-free numbers. I still can’t use the iPhone hotspot, while my wife’s phone does it without any trouble.

Kudos to YucatanLiving.com for the details on how to change toll-free numbers for successful calling from Mexico.

For some huge companies like Verizon, customer service is a necessary and seemingly unwanted expense. If the company isn’t willing to make a decent interface for their app and can’t provide chat access in less than 10 minutes, they probably don’t see customer service as an important feature of their business. They aren’t going to do what it takes to solve your problem or to make your experience with them a positive one. It’s better to assume that they aren’t goping to be helpful and to just focus on finding useful information online about how to solve the problems you encounter, saving tech support as a last resort when corporate intervention is needed.

The post How to Call US Toll-free Numbers from Mexico (and My Verizon Experience) first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

Office 365: Outlook Slowness

My wife’s new HP Spectrum computer with Office 365 was giving her very bad performance in Outlook. It was taking hours sometimes for email to show up, when the same emails were quickly available on her iPhone.

It’s the kind of problem that suggested trouble with the PST file. But the file was not huge (780 Mb) and has only been around for a few months since starting Office 365. How could it have become corrupt? But it seemed like fixing the PST file was the first thing to try, and then perhaps we could do a complete reinstall.

The frustrating thing about Office 365 is the folks at Microsoft don’t seem to have a way to just reinstall Outlook alone. You have to remove and reinstall the whole package, which is traumatic and leaves room for all sorts of loss and mischief (losing autocorrect commands, spelling dictionaries, Macros, custom styles, etc.) unless vigilant and time-consuming steps are taking. It’s sort of like finding out that to repair a broken windshield, you also have to remove the bumper, the radio, the front seats, the wheels, and the radiator. Or like having to strip out the engine in order to inflate a flat tire. No thanks.

Fortunately, repairing the PST file worked well and was easy — not in normal human terms, but in Microsoft terms, meaning it only was five times more painful than in should have been, and that it gave more reasons to doubt Microsoft.

When a PST file is suspected of corruption,  Microsoft’s website indicates that one should simply run the SCANPST.EXE file. This began the fun journey of finding where this is. Since it’s a basic utility file that almost every user of Outlook will want to use someday, Microsoft has taken the appropriate proactive customer service measure of hiding it. That’s right, it’s an invisible system file buried in an obscure location that is not universal for all users, just to keep things complicated. So one must first use Folder Options to make invisible files visible. One can then search for SCANPST.EXE, but this doesn’t seem to work. Multiple searches yield nothing, perhaps to due to the Microsoft Deep Hide parameter being set to “FULL ANNOY” somewhere in Regedit. So I had to manually find it. I struck gold by looking in “\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16,” as recommended for some computers.

Once I found it, I carefully followed directions, which become meaningless as soon as I did step one, “double click on SCANPST.EXE.” It usually takes two or more steps for the instructions to depart from reality, so this was more fun than usual. I double clicked and nothing happened. I tried right clicking and running as administrator, with the same response. I made sure Outlook was closed, checking with Task Manager. Tried a number of approaches, and realized that this software simply did not operate, which is why there are a host of 3rd party applications being sold to help poor Outlook users part with their excess funds to do something that should happen automatically in Outlook: maintain and repair damage to the PST file.

Abandoning SCANPST.exe, I tried a simple strategy based on what I could do short of a complete reinstall of Office. Within Outlook, I first when to File > Account Settings > Data Files. There you can select an email account and repair it. You can also compress it. I did repairs for both accounts (there was a duplicate account that I deleted, which may have contributed to the problems) and then compacted the PST file. Then I exported it to a backup file. Select File > Open & Export > Import/Export and then choose to export the PST file (click the highest level folder choice and choose “select subfolders,” then export). A password is not needed — just click “OK.”

