After talking with the various friendly legal authorities, the best plan concocted was to simply to take a trip to Hong Kong, pay the fine at the border, and get the visa taken care of, as usual, in Hong Kong. Xiao Ji took me to the ferry station in Shekou. I bought a ticket to Kowloon an hour in advance and then got in line to straighten out the Visa situation. Same sort of little dance again but this time I ended up in a room covered in wood on all sides. There were several computer terminals on the opposite end running Windows XP (were they legal? I’m sure they weren’t.) I took a seat and snuck a picture of the room (below). Wow, ain’t I clever and sneaky? This could be the opening scene in the next 007 movie. Aw yeah.

Unlike the officers at the main police station near the Di Wang building, these folks were pleasant. With my passport in hand, the lady sat down at one of the computers and started entering information (as in the above photo). “Dang, I’m being added to the system”, I thought. My only hope was that they were running MS InfoPath and that it would crash and I’d be safe. No such luck. She continued to fill out forms and print documents. By this time I was bored sitting at the sofa so I was up looking at a map on the wall. A male officer entered the room, approached me, and started asking me about the map. I understood bits and pieces but not everything. But, his English was good. He asked, “Are the maps the same in America?” Uh what? Are the maps the same? I had no idea what he meant. Maybe these were censored maps? I didn’t notice any countries or continents missing (haha), so with a perplexed look on my face, he followed up by asking if America was located in the center of US maps. OK, so he wanted to know how the map was oriented. This map was different; it had Europe and Asia on the left and the Americas on the far right. I let him know that we didn’t put North America in the dead center.

I tried to be as pleasant as possible telling them what a nice country they had (a universally nice compliment). Although I was sincere, I definitely had alterior motives for telling them. No such luck, the forms were already printed and it was time to fork over my 5000 RMB. Well not quite yet; I had to sign documents. Finally, I pulled out the thick wad of pink 100 RMB bills and started counting them in groups of ten. For fun, the officer now actually had me count in Chinese. “Yi, Er, San, Si, Wu, Liu, Chi, Ban, Jiu, Shi”. OK, well, at least I was getting an expensive Chinese lesson. To return the favor, with a tiny tiny hint of surliness, I asked him to count in English.

A ferry docked in Shekou:

After everything was wrapped up, the officer showed me to the empty waiting area for the ferry. He said to me, “Uh, next time, uh uh next…no next time.” OK, fine. I hung out here for about 20 minutes and typed up this report.

Last Sunday, I was planning on going to Hong Kong by way of LuoHu (eastern Shenzhen) to get my Visa taken care of at the Shangri-La hotel, which offers a same-day visa. I wanted to go through LuoHu because it was by train and it had a much more open schedule than the ferry did. Almost all MS folks use the ferry, but I figured I’d break a little ground and try out the train.

At the customs desk, however, the officer informed my my visa had expired. Uh oh, I’m no longer a legal resident of this country. “Come with me, please.” I was led to a little room with some other folks waiting quietly. At least I had my cell phone with me and I fired off a quick text message. After maybe 15 minutes, the officer came back and said, “Your visa is expired by 30 days, according to the laws of my country…you must pay a fine of 5000 RMB.” Oh, OK, well, that’s a decent chunk of coin (about $650). The officer then asked, “Do you want to pay?” Do I want to pay? Of course I don’t *want* to pay! I asked what my choices were:

“You may pay now and go to Hong Kong. Or you can leave and go to the police station at Di Wang.”
“What do I do at the police station?”
“You can ask them to fix your visa.”
“What about the fine?”
“Maybe there will be a fine.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe.”
“Yes or no?”
“Maybe.”

