MÓDULO DE PRÁCTICAS PROFESIONALES NO LABORALES DE IMPOSICIÓN Y OBTENCIÓN DE LA FORMA IMPRESORA

You are going to friggin’ LOVE China: peace and quiet it is NOT. Besides the constant rat-a-tat of firecrackers and ruckus of people who were never taught about the “indoor-voice” we westerners all learned as children, you will hear honking. They honk when they are approaching intersections, when they are approaching traffic from behind, when they are passing traffic, when

Page | 27 they are in front of traffic they have just passed, when they see their friends, when they don’t see their friends; in fact, it’s easier to just tell you when they don’t honk which is pretty much only when they are on their fucking cellphone or pulled over to piss on the side of the road. If they are on the phone, keep your eyes peeled because they cannot multitask as a general rule. Whenever you are in a taxi and the driver takes/makes a call, for instance (which is all the friggin’ time), the car will slow to a meandering stop, most often in the middle of a busy street. In this case, everyone else honks like mad, until that is, one of them receives a call, “oh goodie… Yellooo?” Then it’s their turn to stop in the middle of the street and cause mass chaos. FUCK.

Ed. note: In the first quarter of 2014 Tianjin had 3 top-notch 320 CAs with TRI qualification from the UK, Canada and France resign, and one line CA from Spain quit as well. Couple with this the resignation of numerous Finnish, American and South-American pilots from the EMB190 and EMB145 fleets and I think we start to piece together a pretty good picture of the broad cultural backgrounds of pilots who reject the Chinese (especially Tianjin Airlines) no matter how much money their contracts were ramming down their throats. It’s not very auspicious on a worldwide scale, China; a pretty sound assessment that something is wrong.

I'd like to buy Park Place. BTW doesn’t Mao look lovely in this shade of pink? Relax, it’s $14… maybe Baltic Avenue instead.

Banking

If you want to get pissed off really quickly, and by quickly I mean virtually in nanoseconds, walk into your nearest bank with the intention of doing something downright insane with your money like withdraw some of it or send it overseas. Bottom line: banking in China sucks enorgantic hippopotamus cock. Long-standing rules of banking for foreigners here include such prohibitive measures as:

1. foreigners cannot exchange from RMB to more than $50,000 USD in a year, 2. foreigners cannot send more than $50,000 USD out of the country in a year, 3. foreigners cannot send more than $2,000 USD overseas in a day,

4. foreigners can exchange RMB for a maximum of $500 in a day,

5. each transaction is going to cost you about 250 RMB (given ~6.3 as the rate), 6. most banks like ICBC require a huge amount of paperwork to send money out, 7. you cannot chose your own bank to have your paycheck deposited in, and 8. an almost fanatical devotion to the pope and shiny red uniforms… damn!

Being that you are paid ½ of your salary in Chinese RMB into a Red China bank account, you can see this could present some challenges, especially if you don’t stay on top of it. However, there is a way around it: find a local friend to help you. Locals are still limited to sending

Page | 28 $50,000 USD overseas per year, but the key is that they do not have the daily limit (at least this was the case as of the writing of this chapter). So, find a local friend or few, buy them lunch and have them do your banking for ya.

It’s a little funny having someone else send any amount of your cash through the nether regions of the banking system, but it kindof works and there is no other way to get things done. Truth be told, the first time I did this my cash got lost for a couple of weeks and I freaked out (it was only 10k only). But then it came back to China and luckily my friend was honest enough to tell me when it landed in his account. If any of this blows your mind, you are in damned good company. I didn’t expect the kind of bloody Spanish Inquisition.

Now that I’ve covered this nastiness, let me impress upon you some more: DO NOT keep your money in China. It’s best to flush it out of their system as soon as any payout is made. Keep a few thousand in your pocket and live off of that. At a minimum you should immediately move the bulk out of ICBC and into another account you open, say for instance Bank of China or the like. The reason you want to do this is that the company has access to the account they are paying into. This means that IF something goes awry you can imagine they will instantly have their dirty little fingers jammed into your apple pie looking for a payoff.

But, this is not enough. It’s stated by the government outright in the UAE that you immediately lose access to your account the instant you’re terminated. Sounds like something the Chinese would do… as a matter of fact, if you have debts in China you can be put in prison if said debts were incurred with malicious intent. I wonder what skipping out on a training bond would count as? Malicious intent? Hmmmm.