After exporting, I imported the PST again with the instruction to replace duplicate entries with the newly imported data. Here my theory is that any corruption still in the PST file from a damaged email record might be forced into decent form by the export and then, upon importing, might overwrite a bad portion of the PST file with something sensible. After importing, I quit Outlook and opened it again. Kapow! Emails from earlier today that had been waiting without being received suddenly were downloaded, and further tests showed that Outlook was working much faster than it had for many weeks.

Whew, I’m amazed that it worked. Nice to have to yank out the entire engine to inflate a flat tire.

The post When Outlook Slows to a Crawl, Try Repairing, Compacting, and Re-importing Your PST File first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

Free at last! I escaped Liberty Healthshare

When I came back to the US after nearly a decade in China, one of my first steps was trying to get health insurance. After calling multiple health insurance specialists and finding that none of them wanted to talk to me and that the only way, it seemed, to get insurance was to go to the government portal and register there, I decided I had to comply and so tried signing up for insurance under the Obama Care program by going to Health.gov to register.

To my surprise, even though I had maintained a U.S. address (the house we rented out while away) that was used on the tax returns we filed every year while in China and for many years before we left, the Health.gov system could not identify me. My address, social security number, prior addresses, and other information it required were not enough to verify that I am a US citizen able to register for health insurance.

After trying many times to register with the system, I finally called their tech support and spent two more hours on the phone as the technical support agent walked me through various attempts, all of which failed. Finally he said, “Yeah, sometimes this just happens.”

For a law-abiding citizen trying being denied insurance after many attempts, being told that “this just happens” to some people is not very satisfying. I asked what I could do. “Well, I guess I could try calling the developers at Experian.” “Yes, please do.” So he put me on hold as he attempted to call the developers. A few minutes later — those familiar with the health care industry in the US will see the punchline coming — the line went dead. That was the end of my quest for US insurance.

Fortunately, I still had coverage for a while as long as I could be treated in China, but when we moved back for good to the US, I definitely needed some kind of coverage. Having been abandoned, so I felt, by Obama Care, I considered some of the “health share” programs out there. The first one I tried, Medishare, required its subscribers to agree to a specific declaration of religious belief regarding the nature of God that wasn’t really in line with my version of Christianity, so I was excluded. Then I learned about Liberty Healthshare which was referred to me by a friend. They also were a “ministry” and thus required a religious statement, but it was one I was comfortable with. The program sounded like it would provide catastrophic coverage and some other benefits that was in line with my needs, so my wife and I joined. After about 19 months, we were realizing that it didn’t work as promised. My annual health care exam, part of which was covered, took over 8 months to pay when they had promised it would be within 6 months. And then I found that having Liberty Healthshare made medical care cost more, not less. I needed to get an echocardiogram, for example, and after carefully pricing it because I knew it would be paid out of pocket (“self-pay”), I was surprised to be billed for a much higher level than I had been quoted. It was because the health care provider views health share programs as a form of insurance and so bills you are the regular inflated rate, not the self-pay rate, even though Medishare instructs us to tell the provider it will be safe pay and that we don’t have insurance, since they are not an insurance company. But it looks like insurance to the provider when they note our enrollment in some database they use, so we pay high rates. Meanwhile, a real insurance company can negotiate the rate, and Liberty tried to by quoting the Medicare-approved rated for the procedure, but the provider does not recognize Liberty Health as a valid insurer or someone they have a contract with, so we get the high rate for looking like we have insurance and can’t get the negotiated reduced rate because we don’t have actual insurance. A 44% discount evaporated because I had that nearly worthless health share program.

That’s when we realized it was time to try again to get real insurance. My wife was able to find an agent who could help us, and as of January 2022 we began real insurance again. I called Liberty in November to cancel. They sent me an email saying that the only way to cancel is to send an email to cancellations@libertyhealthshare.org. I did this, but did not hear back. So I sent it again. Eventually I would learn that this email address was broken, at least for a while, so my request was never received. Fortunately, Liberty did call me on Dec. 21 to ask if I still wanted to cancel. I was shocked that they had not received my emails, but upon searching saw I had received an error message indicating that the account did not exist! But I was able to cancel over the phone then, and was assured I would not be billed in January.

