RAW CHINA - MEET ME AT YASHOW - PART I

The mild nervousness that's considered par for the course among Beijing's expat community started ratcheting up to mid-level anxiety in late March and early April of 2008. What kind of visa do you have? For how long? Did you hear they're going to stop giving F visas? If you don't have a work visa you'll be kicked out. The fears shifted into fifth gear in the late spring. With the Olympics looming, expats began to see that all of a sudden it wasn't going to be as simple to stay in China as it had been. "How are you?" was often followed by "So, what's up with your visa?" It became the number one topic of conversation. Not "What are you doing tonight," but "What are you doing about your visa?" It sunk in that, unlike the last few years, not every piece of human flotsam washing up would be welcomed on the shores of the Middle Kingdom anymore. It seemed the government woke up one day and decided they'd been way too lax and it was time to put an end to their almost all-inclusive policy. Consternation, confusion, and uncertainty were in the air as the clampdown got under way.

Faster and faster the rumor mill revolved. You had to get tickets to the Olympics, because if you had those you'd be sure to get your F visa extended through the end of August. Or, you had to get a Chinese company or school to sponsor you for a Z visa. Or, if you left the country and got an F visa in your homeland and then came back you'd be fine. This person knew some dude who'd gotten a six-month work visa for 18,000 Yuan; that guy knew some other lady who'd cajoled a local employer into being their protector; you could go to South Korea and get an F visa that would last through the Olympics, and so on, ad infinitum. One of the many theories making the rounds posited that the government was kicking out as many people as possible so they'd be forced through airport customs, where agents would identify and catalog them with newly installed, CIA-designed biometric face recognition software. Gossip, speculation, and creeping paranoia became the norm.

I wasn't overly concerned, though: I had an F visa that lasted through June 10th, and figured I'd work it out somehow. How hard could it be? I mean really, were "they" going to kick me out of the country? I liked China, I worked in China. Hell, I lived in China. Didn't that count for something? I didn't agitate for Tibetan independence, complain about human rights violations, or otherwise give offense to the regime. I was a good expatriate citizen and didn't make any trouble. Why should I lose sleep over it? I was a walking, talking advertisement for the place, at least on the good days.

Also, everybody seemed to think that if you went back to your home country you would be able to obtain an F visa there. Since I had a trip planned to the US in May, I imagined it would be a breeze. The mounting sense of unease didn't seem to be anything to get too excited about and the expatriate hysteria over visas seemed a bit exaggerated. It was something for people to talk about: a way of filling up space in their lives with their petty troubles and unimportant worries. That wasn't for me. When I went to New York I'd just go to the Chinese consulate and get another three or six-month F visa and that would tide me over past the Olympics. No problem.

New York's shocking heterogeneity took a bit of getting used to when I arrived in the middle of May, but I adjusted and went up to the consulate at 42nd Street and 11th Avenue. Walking towards Morris Lapidus' 1960 Sheraton Motor Inn--defaced and altered beyond recognition--on the block between 10th and 11th, I saw two huge, generic, Beijing-style apartment buildings going up. The construction noises approximated Beijing levels. It felt like home. Sauntering through the embassy's security checkpoint I was greeted by hundreds of people sitting, standing, and milling around. I wondered if the volume of people had something to do with the Sichuan earthquake of the day before. As far as I could tell, however, nobody was talking about the quake--they were just semi-patiently waiting. I took a slip for 332, sat down, and after a while looked up at the electronic board to see that number 121 was being served. Twenty minutes later it was 122. I left and came back two days later when--with the exception of there being even more people--the situation was the same. I took a number--at least a hundred away from the one shown on the board--sat, soaked up the atmosphere for half an hour, and left. Just to be sure, I went back one more time at eight in the morning and stood in line with about 200 people for an hour and didn't even make it through the door. My plan to see the consulate didn't work.

I was still fairly confident my situation would get sorted out in Los Angeles when I stopped there on the way back to China. At the consulate in Koreatown, it wasn't as much of a madhouse as it had been in New York, and the ambiance was a bit more subdued, possibly due to the incessant earthquake coverage blaring from the four different monitors mounted on columns in the waiting area. Totally pimping out the suffering and death, the CCTV reports were aglow with patriotic fervor and self-satisfied gloating over the heroic rescue efforts. It was a bit much, sitting there holding my numbered ticket, basking in the obscenity of tens of thousands dead turned into a public relations coup. And how convenient was it that the Earthquake diverted nettlesome attention away from the March riots and protests in Tibet? There was something so crass about it, and--though not related to my visa troubles at all--it added up to a growing sense of frustration toward the government. They were not only shamelessly using the earthquake to reify their own power but, on a more personal level, it was really starting to get on my nerves how damn difficult it was to live in their country.

This time I only waited forty-five minutes before being called to the window. When I told the not-so-friendly lady I had an F visa and wanted to get another one, she flatly refused. When I asked if that meant they weren't giving out F visas anymore, she said she didn't know. She suggested getting a 90-day tourist visa. "But I live there, why would I want a tourist visa?" I asked. "Well then, when you get to Beijing you'll find out." she said. "Can't you tell me here and now?" I pleaded. "No."

