S informs me that, while Bank of China has a deal with Bank of America to let BoA customers withdraw money from their accounts at a small processing fee (around $5 per transaction, IIRC), she still ran into some monetary difficulties while in Beijing due to the designs of the ATMs.

As customers of BoA or Fleet (and I am sure many other major banks in the US) would have known, ATM PIN are allowed up to 10 digits long (as opposed to the commonly used 4) for accounts on the banking/debit cards issued by those banks. In the US, that never really posed a difficulty: even though at certain times, when making a debit card purchase at grocery stores or at train stations, the pin pad only display 4 asterisks for the pin, I could still type in the full 10 digits, which the machine would acknowledge in full and transmit to get the transaction approved. So while it might appear that the machine does not have the concept of PIN of more than 4 digits, it is only an interface design flaw, whiel the underlying mechanism is compatible with longer PIN. (The main thing is that I would be required to hit the "enter" key after completely entering the PIN.)

Unfortunately, the ATM designers for Bank of China does not have such expandability in mind. They hardcoded a limit of 6-digits for the PIN. If the PIN is shorter than 6 digits, the ATM requests you to hit the "enter" key after entry; if the PIN is exactly 6 digits, the machine would automatically send off the 6 digits to be processed and proceed to the next screen--which, in S's case, means that the last digits of her PIN gets chopped off.

And getting the PIN changed on a banking card from overseas is not the easiest of things.

So... China Trip Tip #1:

Change the PIN on the debit card to be not more than 6-digits prior to leaving the country.