On Jan. 2, I saw that I had just been billed again by Liberty. I called on Jan. 3, a Monday, and complained. It took a couple of hours bouncing around, but they finally admitted they had made a mistake and that I should receive a refund to my credit card in 3 to 5 days. Initially they said they would issue a check, but I knew what that meant: 8 months or more, so I insisted they make a refund directly. Took some doing, but they agreed.

One week later, still nothing, so I called again on Jan. 10. “Oh, it’s the holiday season. We’ve had delays, but now you’ll get your refund in 3-5 days.”

One week later, still nothing. Called again and was told a manager would call me back that day. Never happened. The next day I called again and learned that they had just submitted my refund request, which had not happened as promised on Jan. 3, or as reiterated on Jan. 10. For over two weeks they had me believing that my refund request has been submitted and my reimbursement was about to show up, when that was all fiction somehow. Now can I expect that the refund actually will happen in a few more days? Not holding my breath.

A big mistake in this was relying on an acquaintance’s recommendation. To be more thorough, I should have checked Liberty’s reputation at TrustPilot.com: dismal! 100% of the reviews are negative. In spite of all the reviews giving just 1 star, TrustPilot mercifully gives them an average og 1.6 stars.

By the way, after explaining the failure of their email for cancellations several times, I was assured that it was probably just a temporary glitch. So a few minutes ago,  sent them a message again at cancellations@libertyhealthshare.org (the address you are told you must use to cancel your service) and quickly got this error message back when the email bounced: “Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 permanent failure for one or more recipients.”

“Permanent failure for one or more recipients” — that’s about the most appropriate automated response I can think of for this company.

The post My Failed Health Share Experience: Liberty Healthshare first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

From an earlier disaster: the remnants of a shattered shower that cut my wife’s foot when it failed as she simply tried to exit the shower.

As I write, I’m looking at three new cuts on my right foot that happened when my elbow gently bumped a glass shelf in the corner of  my walk-in shower. The glass was unsecured and it only took a gentle bump to send it to the floor. When it shattered, fragments of glass went flying, 3 with enough force to cut my foot that was about 30 centimeters from the impact. One gash was about an inch long, while the other two were small puncture wounds. But none were welcome on a busy day like today.

In China, don’t assume that safety glass has been used in places where you would expect it. If there is something like a glass shelf in your shower, remove it if you can because when it breaks, you might be injured.

My wife had a more serious problem in a different apartment. One of the two sliding glass doors of the shower wouldn’t slide at all because the roller bearings supporting it were so old that one of the little rubber rollers it required was missing about half of the rubber. The landlord refused to repair the glass door and said it was still possible to move the other door, though it, too, was becoming rough for similar reasons. But she refused to spend any money to repair it. A few weeks layer, as my wife was trying to exit the shower, the door wouldn’t move normally. She grabbed the metal bar on the shower door and tried to slide the door open, at which point the entire door shattered. It crumbled as if it were made from some kind of safety glass, but there were still hundreds of sharp edges and her foot was badly cut. (As I said, be careful with anything glass in your bathroom or anywhere else. There could be danger a foot. Or both feet.)

When we reported this to the landlord, complete with photos of the shattered glass and her bleeding foot, we did not even get a “sorry!” in response. Her reply was that this was our fault and we would have to buy her a new glass door. We met later and after some firm negotiation, we got that down to just paying for half of the cost of the door. Plus she chewed us out for having thrown away the metal pieces from the shattered door, which added to the cost of the repair. We were out about $150. We could have gone to arbitration and easily wasted much more than $150 worth of wasted time and anxiety, perhaps with a victory, or more likely the kind of ruling that is favored in China: “Why don’t you two just split the difference? You guys pays pay $150.” We wanted to stay on friendly terms with this woman and chose not to fight — it’s often futile, anyway.

