Canadian living in China and duelling bureaucrats

Chinese vs Canadian Bureaucracy: Cage Match - The Squid Zone: "For complicated reasons related to evil banks I had a problem with my passport. The problem, you see, is that my marriage certificate (required to get a mortgage with my wife) has my old passport number on it. Naturally my new passport doesn't match. The bank, and the housing authority, are inflexible on this point. Photocopies of my old passport don't count: I need to have my real old passport so that the numbers match.Well, after careful investigation there were three options we could go with:"