Basically, she didn't answer any of my questions, didn't clear up anything, and besides that, was the personification of bloody-minded bureaucratic stubbornness. I left rolling my eyes and took one more look at the monitors showing the glorious response to the devastating earthquake and muttered to myself "Fuck this fucking country." But I still wanted to go back. I had an apartment and a life there for one, and I really liked China--though that sentiment was waning with every failed attempt to crack the visa code.

In a vaguely uneasy state of mind, I flew back to Beijing on June 5th and promptly slept for most of two days. That flight across the Pacific can really take it out of you. Since my visa ran out on the 10th, I started making calls and quickly discovered that the anxiety about visas had taken a turn toward delirium. Everybody had stories of people being expelled, of scrambling to get Olympics tickets, of going to Hong Kong for 30-day visas, or of making plans to leave the country for good because they couldn't stand the uncertainty any longer or weren't willing to jump through the required hoops. The information one person gave you would always be totally at odds with the lowdown according to someone else. Two stories I heard were especially unnerving because I actually knew the principals.

A lesbian couple, China veterans whose swanky art-filled high-rise I'd been a guest at a couple times, were now gone without a trace. Poof, and they were gone. Then there was a German guy named Rutger who'd flown to Japan to attend an art exhibition, only to come back three days later and be held at the airport for six hours of questioning before being unceremoniously put on a plane back to Tokyo. He had a valid visa—supposedly—not to mention a Chinese girlfriend, an apartment and studio, and all his expensive precision Teutonic power tools he'd shipped over from Germany at great expense. Kicked out for good. That didn't bode well.

Fretting, I made a round of increasingly frantic phone calls. This guy said call this other guy. That guy said call this visa "agent." The agent said go to Hong Kong immediately to get a month long F visa. But what about for longer? They could maybe sell one for 16,000 Yuan. That seemed excessive, to say the least, especially since before the madness a six month F visa could be had for 1,200 Yuan. Somebody else suggested going to a French café where "They know what's going on." This was Saturday the 7th with three more days to go before the cutoff. Then I found out Monday was the previously unheard of "Dragon Boat" holiday, which meant I couldn't do anything until the day my visa ran out. Every day after would mean a fine at the least or deportment at the worst. Was I really willing to pay almost $2,000 to stay in China? Was it worth it? An Italian friend who seemed to be in the know suggested calling an acquaintance of ours, one William. "He knows somebody." I had some issues with William because he'd slept with my best friend's girl, but due to the mitigating circumstances, I put my distaste for him aside. After a few insincere pleasantries, William reported that he was buying a one-year work visa for 12,000 Yuan and told me his agent was trustworthy and could help me out. Her English moniker was Mary, and when I got in touch she explained we could try on the 10th to extend my F visa for a month and in that time begin processing a one-year work visa that would cost 12,000 Yuan--4,000 Yuan less than the other agent's offer.

It turns out visa agents make house calls and that afternoon Mary arrived. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties with a small, pretty face and her hair pulled back in a rather severe ponytail, and possessed of an impishly bubbly manner. Like many verbal exchanges between native English speakers who don't really speak Chinese and Chinese people who speak limited English, our conversation veered wildly between the poles of understanding and miscomprehension. When I used a word she didn't know, like "expiration" she'd say, "What's expiration?" Then a tangent about it meaning "the end of something" (i.e. my visa) would follow before the process would repeat in reverse when she used a word or phrase that didn't make any sense in the context of idiomatic English. For the most part we communicated, and the gist of it was she'd try to get an F visa on the 10th while starting to process the Z visa. That would take "two or three weeks" and for that she wanted 3,000 Yuan as a deposit on the 12,000 Yuan, as well as my passport and residency permit. And, she added, smiling, it might not work on the 10th. In that case I'd have to fly to Hong Kong that day to get an F visa there. At this point I didn't really have much of a choice so I decided to throw in my lot with Mary. As I handed over the 3,000 Yuan to my new friend, in an effort at small talk I asked what she did, besides, you know, selling black-market visas. "I'm studying to be a lawyer." I laughed. Giving me a quizzical look she asked, "What is so funny?" "That's just, so, um, ironic that you're going to be a lawyer, that's so perfect." Then I tried, unsuccessfully, to explain what ironic meant and after fumbling around ended up saying, "It's just funny, that's all." We were standing in the kitchen so I offered her some cherries. Taking some her eyes lit up and she proclaimed, "These are my favorite," before going out the door.

Committed to Mary, I crossed my fingers. Certainly my predicament wasn't special at all. It would be OK. On the morning of the 10th I waited with baited breath to hear from Mary. Finally, around noon, I got a text message. Like all her subsequent texts, and like many other text messages written by Chinese people in English, it was all capital letters. Nobody could explain this phenomenon, but text messages are almost always written in capital letters and incorporate an overabundance of exclamation points. Mary's read "THERE IS A BIG PROBLEM AND YOU CANNOT GET AN F VISA TODAY SO YOU HAVE TO GO TO HONG KONG IMMEDIATLEY!!" I called her right away and she said no dice on the F visa, so I had to fly to Shenzhen and then to Hong Kong, where she would arrange everything. Resigned to my fate, I packed a bag, bought a ticket for a 6 PM flight, got some passport photos taken, and jumped in a taxi.

JOCKO WEYLAND

Click here for Part II of Jocko's Chinese visa fiasco.