01Mar 2011 TUE – Yanji Chinese Court

01Mar 2011 TUE  - Today, we had to wake up at 5:30 am today to catch a 6am bus for Yanji. One of the people in the group had a civil dispute with a person in Korea which required a court appearance in Chinese Court. The details were sketchy but apparently, a person or company in Korean had promised many people jobs in Korea if they paid a fee. Yanbain is on the border of North Korea and there are many people from Korea living in this section of China. After the fee was paid, the jobs were not forthcoming. I think it was a scam. In order to cancel the contract, individuals had to appear in court. There were about 20 people with the same problem in the court today. This court is set up just to hear these cases. There are 20 – 30 per day.

I volunteered to go along so we took a taxi to the bus station and rode the bus for about an hour to Yanji. It is very different for me to depend on public transportation. Few Chinese people have cars in Jilin so there are many public transportation options – taxi, bus, train, hired driver. Yanji is about 40 – 50 kilometers away from Antu. Living in Atlanta or any other place in the US, it is very easy for Americans to hop into their car and drive 40, 50, 60 miles every day to and from work. Automobile ownership gives Americans great freedom not enjoyed by the peoples of most every other country.

I shopped for a telephone SIM Card but they are only good for calling within China. I could not find one that allowed me to call outside of China. To buy a SIM card in the Arabic countries you have to have a local resident ID or a passport. Not everyone can buy a SIM card. I am not sure what is needed since one of my Chinese friends was going to buy it for me. However, since I would always be with the group and could not call US with the SIM card I decided not to buy one.

Instead I used a phone at a phone booth. The phone booth is a small office inside a large market with one phone. You use the phone then pay the attendant cash for the number of minutes of the call. The cost was 2 Yuan for 2 minutes or $0.15 USD per minute.

We took the train from Yanji back to Antu. The train cost was less than the bus. We sat across from a young couple. The boy was from Korea and the girl was from China. After we arrived back at Antu, we shopped at the market for food to cook for dinner and for hot water heater, tea pot, and tea to drink.