Incidentally, we spent a good deal of our own money to fix up the apartment belonging to that particular prior landlord. We paid to have an ugly living room painted in fresh white, bought new furniture, decorated it, etc. She was impressed with how much better it looked. Delighted, in fact. So delighted that she realized that her attractive refreshed apartment could be rented at a higher price than the good deal we had obtained when we moved in, so she announced that she was raising our rent by 30%. Ouch. We refused and moved out. Glad to go, though we loved the place and the complex it was in.

Our current landlord, though, is just wonderful. Very kind to us and very attentive, often brings us good food, and is a friend. But we are sad that her place is getting old and will require some serious repairs in the future for some of the things that we are just living with because we like her — things like corroded original water pipes under the floor that were replaced recently with a wild system of visible PVC tubes running between rooms. Probably not up to code, but we’ve been able to cope. Just wish the glass shelf had been made with safety glass!

This tip applies to apartments, hotels, and anywhere else there is glass that could break. Be careful here or in any part of the world. My bad for not removing the glass shelf before the accident!

The post Surviving China Tip: The Glass in Your Bathroom May Not Be Safety Glass first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

The post How We Fixed a Painful iPhone Email Error: “Cannot Verify Server Identity” first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

One of my few frustrations in China has been the slow data services on my iPhone. When I need to use the Internet and don’t have local WiFi, I’ve been limited to 2G. Folks at the Apple store here explained that my US iPhone was designed for a different cellular network not compatible with China’s network, so there was no hope of 4G service like everyone else seems to have. But they were wrong. The real problem, as explained by a knowledgeable Taiwanese colleague, was that the provider of my former SIM card, China Mobile, operates over a portion of the cellular spectrum that is incompatible with my iPhone. China Unicom, on the other hand, operates over a different portion of the spectrum, making their network more compatible with US phones. The China Unicom employee smiled as she explained what was apparently well known to her: their service gives me 4G, but China Mobile’s service can’t. Wish I had known this a couple years ago! Even after a supposed updated SIM card was installed in my iPhone courtesy of my employer, the service remained 2G.

Why am I changing SIM cards at all? My employer is giving me a new company phone, a Samsung model with high security features (VMWare to track employees and make it harder to steal trade secrets, supposedly) that has 4G, and are giving me a new SIM card with that phone while requiring me to return the old SIM card I have been using in my iPhone. Changing phones is a bit traumatic, but discovering accidentally that I could easily upgrade to 4G just by switching to China Unicom helps make the change more welcome. Thank you, China Unicom!

The post Finally! Now I Have 4G on My iPhone 6+ Thanks to China Unicom (Goodbye, China Telecom!) first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

The first time I used a credit card in China was at a Best Western hotel in Shenzhen, near the Hong Kong border. Within 15 minutes after using the card, a spurious charge was made against that number by someone trying to purchase something in California. Our credit card company called to report the problem and our card had to be inactivated. Big hassle. Not everyone has that problem, but in Asia there are many places where credit card numbers will be swiped. They are easier to swipe than the highly secure ATM cards that are commonly used and accepted in China, cards that require a 6-digit password.

For secure use of a credit card here or anywhere else, a great service offered by some providers is a virtual credit card number. Bank of America, Discover, and Citibank offer this service. With a virtual credit card service such as Bank of America’s ShopSafe system, you can request a one-time or limited time use credit card number with a set maximum amount that can be charged against it. You don’t have to worry about the virtual credit card number being stolen. For example, I just logged into my credit card’s service and requested a virtual credit card number. I specified the amount that could be charged ($30), the date the card would expire (2 months from now), and then received a new card number, CCV code, and expiration date with my name and linked to my credit card. I used this to pay for an annual service that I don’t want to be automatically renewed with a provider who may not have the highest security. I made the payment and don’t have to worry about them charging me over and over or about hackers stealing my card number. It’s worthless now that I’ve made my payment.

