More visa chaos…I hate to say I told you so!

I was woken up at 8am on my day off by my teaching assistant banging impatiently on my apartment door (anyone who knows how much I like my sleep, will know that this is starting badly!). “We need to leave urgently, you have to go to Son Yuan to get a new visa. Today!”.

So after the last debacle (where there was opportunity to extend the visa for the length of my contract, but no), I was less than surprised that this had been left to the last minute, but even I had not anticipated what a convoluted and chaotic 48hours I was in for.

I will only preface what I am about to tell you with NO-ONE TOLD ME ANYTHING and, as you know, I don’t speak Chinese. So, here’s how it went:

Jumped in a taxi to Tanggu station at 9am on Thursday with as much stuff as I could shove into a bag (and the emergency Snickers my flat mate threw at me as I was running out the door), for the train to Beijing. No train. Taxi to the Chingway in Tianjin, 45 minutes away (which I could have caught from my apartment at 9.30am and been there for 10am).

Arrived in Tianjin at 11.15am. Another taxi, this time with an incredibly dodgy driver and some other random old man with intensely bad breath. To Tianjin Railway Station for Beijing train. Stuck in traffic due to a burst water main.

Got to the station, purchased tickets and unsubstantial snacks for lunch and transfered to Beijing South. Caught another two metro trains to Beijing main station and made the 1.15pm train to Chang Chun by the skin of my teeth (with a sneaky MacDonalds to boot – which is a blessing as it turned out to be an eight hour journey!).

Late night arrival in Chang Chun to meet my boss (grateful for the deserted train station experiences of the Trans Siberian to stop me from freaking out). No boss. Instead, a nice Chinese lady who lived in St Helen’s, but was visiting family in Chang Chun, collected me in her brother in law’s car and drove me to a hotel which wouldn’t accept foreigners, so drove me to another dodgy looking backstreet hotel which was Korean and “safer”.

At 10pm I lay on my bed, in the hotel I didn’t even know I was going to be staying in, starving but too scared to go out (as even St Helen’s lady said it wasn’t safe and she used to live there), a little bemused and grateful for the Snickers!

At 6.45am Friday morning, I flagged a taxi (using the Chinese instructions given to me by the nice St Helen’s lady) to a Lake in the middle of nowhere, where she would pick me up again. Ding Ding (yes, as in bell), my bosses driver turned up out of nowhere, as did St Helen’s Lady and her sister, Meow (yes, like a cat), with a picnic breakfast. The four of us set off on the three hour journey to Son Yuan.

Approaching 11am, after passing fields of sunflowers (singular trip highlight) we arrived at the toll near to our final destination only to get stopped by police for not having any registration papers (bearing in mind we are in the brother in laws car, with a random driver). After several frantic phone-calls we abandoned Ding Ding with the car and got picked up by the school minibus.

At the school my boss didn’t even say hello, just told me to go “with him” (a guy I’d never seen before) to the Police Security Bureau (PSB), where I had two photos taken, handed over my passport (despite much resistance), all the while being interrogated by an aging and partly deaf American who wanted to quiz me about working for my boss’s school. To say I was a little fractious would be an understatement.

Back to the school for 3pm where I was accosted into taking PR shots to publicise the school. I was then left to my own devices for three hours with nothing to do except be invited out to dinner by a Chinese Army Major who showed me his thesis on Ancient Greek Military Strategy – “It is in English”… I was rescued from this surreal scenario by the nice St Helen’s Lady, Meow and Ding Ding with the car released from police custody and another three hour drive, back to Chang Chun.

Following an inspirational and insightful conversation with Meow, Ding Ding and I were abandoned at a petrol station, got into another cab which drove us into the dodgiest place I have EVER been, to get me a ticket to the overnight train from a guy in a thick gold chain and a blacked out Audi. Money and tickets exchanged, just enough time for a  McDonalds (yes another one)with Ding Ding – eaten in the painfully uncomfortable, yet polite, silence that only two people who don’t speak each other’s language can achieve.

I got on the 10pm train without a passport (knowing that I couldn’t get through Beijing without one) to be met at 8am on Saturday morning in Beijing by the over-friendly Frank (another friend of my boss), who was meant to buy me a ticket with his ID, but he didn’t bring it. He did however buy me a KFC breakfast (savoury porridge) and offer to take me back to his house so I could shower, rest and spend weekends with him whenever I wanted…er…no thanks, Frank.

To cut a marathon 48 hours short…I politely declined Frank’s further offer of lunch and an afternoon at his apartment, waited until 6pm to get a train ticket that didn’t require my passport to purchase, returned to my apartment at 9pm on Saturday evening to a frantic flatmate – exhausted but safe and having seen another part of China (albeit one that I could have probably lived without and could have been avoided!).

Moral of the story…sort out your own visas in advance and always expect the unexpected!