I just went to deposit a US check that my family mailed to me at Bank of China. After stamping what seemed like 40 pieces of paper with their chop they gave me back my passport, a few slips of paper and I saw several charges: one slip saying 60RMB (I think it was a charge to my account), another 10RMB charge and another that said .1000% and 50RMB (the original check was for $5,000USD). They also said it would take 1 month for my check to clear and be deposited. My feeble atempts at Chinese and their (very unenthusiastic and annoyed) atempts at English failed to provide me with any understanding of what I had been charged.

Can anyone else verify that there are charges on depositing US checks here in Chinese banks and that it takes a month to have funds hit our accounts here in China? THis is food and rent money for us! The check is from a very large (aka still solvent) US bank.
Thanks....

They charge a service charge, and exchange fee and possibly others to cash a check from outside the country, AND they wait until the funds are transferred to Bank of China from your bank before they give it to you. In short, it is not unusual and in the future, a wire transfer will be a better bet.

It all sounds about right. Thats about 0.1 or 0.2% to do the transaction, and in my experience the Chinese banks give you a pretty good exchange rate. It does take about 3-4 weeks for the funds to clear. I did this earlier in the year, and that's about what happened.

If you need funds right away, have your family wire money to your account here, that takes 2-3 days.

4 weeks is a good deal. Usually it takes 6.