Virtual credit card numbers can help you add security to your travels and your online life. You will need online access to your account to create them. You can obtain a variety of numbers for different parts of your trip. It’s a terrific advance in credit card security.

The post Credit Cards in China: Don’t Rely on Them, and Use Virtual Credit Card Numbers for Security first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

A friend staying with us today needed to buy a bus ticket for tomorrow to get back to Rugao, a town near Nantong. He wanted to go to a bus station to buy the ticket, but that would have used up a big part of his day. Instead I figured there must be a way to do that online. I asked a Chinese friend and was informed that Ctrip (携程) is a good way to do that. I tried my Ctrip app (now just Trip, tied to Trip.com), but this English only app does not show bus information. I lauched Ctrip.com on my iPhone and changed the language setting to Chinese, and still had nothing about buses. I went to my computer and opened Ctrip.com in English, and still had nothing. But when I used the Chinese language version of the website, the bus information was plainly available as the menu item “汽车票” (vehicle tickets), which takes you to http://bus.ctrip.com/.

Ctrip Menu for Chinese Language on Laptop

You then enter the departure site, destination, and date (Chinese characters are needed for the locations), click on the orange button, and you’ll see a list of bus trips available for your date.

Over on the right, the orange buttons take you to a payment page. You’ll need to enter your full name as on your passport, passport number (select 护照 = passport), and enter the same information in the second area for the person who will pick up the ticket (typically you), along with the phone number (手机). If the ticket is for someone without a phone, enter the phone of someone who can be in touch with the person to verify the ticket. I entered my phone for this traveler without a Chinese phone number (but he has WeChat) and will let you know if this fails tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Then click on the big orange button below to pay using WeChat. You’ll get a 2D code you can scan to bring up WeChat payment. Pay for the ticket and the person can then pick it up at the bus station. Make sure you give them the images of the ticket info, receipt, etc.

In my case, I sent him screenshots of the payment confirmation, then clicked on ticket information to get the ticket sales number (取票好) and order number (取票订单号) in another screen shot. If all goes well, my friend will be on a bus tomorrow to Rugao. If not, it’s a long walk. I’ll let you know.

If you know of other ways to order long-distance bus tickets online, let me know. This seemed pretty easy and the fee was low (3 RMB for a 73 RMB ticket).

The post Long Distance Bus Tickets Be Ordered on Ctrip.com (Chinese Language Site Only) first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

If you must get a turkey, the best price I am aware of is at Carrefour, where you can get a big frozen turkey for about 450 RMB. We had to buy one today for a Thansgiving party we had, where some of our American guests just wouldn’t be happy with fresh, delicious chicken or duck. At the Gubei Carrefour where we shopped, they are in the meats section close to the end of the check out lanes) in a frozen foods case with a glass door, against a wall. Easy to miss, but there were plenty in stock today.

The post Turkey for American Thanksgiving in Shanghai: Consider Carrefour (But First Consider Duck and Chicken Instead) first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

If you are coming to Shanghai, attending The Lion King might be one of the big attractions you should plan for. Note, however, that going there by taxi can be rough since many cabbies don’t know the area yet and since the Shanghai Disney Resort Website is surprisingly deficient in basic information on how to get there. There is no map or address given! There is a chat function for help, so I tried in many ways to squeeze information out of the chat service, but they insisted that there was nothing to worry about, that you just had to say “Disney” to cabbies and they would know where to go, which proved to be completely wrong for our friends who tried to meet us early at the theater to get their tickets. I eventually got an address from the chat service–actually 3 addresses, which confused things further, but none of them were helpful to the cabbie and my friends, came within a couple minutes of missing the opening of the performance. As of today, June 23, 2016, the website still lacks an address for those coming by taxi. Huh? I tried about several times to ask the chat service person to let the webmaster know this needed to be added, and just got the delusional “no worries, there is no problem, cabbies will know how to get there” response. Disney, wake up! You are not the Middle Kingdom in the center of the world where everyone knows your location. You are in an obscure remote corner of the outskirts of Shanghai and people don’t know how to drive there.

