Paying Bills

Today I had another first - I paid the bills for our electricity and home phone. Actually, it is more convenient than I thought it would be. I go to an ATM at our bank (that I can bike to) and pay all of our bills there. While it is not as easy as doing it online, at least it is consolidated and I can do it all in one spot (well, except the cooking gas, but this another story). The only challenge is that everything is in Chinese! And I am not even talking Pinyin (the English pronunciation of the Chinese character), I am talking ALL CHINESE CHARACTERS! Someone came with me last month and wrote down all the characters, so this month all I had to do was find the right characters and pay each bill. Easy, right? I found the characters for the electricity and got to the screen where I thought I had to pay, but was stumped by the next screen. I hit what I thought was the right button but to my dismay the machine didn't print my receipt. To be reimbursed for the utilities, I needed the official receipt called a "fa piao". But this is where the bureaucracy comes in because in order to get a fa piao, you take your receipt from the ATM inside the bank and get the official one from a teller. I paid my phone bill without too much trouble and then headed in to get my fa piaos. Amazingly enough, I communicated what I needed and got my official receipts! I still wonder if I did everything right or if the teller inside the bank kind of fixed things for me. Hmm, we shall see next month when I have to do it again. :-)