How long til you get the check? Do you get it by kuaidi (someone actually calls you and hands you the check) or they put it in your mailbox (which can be tricky in China).

A lot of players would buy your PS dollars for actual RMB in China for a higher rate, why not simply do that?

Is there any posts on living & grinding in Hong Kong here?

Am I paranoid for not buying liquor at bars in China?

Anyone know where in Shanghai one can buy paraphernalia related to smoking one's preferred legal (in some places anyway) herbal product?

Soul: I can't really remember it's been years since I lived in Guangdong and did that. When I moved to xiamen I would just "cash out" by selling pstars money to live players who wanted money like you suggested.

Pe: no but fwiw a lot of beer is fake too. The beer they gave to foreigners in xiamen would make people do weird ****.

Depends on where you're going. Usually you can figure it out by the taste of it, or the price tag. In Beijing, in a lot of clubs they have this 50RMB open bar for foreigners ONLY, this way they get all foreigners students with no money to come and get drunk on fake booze while Chinese customers spend thousands on expensive real bottle, thinking that the place is high end since foreigners hang out there.

Basically if it's too cheap, do the math, it's fake. Try smaller bars open and managed by foreigners and the chances that you drink fake alcohol get thinner.

Which city?

Yeah, I'm realizing that too. I know its completely anecdotal, but a friend and I went out in SZ one night AMD had 5ish beers apiece. We felt horrible the next day. That evening we went to HK and started off with Mortons happy hour and continued drinking all night. We felt OK the next day.
Zhongshan mostly, soon to be Shenzhen.

Good point about the price, although I'm pretty conscious of "if it's too good to be true it probably is".

True about taste for some things. I definitely recognize Jack Daniels as soon as I taste it. However if they made it 25% water I'm not sure I'd know.

The thing with mixed drinks is that you often don't know what is fake. In xiamen at one bar they had real whiskey but fake coke. The **** was disgusting. I actually prefer whiskey and water but anytime someone bought me a drink I'd gag it was so bad.

Zhuhai had some infamously bad liquor too. There was one place that had a 150 rmb bottle of walker which we dubbed "jitter juice" you can imagine why.

one night a guy got black out drunk before going there and when he woke up he said he knew he had gone to that bar because his heart was still pounding. Really a ton of gross **** in china even from the more high end places.

That's why you drink from 7 eleven in front of the club, lol. I miss Wudaokou

Wtf at using fake coke. It's cheap as **** anyway.

+1

Note to anyone newer than me to China (I imagine veterans know): don't take any buses reaching their destination after 12. I needed to get from one city to another to catch a flight, cities are a few hours apart. Trains booked up so I take the last bus. The bus stops (along with 50 other buses) at a ****ty rest stop at midnight. I figure it's a bathroom break. Nope, it's a scheduled 5 hour stop, more than doubling the length of the trip and making it very possible I miss my flight. BTW, I don't normally drive 5 hours for a flight, I was planning on going to that city the day before, but was having more fun in Dali. Obviously I'm pretty pissed.
Also it's a sleeper bus, a thing I didn't know existed.

Really?

Pretty standard for mainland that kind of story.

If you said the words I'd be able to form some picture in my mind, but i didn't know it'd look like a WWII Uboat and smell like a wet sock factory.

which city did you depart from and destination?

Dali-Kunming. I made it, but they were about to close the doors.

done that one, but it was a day one and not a sleeper, so I guess they keep the sleepers one for the nightly trips.

I did take the sleeper bus (bad experience) from kunming(or another city, cant remember which one) to the vietnamese border but I dont remember them stopping during the night.

Moving money: I remit $2000 USD every month with WU...$1975 gets to the destination if you send it in USD. So I assume the rake is 1.25% + whatever rate you get converting RMB to USD (WU only sends USD). It's a bit more expensive than a b2b wire but worth it imo. I do this because I heard that with any other type of bank to bank transfer, you bank account info automatically gets sent to the IRS. The person who told me this may be wrong but I do know that WU is cash-to-cash and they protect your info. If it's good enough for terrorist money launderers and banking executives, it's good enough for me.

Travel: I was skeptical at first, but using dididache for intercity travel is pretty good. There's always some poor bastard willing to drive you anywhere. I got a ride with didi from my home (Zhaoqing) to Baiyun Airport (1.5 hours away) for 200 kuai just this January. Since I split the cost with two other people, it was a little under 70 each. Bus fare is usually 60. I know Dali is a small city but are probably some didi drivers who would have taken you to Kunming since it's an oft-traveled route. Just make sure you know some Chinese. Buses are obsolete.

https://boingboing.net/2016/02/18/ch...ues-himse.html

amazing.

Oh there was. For 800rmb haha. It's a 5 hour drive. I'll never take a bus when I can take a train. I know enough for travel, although I let my girlfriend do most of the talking (if people know you speak any Chinese they always want to ask the same stupid questions).

How many beers can you drink

What currency does your country have

One of my favorite Nanluoguoxiang stories in Beijing is some bar that's no closed down, not the 10 square meter bar but on opposite side a little further north, closed down a few years ago. So I go in with some friends and I order a Long Island Iced Tea. The guy tells me 10 kuai. I hand him the money, take a sip and say this taste nothing like a long island iced tea, what kind of bull**** did you put in this?

He looked at me incredulously, and stated you just bought a ****ing long island iced tea for less than 2 dollars where imported alcohol cost more than in the US and you actually expected to get a non-fake ****.

I said touche, respected the cut of his his jib but never went back there again.

True, I remember eationg BBQ yang rou for 1 kuai per stick. I was shocked when my gf told me it was rats and not sheep. That bartender argument make much sense haha.