I was robbed in a bar tonight.

I am in Xi’an. Not even my home base in China. Just some random city where I’m traveling.

Aside from the cash I had in my backpack, I have no access to money whatsoever.

I have no mailing address. They won’t send a credit card to the hotel, and even if they could, they have no mechanism by which to do so before I leave Xi’an. I leave in 3 days (today is technically the 4th) and the soonest they can mail something is the 9th.

In sum, I have 1000 kuai to my name; that is $151. I am pretty sure my hotel and plane ticket back to Beijing have been paid for. If not, I can’t quite articulate how completely fucked I am. I have no credit or debit card. They’re canceling my credit card now. If the cancel voids my plane ticket, I have no way to get home. I still have my passport.

Parents trying to help. Not much they can do. Bank can’t get me a card until 5 days from now; and even then they can only send it to my office. God knows how that will work. I don’t even know if my office has a proper mailbox. But it does have an address, which is better than trying to send a credit card to my fucking 胡同。　Hutong, by the way, means alleyway. And off of said alleyway, you have to have a special RFID card to get into my little courtyard thing, at which point I am house 8. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have a mailbox, but even if it did I don’t really have a way to communicate how to find it. So there’s no way for me to receive mail in Beijing aside from sending it to my company’s front desk and hoping for the best. So basically pending divine intervention I won’t have any money for the foreseeable future.

I’m scared, poor, and very, very alone. I have a sorta-friend that I made named Eric; he has been a huge help with translation, but even he can’t get my wallet back. I am not sure what to do.

I want to see the terracotta warriors tomorrow. This involves spending about 150 kuai, from what I can tell. That’s like 25 bucks, which wouldn’t be a big deal at all if it wasn’t a significant portion of my total funding at present.

Shit. I’ve been awake for 21 hours; I’m exhausted but too nervous to sleep.

What am I supposed to do?

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