Everything's Harder in China (GRE Edition)

As I've mentioned briefly before I'm planning on taking the GRE late this summer. When I checked on registering for a time a few months ago nothing was available yet, but now the times are out and many have filled up. Because the available seats seem to be going fast I thought I'd just on one, but not so fast this is China we're talking about. The GRE is designed by an American company, but in China they farm it out to a Chinese company to actually run the test. The Chinese company sucks. The GRE costs about $200 and you can only register after you have deposited money into their website, but unlike every other website everywhere you can't just use a credit card. You have to use a card specifically issued by Bank of China, ICBC, or China Merchants Bank. OK I thought, well my dad will let me use his China Merchants Bank card to register and then I'll pay him back. But again there is an issue, the China Merchants Bank site where you pay is entirely in Chinese. Fine, I thought, my sister banks with ICBC, maybe she can help me out. But it turns out she has already been trying to do this for a while and can't get the ICBC website to work for her.

On top of all of this I discovered that they had my Social Security Number wrong, which could be a really big problem if I take the test but then don't have my results count. The regular GRE site has my SSN just fine it's the Chinese site which is problematic. This all leaves me thinking that I should just take the GRE in Hong Kong. I didn't see exactly how there payment process works, but there it doesn't send me to a Chinese website, the tests seems to be administered directly by the American company. And when it comes to that I have faith that the American company will actually be able to take my money. Unfortunately they haven't posted the dates I'm looking for yet, so I'm stuck waiting. There is a lot of waiting in China.