Here are important phone numbers you need to be aware of in Shanghai.

Police – 110

Although Shanghai is rated as the safest city in China (according to sina.com), you still need to be aware which number to call during emergency. I call this number once every two months. :-D When I see any emergency on the street, no matter whether I am involved, I just pickup the phone and call them. The last time, I got spam advertisement SMS to sell fake certificates to me (they claimed they can create all kinds of certificate and document, including marriage certificate, national ID, graduation cerficate… anything you can imagine). 110 was happy to get my report and I suppose they will call the number in the SMS.

Fire – 119

I never dialed 119 since I have never failed to put off fires I made in my kitchen. :-D. I have called 119 in Beijing once by mistake. It was a funny story. Someone sent me a SMS from number 10119. I called back but the number was invalid. I thought, “maybe it is a phone number out of Shanghai”. As the dialling rule specified, I tried to add a 0 in front of the number and dialed again. 0 – 1 – 0 – 1 – 1 – 9 ——-. Then someone answered the phone “Hello. How can I help you?”. I realized I have called the 119 in Beijing. Now I understand that 10119 means a SMS from a SP with ID 1011.

Hospital – 120

Never called, and hope don’t need to call this number. Why there is no single number like 911 for 110, 120, or 119? It is rare that people need to call 119, but don’t need 120.

Internet Service – 16300

No matter where you are, 16300 is the number to help you connected to Internet. Create a dial-up network and loging with user name: 16300 and password: 16300. You are just 10 seconds away from Internet. The fee will be included in your (or the telephone owner’s) telephone bill. After struggling to install brandband and wireless, I finally returned to the 16300 Internet age in my home.

Consumer Complain – 12315

Are you a tough customer? If you are, dial this number when you feel angry about any product or service to complain. It (sometimes) works.

Legal Consultants – 12348

Having questions about law? Dial this number. China is changing its style. People like to go to court to settle things down. It helps me to learn my rights before I talk to a manufacture or service provider.

Transportation – 96900

For all your transportation questions, dial this number about how to go from one point to the other in the city – by driving, bus, metro… It is useful. The last time I called this service is the day before yesterday, when I was in bad need of a gasoline station.

Yellow Page – 114

Ops. 114 is the number I dial before I dial the other number for most of time. :-D Just kidding, but they are very helpful to get a phone number by a name.

All these numbers are obvious to local residents, but as Shanghai Slim commented:

WJS, great work! Thanks also for the consumer hotline phone number! This kind of information is difficult for “foreigners” to find.

That is the reason I post these obvious information here.