Best to go by subway. Line 11 ends there at a station clearly marked as “Disney.”

Here are some photos of the theater.

Before or after the show, enjoy a meal at one of the many good restaurants in Disney Town. This is a fun place that doesn’t require a ticket to get in. Just stroll from the subway (Line 11, Disney station) to Disney Town and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. The restaurants include some of China’s most popular higher-end places like Shanghai Min (wonderful Shanghai-style food, one of my favorite places), The Dining Place (fairly inexpensive dim sum and Shanghai fair), Element Fresh, Simply Thai, and many others. We tried a tremendously popular US restaurant that is the first of its kind in China, the Cheesecake Factory. We were very impressed. They have a menu just like the typical menus in the States, with strong leadership from the States here to train the staff and ensure high quality service and food preparation. Food was delicious though pricey for Chinese standards, but portions were also huge, maybe twice the size we are used to in China, so for us a single dish shared would have been enough, coupled with the appetizers were bought. I had Jamaican chicken and shrimp, and it was so flavorful and tender. The guacamole was surprisingly good, almost perfect. A slight disappointment was that the fish tacos were almost cold by the time they came to the table. Looks like they try to bring all the food at once, which means uneven wait times for some dishes. Ask to have food brought hot as soon as each dish is ready. More work for the sometimes overwhelmed staff at this hugely popular place, but you deserve your food fresh and hot.

The post Review of The Lion King Musical at Shanghai Disney Resort, the Chinese Version of the Broadway Hit first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

This was a “stress test” day since other days of the soft opening had been limited to about half as many people. It was wonderful to be there, but there was plenty of stress.

Our favorite ride of the day, by far, was Pirates of the Caribbean. Of course, to be fair, I should point out that it was our ONLY ride of the day. We tried to get through the Tron ride, twice actually, but gave up even though we had managed to obtain a fast pass ticket for our second attempt (with the help of a kind friend) and were just minutes away from entering. But then there was a mechanical problem that shut the ride down before we could go on it (I later learned that an employee foolishly opened a door that could have let someone walk onto the track, and the interlock safety system shut the ride down for safety reasons until they could troubleshoot the problem), and we were out of time. We had to leave early for a dinner event, unfortunately. One day, one ride–but it was still a great day.

If you go, don’t make our mistake of attempting to get fast food in one of the big eateries. That wasted an hour and a lot of money, and we ended up walking away from our food, largely uneaten. Ugh. Bring you own. But Remy’s Patisserie was excellent and fast, with perfect spinach quiche. Try that, perhaps, but now the hamburger joint near Tron. Ugly lines, very slow, and lots of craziness.

Prepare for Disney by using the fast pass system and by making online reservations. Do your homework first! Then enjoy. Please don’t stand in any line over 3 hours long! Life is too short.

The post Shanghai Disney Resort: Fabulous Theme Park, Awesome Lines first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

Wang Zhen was a Chinese official who recognized that vast amounts of agricultural technology scattered across China needed to be preserved to help all of China reduce famine and be more productive. He took a Chinese invention, movable type, and improved upon it to make a practical way to print an entire book. He used carved wooden blocks for each character, and developed a sophisticated way of arranging them on two rotating tables to allow typesetters to quickly find needed characters to place them in his press. The Nong Shu was printed and preserved many notable inventions in China, including an early form of a blast furnace driven with a reciprocating piston attached to water works, something long that to be a later European invention.

Recognizing Wang Zhen for his important role in the advance of printing is a fitting step for the Hall of Fame, and I look forward to many more Asian inventors, scientists, and business leaders being recognized in the Hall of Fame in future years. The historical contributions of China in numerous fields have received far too little attention, and I’m delighted to see folks in Appleton taking the lead in rectifying this problem. Kudos to the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame!

