1000 cuts
On November 7, 2019 by Keturah HaferkampCelebrate good times! I finally completed the visa process and was granted residence, AND we made it 1 full month. I am now officially a resident of China.
Residency was a difficult 9 month long process that ended in the last couple of weeks. The day we went to retrieve the visa we decided our whole family would make the hour long trek to the immigration bureau. While in the office we realized I’d failed to bring the original paperwork and had only copies of the forms with me. So we waited for nothing. Immigration officials turned me away.
It is a humiliating experience to be shouted out of a government office in an unfamiliar language, your paperwork soundly rejected. But worse was the realization that the office closed at 5:30 pm and we still needed to get home and back to the office with the proper paperwork. That was at 2pm in the afternoon. At that point we decided we would have to take a cab home in order to get back in time…. with the understanding that if we failed to get back in time, we would face deportation or detention for overstaying the current visa. (Only later did we learn that there was no need to rush and that we could return on a different day. Breakdowns in communication prevail when you cannot speak nor understand the language.) …. But costly as it was, I will say that I am truly grateful to have been able to make the choice to take the taxi when the situation required it.
I have only been summarily dismissed by an immigration official once before in my life and that was far more traumatic than this experience in China. That experience in Spain so many years ago taught me a lot about the arbitrary reality of the immigration experience. One official having a bad day can mean the success or failure of exit and entry.
Fast forward….the taxis despite traffic got us safely to and fro. I stumbled back into the immigration bureau that same afternoon with the proper papers, promptly received my passport and new visa and took the subway (more than 1 hour) back to our apartment.
Naturally we were overjoyed!
So we celebrated by buying China’s version of legos, some stuffed animals, and we had Subway sandwiches for dinner with Apple juice and Gatorade. Western foods like bread and cheese are nice to have every once in a while and easier to access than we guessed they’d be. But most of the time we eat rice, noodles, soups and meat and vegetables, lots of fruits, granola, yogurt, with tea, pastel de nata(!) and of course water (We are in a tropical climate and it’s important to stay hydrated).
Unfortunately, we are not finished with the process for legal residency. The visa situation recounted above was just for my work permit and residence. Now my husband and the children’s visas will expire soon which means they must leave and re-enter China in order to renew. We are looking at a few different options other than our initial plan since we think it best to avoid any cities experiencing growing unrest, despite the convenience of their location. Hopeful for inexpensive flights to a different place (still trying to figure out where) and that we will be able to exit and enter with no problems.
This…all of these matters must be addressed while still doing the normal routine of our everyday.
This… The miscommunication, the being turned away with minimal explanation, the taking a taxi twice unnecessarily, the extra effort it takes to understand and be understood….this is what is meant when it is said that living in a foreign country is like death by 1000 small cuts.