I figured I’d take my chances at the police station. I already knew where it was, and I didn’t feel like forking over all that money, plus I needed some counsel. Well, the next morning I was at the police station. The government buildings in China are quite nice by the way, and the civil servants have a reputation for being lazy, well-paid, and corrupt. I ended up in another little room with a bitter woman who sarcastically remarked at my expired visa. When I gave her my explanation of “why” it was expired, she remarked, “Oh you’re such a smart American!” She then proceeded to give me these incredibly complex instructions. Go to this police station, register, bring the paperwork back here, wait for 5-days, come back for you 10-day Visa, go to Hong Kong… Forget it. I just said, “Sure” then left with no intention of coming back. Instead, I did the smart thing (the thing I should have done first) and went to my office to ask about what to do. Jimmy had me a little worried (“This is very serious!”) but it turns out that he had a similar problem some years ago, but with a different type of visa. What a complex system. Finally, it was decided that I should go to Hong Kong on Thursday afternoon for a Friday express visa.

Here’s how the visa got expired: I thought it was a 60-day. Nope, it was a 30-day visa, with two entries of 30 days apiece. I reckon that’s how I rationalized 60 days. Indeed it would have been 60-days had, on day 30, I’d gone to the border, crossed, turned around, and walked back into China. Jeez. 30 * 2 = 60. Of course, I was giving governments way too much credit in making the assumption that the visa system was simple. But, it’s nice and complicated.

Every two weeks I “teach” an English class at my office to anyone who is interested. There’s lots of enthusiasm for English at my office so I usually have a good turnout. The first lesson was really just an introduction. I wasn’t sure about what to do (the director just suggested talking about one of my hobbies) so I picked something with some good visuals – climbing! So, I gave a quick introduction with the climbing trip that Aidan and I took to the Bugaboos last year.

After that, I decided to commit to an official schedule and teach something interesting about American culture or the English language. Here are the topics we’ve talked about so far:

1) Common Greetings: We talked about the proper and common ways to greet people, why certain greetings developed, “handshake theory” (I include the word “theory” only because we spent so much time on it, analyzing it from many angles), and so on.
2) Body Language Basics: This is a topic that I’ve become interested in the past year or so and it was a lot of fun presenting it. We talked about the various unconscious signals that we send with our bodies, how to read basic gestures and groups of gestures, differences between China and the West (I’ve experimented and discovered there is a lot of commonality), and flirtatious signals (got lots of laughs).
3) American Table Manners: This may have been more fun that discussing body language. I was able to talk about all the various rules that I learned growing up and pointed out the important ones when visiting the US. Having so many complex rules (especially in the traditional American system), I got lots of questions. I also asked questions about the differences in China. There are many, but thankfully China is pretty simple.

Here are some pictures from the discussion on American Table Manners:

I’d like to share some of the biggest differences of table manners between China and the US (some are completely opposite!):

1) Napkins – no concept of putting the napkin in the lap, or the napkin to signal the end of a meal. In fact, napkins aren’t very common (the Chinese have fewer opportunities to dirty their hands).
2) Serving dishes – In China, almost every portion of food is in a common serving dish and it’s normal to dip straight into the dish with your chopsticks, fish around for a good piece, and deliver the food directly to your mouth. This is very different from the American system where there’s a serving fork or spoon and you transfer food from the serving dish to your plate and eat from there.
3) Noise – Here’s the big one. The Chinese (and even moreso the Japanese, so I’ve heard) can be loud at the table. Overall, we are much more quiet. So, for example, I pointed out that instead of slurping soup to cool it, we blow on it and sip it. Some had heard of this, others thought it was hilarious.

I got thirty minutes of questions after the discussion. We finished around 8:00pm. That made it nearly a 14 hour day for me. I had to come into work at 6:30 for a meeting w/ the US. So, tonight I don’t want to go anywhere. Just gonna hang out, update the blog, and watch some Prison Break.

Here’s another funny “Chingrish” (if that’s the correct slang) sign. They don’t want people “spanning” the fence here. Obviously, they mean “don’t climb the fence” or “don’t cross the fence” because the fence where the sign is located happens to be a very small fence. Well, wait a minute, maybe they do mean “span”. Maybe there are people who just like to stand around with one foot on each side of the fence intimidating passerbys. But the spanning person in the picture looks harmless enough – except for the horn and cloven hands. And why do they look to be running carefree, arms extended with joy, with a big smile on the face? Ah well…”spanning”.