The post The Paper Industry International Hall of Fame to Recognize China’s Answer to Gutenberg, Wang Zhen first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

A few things can go wrong on this process. Make sure you know exactly what name your company requires to be on the fapiao. For me, it has to be the proper legal name of my company, not my name and not other commonly used versions of my employer’s name. One time my landlord bought several months’ worth of fapiaos all at once, but used the corporate name I pointed to on my business card instead of the official legal name, and I ended up having to pay for new fapiaos out of my pocket. In that process, though, I learned that getting fapiaos involves going to a local tax office, showing your rental agreement and your passport, and then simply paying 5% of your rent to buy the fapiao.

Also make sure you get fapiaos by the month. Your company will generally want one for each month, not one for three months at a time, even if you pay your rent once every three months as I do.

A more troubling problem you may encounter is fake fapiaos. Fake receipts? Yep, it happens, and is an easy way for an unscrupulous person to make some quick money. This may happen when a real estate agent, after closing the deal for your apartment, offers to save the landlord the trouble of getting fapiaos. The agent may have a friend allegedly at the tax bureau who can help you get the fapiaos easily. If the agent doesn’t need a copy of your rental agreement, that’s a clear sign that something is wrong. I don’t know if the seemingly official fapiaos are printed on stolen receipt paper from government offices or are just really good forgeries, but they look like the real thing and businesses may accept them and reimburse you, but if there is an audit or careful investigation, they may discover that the fapiaos are fake and you may then be denied your reimbursement.

For Shanghai folks, you can check to see if your fapiao is real or not using a government website [this is now an archived page — check with Chinese friends for the latest link]. It’s in Chinese, so you may need help doing this.

If you are getting fake fapiaos, let your landlord know. It can hurt their credit and their reputation with the government. It may end up hurting you. The crooks who are stealing your money (and stealing tax money from China) with fake fapiaos need to be stopped. Of course, your agent or whoever gave you the fake fapiaos will be shocked that their friend in the tax office made some kind of error. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t, and maybe it was all an innocent mistake, but given the easy money to be made, chances are someone is just pocketing the money, and not pocketing it accidentally.

Unfortunately, one acquaintance of ours says that she got fake fapiaos by going to the fapiao office her business told her to use. I think this was an official fapiao office but I need to confirm that. Whether it was an accident or intentional theft, you need to recognize that there is a possibility that the fapiao you get is fake. Check to make sure they are legit, and try not to get too many months of fapiaos all at once in case there is a problem with them.

The post Beware Fake Rental Fapiaos (Receipts) in China first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

One girl at our table looked really depressed. I asked what was wrong and found out that she had been to the main buffet on the first floor with numerous delicious items and had really been looking forward to a special evening here, but now was gravely disappointed with the low-quality food being brought to us. I asked the floor manager if she could be allowed to go down to the first floor and get some real food. He gave us some story about how we had a special rate for the room and this did not include access to the first floor. Sigh.

The food they brought came in a few large bins that were often empty. It was usually cold, with no devices to keep anything warm. What surprised me was how inept their system was for providing the food. For over 200 people, the food was presented on a single line of tables and they only allowed people to queue up in a single line on one side. This resulted in a ridiculously slow line, complicated by the fact that the bins they brought were too small and quickly depleted, at which point people in the line often just stood and waited until a refill eventually came, making it all the more insufferable.

The fish was cheap, unpalatable sardines or saury. The chicken was cold, boring, plain whole chicken whacked into boney pieces. There was flavorless beef and broccoli, cold. The crab was perhaps the highlight for appearance but there was so little edible meat that it did little to abate hunger. Some fried rice. A salad that was often empty. Tasteless cheap little fluffy cake pastries for desert. Lukewarm Sprite or Coke as the only beverages. There was a tray of smoked salmon, enough to serve about 10 or 12 people per refill, that was usually empty. Some cold shrimp (tender, though) and corn was provided as a salad. That dish was OK, but overall it was something of a miserable meal, given the fact that we  knew we were being poorly treated, even ripped off, and that for the same price or less we should have been able to eat a great meal below. Sigh.

