The journey of a thousand miles…
…begins with getting a visa.
Confucius was prescient. Passports for ordinary travelers are a recent development. Of course, so are ordinary travelers.
Even as late as 1911, The Encyclopedia Britannica described a passport as a “safe-conduct, in time of war.” 1911 was not a time of war; it’s about the last time that wasn’t. “Although most foreign countries may now be entered without passports,” it goes on to say, “the English Foreign Office recommends travellers to furnish themselves with them…”
That is so pre-6/28.
Getting a visa to visit China used to be a matter of going to the office, handing over a photo and $50, and having them stamp your passport. That was before the Olympics. The day that the Olympic torch arrived in San Francisco was unfortunately the day that I went to the Chinese consulate there. Protestors were scaling the Golden Gate bridge, the torch had been attacked in Paris, and the consular officers were in a bad mood.
I waited two hours in line and the man at window 8 would not even accept my application.
I guessed wrong about too many things.
I put down “Tourism Solar Eclipse” as my reason for going. In Chile, in Zambia, in the Philippines, this is a free pass to the front of the line, as the bureaucrats don’t want to impede scientists.
Not so, this guy. First he had to look up in his Chinese English dictionary what Solar Eclipse meant, and after that it became clear that he had never even thought of the possibility that the moon and the sun might have anything to do with each other and if I thought so, there was something afoot. Maybe astronomy is suspected of being a Falun Gong thing. You don’t get a foreign posting — San Francisco no less — under the age of thirty, even as a clerk, by spending time looking up at the sky.
Then he wanted to know why I checked One Year Multiple Entry rather than Three Months One Entry. I said, well, they cost the same. This is not an argument to be used to Communists, even ones for whom it does not, by decree, matter any longer if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice. It’s just a different way of thinking. Of course, we are talking about the civil service here. I don’t suppose American apparatchiki think in terms of economy either.
He made me go stand in another line, so I could talk to the lady who had come over behind the desk to tell him what she thought a solar eclipse was. She said I needed to bring her a complete itinerary. She was a bit incredulous, that I was going to be in China this summer and not at the Opening Ceremony. Wants me to prove it. They clearly did not want people at loose ends in Beijing. Or anywhere.
The next time I went, I brought a folder with all the printouts from my hotel reservations on Travelocity and a printout of the pdf describing Eclipse City and all. The lady was entirely dismissive. She said, “What for you want to go to Urumqi” and did not even listen to my reply. She said of all the printouts: “This is not itinerary. Anyone can type this.”
I asked her directly if independent travel was permitted in China. She said directly, no. If that is truly the case, it hasn’t been mentioned in Rough Guide.
She said she knew because she used to work for CITS. She wanted an itinerary from CITS describing my participation in a group tour, and nothing else counted.
After a couple of weeks of email with Eclipse City, I had a document in Chinese from CITS explaining that I was going where I was going. I had to trim our trip down to 30 days because everyone now agrees that visas for longer than 30 days are not granted, at least until the Olympics have passed.
But this time I did what I should have done in the first place: I went to a travel agent. In one week, for only an extra $30 handling fee and $15 FedEx, Dave and I had our visas to China. There was no charge for a “rush” order, though it came through that fast.
The FedEx fee was because China Travel Service sent our passports to Los Angeles, where they have better relations with the consulate. Angela, at China Travel Service, knew exactly what she wanted to know. “What window did you go to?” she asked me. By which she meant to ask, what individual did you talk to and did that person have prejudices that might interfere with the issuance of the document. In the end, it was better to try another office.
So bookmark this as the place to get your Chinese travel plans:
China Travel Service
930 Montgomery Street #501
San Francisco 94133
As a final irony, completely without asking, the Los Angeles consulate gave us a 60 day visa, good 6 months. But we’ve already got non-refundable tickets to leave Shanghai on Day 30; it would cost $500 to change that.
There is one other item on the agenda for summer. Our friend Dan, whom we met on the train in 1999 is getting married in Craiova at the end of August. Unfortunately Digidesign has made a product release schedule that requires Dave not to take the whole summer off; therefore I am going to see Dan on my own. I have also allowed some time to go see our friends in Iasi and Bucharest before coming home just in time for the rehearsal dinner of Dave’s cousin Ryan, who is getting married on September 14. Ever since they made it legal for boys and girls to get married, they all seem to want to do it.