In Which Things Fail to Go to Plan in Beijing

After a week spent sorting out Chinese visas in Kathmandu, plus getting stuck in Lukla on the back of Everest Base Camp, my projects for Beijing are, pretty much:

• * see friends and do kiddie stuff with them
• * sort out Chinese visas
• * do some work
• * eat my bodyweight in Beijing duck
• * grab some atmospheric snaps of hutongs if there’s time

That Beijing duck comes only fourth on the list should tell you quite how much of an issue the work is.

And that visas come before work should tell you how critical visas are. Because without the right visa we can’t stay in China, and the visa that took a week to get in Kathmandu is only valid for 30 days.

Now, the boy and I love Beijing. It’s one of our favourite cities in the world.

Zooming along an elevated freeway at night past the Forbidden City decked out in lights is like crossing the Thames with that iconic view of Tower Bridge, the London Eye and Big Ben. It just doesn’t get old.

You are – you just are! – in a major world city, rich in history, and it’s wonderful.

Air quality, schmair quality.

We HEART Beijing.

All I need do, really, is get the visas sorted and then we can enjoy the city.

New Year’s Eve with friends at their hotel makes an excellent place to start. The kids play charades. The adults drink. It’s all terribly civilised and grown-up.

My first port of call when it comes to visas?

The loafers and reprobates who frequent the bar at our charming Beijing residence, swilling Tsing Tao and dating age-inappropriate Chinese girls, with perhaps a little light English teaching on the side.

Some of them I know from last time we were here.

“What’s that agency called that can flip our tourist visas into business visas?” I ask a loafer.

He’s at the doom-laden stage of the evening early afternoon. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” he says. “China changed its visa rules again, and the last thing I heard from them was a text saying that they’d had a visit from the PSB and if I needed to renew I needed to do it by the 28th December, and it would cost an extra 500 kuai.”

“WHAT?!” I say.

That’s two days before we entered the country. SAY IT AIN’T SO.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think the PSB is having a clampdown.”

(The PSB, for the record, is the division of China’s extensive state security apparatus that looks after foreigners and other undesirables such as dissidents.)

“China doesn’t need us now,” chimes in another reprobate, in between doing alarming things to the cat for Zac’s amusement. “They don’t want us any more. It’s not like it used to be, where they were a nation of emigrants. They’re the coming land now. That’s what people don’t understand. You don’t emigrate FROM China. You emigrate TO China.”

“BUT…” I expostulate, not wanting to identify the precise economic point at which one flips from expat to immigrant, while suspecting that if I don’t get some work done fast I’m definitely going to be classed as immigrant (undesirable). “BUT… I thought you could just flip the visa, with this agency?”

What I’m after is what I call the “loafer visa”, AKA the F business visa, except instead of actually having an employer in China to sponsor you, you are, allegedly, doing research to set up your own business in China, so it’s an F visa for business research.

That’s the visa all the cool kids have. It lets you go in and out of the country at will, work legally, and piss about as much as you want.

I have my business research all planned out, in case anyone asks. I’ll be fixing Chinglish and copywriting.

For I did, lest you think I’m a complete cretin, do some research on Chinese visas before planning to spend the winter here with Zac in a Chinese school.

At the time, there was a clampdown on Chinese business visas issued in Hong Kong, and, after a few horror stories of people paying through the nose for loafer visas, only to be turned away at the border and have to go back for a tourist visa and fix it in-country, Beijing seemed like my best bet.

“Like I say,” says the loafer. “I don’t think it’s that easy any more. Mine expires in February. I’m not sure what I’m going to do after that.”

Oh fuck.

We are not exactly running low on funds, but we’re not exactly comfortable either, and, until I get the visas sorted I can’t really get on with work. I’d like to be in the north and in a flat before the end of the Chinese school term, with time for skiing before a billion Chinese take to the trains and buses all at once for the Chinese New Year holiday.

I try calling the agency, but it appears they’re closed for our Western New Year.

Bugger.

I head off to join our lovely friends for some excellent Beijing duck.

Now, I wouldn’t say I’m superstitious, but I believe in runs of luck, and 2013 is not getting off to the best start, plus it has a 13 in it, which is never good.

It is now clear that this run at China isn’t going to be a walk in the park like our last one.

And… I can’t focus on work and getting my head down with so many variables to juggle.

We have yet to decide where to live. We’re torn between Harbin and Jilin, both of which have good Chinese accents and close-to-zero English speaking expats, meaning we’ll actually need to speak Chinese, as well as reasonable access to skiing.

Why not Beijing, I hear you cry?

Well, as Zac put it, “Beijing would be total fun. Brilliant fun. But it would just be too easy.”