There were also some “sushi rolls” that were just rice and radish or other veggies. These sliced rolls came with a safety problem: some were still wrapped in thin cellophane that guests would ingest if they didn’t notice and peel it off before eating their slice. After someone on my table apparently ate one, I pointed this potential danger out to a worker, who blew me off by saying that the plastic was necessary to prepare the sushi. There was not an attitude of serving the customer that night! I went to someone more senior an explained the problem again in great detail, asking repeatedly to make sure he understood that yes, this was a safety issue and should be resolved. Nothing happened for a while, but later I did see that the rolls they brought had the plastic off.

I feel that they really took advantage of our group. If that is their attitude toward customers, I won’t be back.

The post Golden Jaguar on West Yanan Road in Shanghai: Huge Disapppointment for a Large Party first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.

Your ATM card is a disaster waiting to happen. If someone gets your number and your PIN, by theft or guesswork, you may have no recourse. You must limit the use of your card to avoid having thieves scan it and not keep too much money in any account that can be stolen using an ATM card.

Whenever you use your card with a retailer, there is a chance that the retailer is keeping your PIN, perhaps inadvertently, and this PIN can then be hacked and sold to thieves. See the 2006 story from NBC News which explains some of the basic threats.

The more you use your card, the greater your risk. The more money in your account, the greater your risk. Keep some of your money in accounts that cannot be accessed with an ATM card using the terribly inadequate 4-digit PIN security system.

Surprisingly, money may be swiped from your account using your ATM card number even if the thieves don’t know your PIN number. Sound impossible? Our experience proves otherwise.

Recently someone in Germany started pulling about $300 a day out of our US bank account using our ATM card number from our US bank. This is a card we rarely use–I think we have never used it China but did use it on our trip to Italy in February 2014. the thieves struck in May 2014. They took the most they could each day for 3 days in a row before I happened to check my online bank account and notice the unexpected withdrawals. It was very fortunate that I noticed this right away instead of after our account was drained dry. Amazingly, there was no anti-fraud alert to the surprise bleeding that was underway. Bet they could have taken everything if I hadn’t noticed.

I immediately called the bank and they inactivated the card. Whether I would get the money back or not depended on one thing: did the thieves use my PIN number when making the withdrawals? If they had, then the money would be lost forever. No recourse. But because the bank in Germany that dispensed the money was not able to provide proof that the PIN had been used, my bank ruled in my favor and refunded the money.

How the thieves got money out of my account without my PIN was never explained. But it did happen, so it seems, and that means it can happen–to you! Check your account often for fraudulent charges. Use your card as little as possible. Don’t use it in shady locations–whatever that means. Assume every operation is shady and vulnerable. Guard your PIN zealously and watch for unusual attachments to ATM machines, and realize that people may be watching the keys you push, so cover the keypad and use false moves as well.

On the other hand, when PINs are just 4 characters long, someone could simply guess the PIN after enough tries with enough cards (several tries each on a thousand or more cards) and then they have a money machine. The chances of someone guessing your PIN on the first try are just 1/10,000. After 10 tries, though, it’s 1/1000. How many people have been trying to guess your PIN? Does your bank every tell you? Probably not. Your card might get inactivated with lots of bad guessing–a huge inconvenience, but better than losing everything. Check with your bank and understand their anti-fraud systems and what recourses you have to fraudulent withdrawals.

Remember, you are just 4 numbers away from disaster, and those numbers can be stolen or possibly even guessed.

The post You Are One Guessed or Stolen PIN Away from Disaster: Be Careful With Your ATM Card in China (or Anywhere) first appeared on Jeff Lindsay's Site and the Shake Well Blog.