To Newbies, or even veterans, be careful with your ATM card. Getting a replacement ATM card is super annoying. In 10 years, I have lost two.
The ATM card must be reissued at the bank where the account originated. If you lose a Bank of China card, you have to go to the particular Bank of China branch where the card was lost. Just any bank branch will not under any circumstances.
The first card I lost, I moved far away from the bank branch who issued the card, almost as far away as one can go in Hangzhou proper. I explained to the bank nearest my home that I don't want to travel 1 hour by bus in a far off neighborhood, with the solution being that the bank would more or less vacate the other account and then give me a new account with a new card. This took about thirty minutes. 30 longass minutes of signing numerous slips of paper, pressing in my secret cold several times, staring at a skinny yellow girl tap away at her computer and other addin' machines, with me wondering why can't the same bank company just issue a card at any branch?
Lost my card the second time on the train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. Took a pee and while stretched, took out my wallet to see something with the ATM card doing a swan dive straight into the toilet hole and gone in a flash.
OH
, not this again!
My second card was issued in a small BOC branch in the middle of the city, a busy road called Qingchun Lu, since I lived in an apartment nearby there. This is a dinky bank branch and since it is in the middle of town, it is very busy. I have a BOC branch literally across the street from me that is rarely busy. Nope, I gotta go to town!
Of course, there are people freaking everywhere and I had to wait about an hour to talk to someone. I did have to fill out a form and I had my passport in hand for identification. Go up, talk to the lady, give her the passport and all that. We almost came to blows on my passport. Since the time I lost the first card, my passport expired and I got a new one from my tyrannical government in Shanghai. One thing tyrannical government did that annoyed me was to give me a new passport number. I would have thought that they would want each person to have their own passport number like social security, but that was not the case. I was a bit annoyed that I would have to memorize a new nine digit code and throw the one I have memorized as high importance from my brain.
The teller woman was going to turn me away since the passport numbers were different, even though she had a copy of my old passport with my face and know it was me. I stood my ground (wasn't a dick but firm) that this was my face, my ID and I have the old passport at the house and will give it to you for inspection the next week when I picked up the card. She was cool about it, because I was going to be livid and would be a dick if she turned me away.
No big drama the next week when I had to make the 30 minute bus journey to that location, wait another thirty minutes in line a closet sized bank (banks are the most boring places on Earth, unless you have a 12 guage to the manager's head demanding the vault be opened) I did have to produce the old passport.
Don't lose the ATM card. Sage advice.