Blood shot eyes and Red tape

Army and police were everywhere. Citizens were scanned for explosives at every sub way station. In Beijing, there was a palpable sense of joyous paranoia and Nationalistic pride dripped down the legs of the city.

What happens when you over stay your visa in China one week before the 60th anniversary of communist rule…Read on

A fugitive in China…well not really, but I did overstay my visa for 13 days and experienced first hand the wrist-slitting tedium of Chinese bureaucracy. I also had the unique pleasure of spending five days of my life (which I will never get back) being lied to, frustrated and threatened by police and immigration authorities in my vain attempts to abide by the correct protocol.

But first, a little light hearted background info –

On the first day of October in the year 2009, China, the rising super power of the modern world celebrated 60 years of Communist rule.

The scale of this event can not be underestimated. The build up was dramatic.

Army and police were everywhere. Citizens were scanned for explosives at every sub way station. In Beijing, there was a palpable sense of joyous paranoia and Nationalistic pride dripped down the legs of the city.

With these forces at play, my travel companion Evan and I arrived in Beijing from Shanghai at 7.30am, tired and hung over, exactly one week before the October 1^st celebrations.

Trudging with our backpacks through the Beijing smog we made our way to a hotel to check-in, have breakfast and sleep off our sleep dep.

On arrival, we handed over our passports for registration. With a look of utter panic, the girl behind the counter informed me that my visa was 9 days over due (How this happened is another story)

She explained that without a valid visa I could not legally check in to a hotel anywhere in Beijing and all hotel staff in the capital had been advised to inform the police if such a situation were to occur. She was supposed to ring the police and inform them of my status immediately.

I called some friends who had lived in China for years to gather advice.

My intell informed me that I was most likely looking at a penalty of 500RMB ($100AUD) for every day I had over stayed.

I was also told a few horror stories of visa over stayers who had spent time in prison and some who were deported and banned from re-entering China for years.

One friend suggested leaving the country as soon as possible and dealing with the issue in Hong Kong or Singapore. I ignored this advice and decided to deal with the matter legitimately, responsibly, and in a mature fashion.

What a fucking mistake that was!

I was advised to go directly to a government agency called the Public Security Building (PSB) where they work specifically with foreign visa problems. There I explained my story to the first of a thousand bureaucrats who could clearly speak no English. I was asked to fill out a form with the pertinent question  ‘Explain your feeling on this grievous matter and your attitude towards the possible penalties’.

If you re-word that it actually said ‘Please strap on knee pads, kneel, unzip my pants and begin licking the dirty crack of Chinese bureaucracy’

With a sudden appetite for eating shit I cobbled together some sentences in broken mandarin that amounted to – I love this great country. I am a poor and humble student. I have learnt my lesson and will never again trouble the mighty immigration offices of the CCP.

I got off with a warning and the first of a series of useless documents.

Next I was directed to counter 38.

Counter 38 is purgatory.

Counter 38 is the great wall of paper work, the gulag where patience and common sense go to die of starvation.

I was informed that in order to leave the country I would need a 10day bridging visa. To get a bridging visa I would need a ‘temporary residents certificate’ issued from a hotel or police station and yet no hotel would accept me with out a valid visa and no police station would issue one with out having the address of a hotel to register it from. Effectively, I was in a black hole, a vortex of paper work peopled by officials who refused to put themselves on the line.

By the fifth day of trudging between the PSB, various police stations and immigration offices I realized that there was no logical way of solving my problem – legitimately.

On the fifth day I was finally given some straight talking advise by an English speaking police officer once I explained my predicament ‘….You really in Fuck position. You be better off buying ticket to Hong Kong and hoping for best’.

Bang. I was on a plane for Hong Kong the next day.

When I reached the customs counter at the airport I was taken aside for 40 minutes and interrogated as to why I had broken the law.

I produced all the paper work I had gathered over the past 5 days and explained my story.

The young, hard faced official ignored it, looked me up and down and said in a rough voice ‘Do not do this again, or next time we will not be so nice to you’.

I was processed and accepted in to Hong Kong, bamboozled, broke and seriously wondering how the hell the CCP actually gets anything done…at all.

So here I am back in Beijing, with a valid visa to remain in China.

The streets are over run with Red flags and I now know what that red represents – Blood shot eyes and Red tape.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Beijing, China, Long read, Pictures, Problematic . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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