“Yeah,” I say. “We could live here for months and only ever use Chinese in taxis.”

Also, Beijingers talk like pirates. Whereas in Harbin they talk perfect, accentless Chinese.

The guys at our place help me navigate ganji.com to look into accommodation in China (for more on this, go here).

A flat in either Harbin or Jilin should cost around 1500 kuai (£150) a month, they reckon – I figure I’m going to pay a tourist tax on one level or another – but, either way, they look as affordable as cities that routinely drop to below -30 at night should do.

Well, that’s sorted, I think.

We’re going to be living up near the North Korean border. In winter. That’ll be fine.

Siberian temperatures? No problemo! We have down jackets!

Flats are easy. Now for the visas.

I’m calling the agency several times a day, Googling other options and talking to folk I know in China for alternatives, but still no joy.

There’s an agency in Hong Kong that might be able to help, but their website hasn’t been updated in donkey’s years and they’re not answering their phone either.

Yes. After spending Christmas at the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu, and an entire week on getting our visas, I am still in visa hell.

Hallelujah! A human being on the phone.

I explain my requirements. “We’re both on the ‘L’ visa,” I say. “30 day tourist visas, British citizens, and I’d like to turn my visa into a 6-month ‘F’ visa for business – business research, I don’t have an invitation – and get a 6-month visa for my son, as well.”

“Oh,” she says, with remarkably un-Chinese directness. “I’m afraid that the PSB no longer allows that. What you will need to do is to set up a Chinese bank account, with at least 20,000 kuai, attend Beijing PSB, show the deposit certificate, and then they can extend your visa for 30 days.”

20,000 kuai, for the record, is roughly £2000, or over $3000. Each.

I don’t currently have £4000. Or $6000. In fact, I’ve barely even got £2000.

I’ve been spending merrily in Nepal on the basis that pretty much as soon as we get to China I’ll be in a longterm rental, with Zac in school and me rebuilding our depleted bank balance, and our living costs close to zero.

“So you can’t help me with that?” I say.

I’ve heard rumours of agencies that will set up accounts with deposit certificates in your name, just so you can extend the tourist visa, but by now a 60-day extension won’t be long enough for us.

We need the loafer visa. MUST HAZ LOAFER VISA.

“No,” she says, with the general air of someone whose contact in immigration has just been arrested for corruption, and who is receiving regular visits from Beijing PSB, probably in long black leather overcoats adorned with jingling handcuffs. “You will need to talk to the PSB.”

Oh bugger.

Bugger, bugger, bugger.

I call the Hong Kong visa agency. They don’t answer.

I Google some more, find an agency in Shanghai.

They can do the loafer visa!

But we need to go to Hong Kong.

“Why didn’t you just go to Hong Kong in the first place?” asks the loafer, as I try and explain the current state of play.

“Because when I was looking into it, they were having a clampdown on dodgy visas out of Hong Kong,” I say. “They were turning people away at the border, and everything!”

“Oh, yes,” he says. “You need to go through the right channel at immigration. They should have told your friend that.”

I don’t WANT to go to Hong Kong. Jilin and Harbin are 1000k north of here. Hong Kong is 2000k south. I’m looking at the pair of us travelling 5000k just to arrange a visa that I thought I’d already arranged.

Wah!

Flights are going to run us over $700. There are no spaces on trains to Hong Kong. But there might be one to Shenzhen, a short walk and a metro ride from Hong Kong.

Oh Jesus. If I don’t get my arse in gear we’re going to be caught in the Spring Festival travel chaos, when the entire country becomes gridlocked and you can’t even get standing room on the trains, as one billion Chinese people simultaneously head home to see their families.

I find an alternative number for the HK visa agency. They answer!

Oh dear god!

They can do me a loafer visa. Zac can’t have a loafer visa, because they’ve changed the rules. He can only have a 6-month L visa for “visiting family”, AKA me, which means he only gets one entry into China, which means…

… Which means I need to talk to his dad. Because how’s he going to see his dad?

I call the Shanghai agency. They say the same thing.

Oh Jesus. It looks like we’re going to have to go to Hong Kong.

Where we will spend a further $500 on visas, to add to the $200 we just dropped in Kathmandu. Not to mention the various expenses attendant upon being in Hong Kong (first world prices) as opposed to China (second world prices).

And Chinese New Year’s coming up, which means we’d be lucky to find space on a cattle truck, let alone a sleeper on a train, and Harbin will be like Piccadilly Circus on Christmas Eve.

Whoop-de-fucking-do. Happy 2013.

I am, I realise, beginning to panic. This really isn’t good.

And the medieval plague that is metronidazole isn’t helping. I wouldn’t be surprised if I broke out in buboes at this rate. And, oh dear god, where is my cash card?