How To Get A Food Card At The Beijing Language and Culture University

The new BLCU canteen (ground floor)

The situation with food cards has changed since my time at the Beijing Language and Culture University in 2010 and 2011. With the building of the new canteens and the demolishing of the old ones some things are now different. In this post I will try to give you as much information on food cards at BLCU as I can (though it's all from memory).

What is a food card?

The food card is just like a plastic bank card that lets you add money to it and then use it at the canteens on campus. It works in the same way that subway cards do (see my article on getting a transport card in Beijing for more information) in that you place it on card-reader stations and it automatically deducts the amount you owe for your meal. It's the most convenient way of paying for food at the BLCU canteens and Muslim restaurant on campus. I'll get to the alternatives a bit later.

Pre-2011 and post-2011

It used to be that you would follow the alley that linked the old Muslim restaurant, which used to be located just south-east of the tennis courts, to the south gate. You could then find a small entrance and office that issued food cards and also recharged them. However, since the opening of the new canteens in 2010 (and the new Muslim restaurant) you now have to go elsewhere to get a food card.

In 2010 BLCU started building new canteens as one step towards modernising the campus. I was still at BLCU for a few months after they opened these new canteens at the very end of 2010 and found them to be a large improvement on the old ones. The main areas that saw improvements were space (the number of people it could hold) and cleanliness. The new canteen buildings are a lot bigger and everything about them is more modern. I imagine that they were also built to accommodate the growing number of students that apply to BLCU every year.

Where to get a food card

Now that I have briefly went into a bit of background behind the canteens, let's get straight onto the main part.

To get a food card I previously said you should go to the HSK building which sits just south of the tennis courts (literally across the road). I've now found out that you can in fact go to the second floor of the new canteen building to be issued one - much simpler! Just double-check that you also have to return them to this office when you eventually leave BLCU as still I had to return mine to an office in the HSK building when I left in January 2011.

What you will need to bring

This is where my memory fails me a bit. I know it used to be that the deposit for the food card was 30 RMB and you had to add a minimum of 70 RMB initially. Whether it is still these amounts today I'm not certain but just bring a few hundred RMB to be on the safe side, though I really don't think you will need that much (unless you want to add a bit more for future spending).

The most important thing to bring is your student ID as they will not issue you a food card without it. Which brings me onto the point that I wasn't able to get a food card until I had gone through the registration process during the first few days at BLCU and been issued a student ID. Until then just carry cash with you to use at the canteen.

Using and recharging the food card

My experience was that the food card is only accepted at the canteens and Muslim restaurant on campus. It cannot be used anywhere outside campus either. This situation may now have changed a bit with the introduction of the new canteens but I wouldn't count on it.

If you are planning on eating at any of the privately run cafes around campus (Lavita, Hope, etc.) or buying things from the Friendship Store, you will have to use cash. The same goes for recharging mobile phones.

As far as I knew when I was at BLCU, to recharge the food card you still had to go back to the food card office in the HSK building. If this has changed or you can now recharge the card within the canteen itself or at other locations, please let me know in the comments section and I will update this information as soon as I can. Thanks a lot!

Alternatives

I said at the beginning that I would get to the alternatives to having a food card later. So what are they? Basically the only alternative is to pay by cash. The downside to this, or certainly what the downside used to be, was that you would have to go and line up in the "cash queue". This just ends up wasting your time. In the old canteens you also used to get charged a very small fee for paying by cash (we're only talking the difference of a few cents), but I'm not sure whether this is still true for the new canteens. Again, if you could let me know in the comments section that would be great!

Well, I hope this article has given you a better insight into food cards at BLCU and how they work. As always, please leave a comment below if you have any questions or would like to contribute any information of your own.

One last thing...

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