情，帮助我！（Ｐｌｅａｓｅ，ｈｅｌｐ ｍｅ！)

Good evening, possums!

In case you didn’t receive an invite, last weekend I held my going-away party. It was a fun night, full of tears, laughter and general frivolity.

I mean, it was an awesome party! However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was pulling the wool over the eyes of my lovely friends and family. Here they were, wishing me bon voyage, giving me gifts and being generally impressed over my gutsy move to study in China.

I’m a fraud.

You see, I still haven’t received my paperwork (see post below) and I have no flights, no visa, no insurance, no study grant money… All I have is an armful vaccines and this tenderly hopeful blog.

Pulling myself together, I decided on an action plan to be initiated as soon as I was over the Sunday hangover.

My good friend, Amanda, was first subjected to my complaints and then lured to my house with the promise of tea and fluffy animals. In reality, I was going to get her to call Nanjing people pretending to be me. I decided she was perfect for the job as she had just come back from her own exchange trip to China the semester previous, with a similarly arduous visa process (Think: Extricating a student visa in a Chinese police station on the 29th day of a 30 day tourist visa.) [read her travel blog here: mandakayandsdu.tumblr.com]

My hands desperately clutched at a piece of paper, with a contact number for the university written on it. I grit my teeth against the ensuing international phone rates and dialed. It rang. I shoved the phone at my friend. It rang. And then…nothing. No answer. Not even a message bank. A horribly bleak image of a buzzing phone in an empty office somewhere in China briefly flashed through my mind.

Pulling together some ingenuity, we then scoured the internet for other contact numbers for Nanjing University.

One-by-one we dialed: Rang out, disconnected, incorrect number, then finally…

“喂，你好”

Success! Tears of happiness sprung to my cheeks. Like first contact with outer space, we clung to the sound of that woman’s dulcet tones. She proved to me that Nanjing University was not a fanciful, made-up place.

Unfortunately, it turned out that she wasn’t actually IN Nanjing that day and so couldn’t put us through to anyone.

But I didn’t let that tarnish the moment, inspired by our breakthrough, I wrote an email to Nanjing uni using the most polite-yet-strongly-worded Chinese that Amanda could provide.

Two hours later, I received a reply.

Two hours.

That’s all it took.

My home university had been emailing them for months and had never received a response.

In English.

China is not ready to deal with what they don’t fully understand. Seeing those emails, written in a foreign language, must have made them deselect the ‘important’ star with which they were sent.

Eyes wide, I savoured my newest lifeline as they suggested that they send ELECTRONIC copies of my paperwork. Yes, I wrote back, yes please, 多谢帮助我 (Thankyou so much for helping me)

And that’s all it takes, apparently, a simple thank you in a person’s mother tongue.

Paperwork Dreams

Hey Kids,

So…you’re going to China next month? What a relief that all the information you need, including application forms for a Student Visa, will have arrived long before you started the countdown.

Oh dear, so naive.

When my mother asked me the reasons behind the delay of something as simple as a few forms…I answered simply, “Because China.”

Yes, China, you pretend to be all grown up and ready to accept the onslaught of students ready and willing to study in your Universities, however the reality is there just aren’t sufficient processes in place yet to do that. At present, China’s processing of foreign students is about as efficient as Beijing’s sewerage system.

(See post by Taylor, 2012, posted by ‘Business Insider Australia’ for an explanation of this particular comparison: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/beijing-flood-sewer-photo-2012-7)

I predict that in a matter of years, the process will become as normalised and habitual as a foreigner learning to throw toilet paper in the bin rather than flushing it down. I can’t help but feel that I am at the tail-end of the ‘first wave’ of exchange students to China. We are boldly paving the way for the many thousands of students who will one day do their own version of the ‘China experience’. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself as I check my email inbox and experience that all-too familiar feeling of foolish hope followed by a veritable flushing sensation in the pit of my stomach as I count down the days until I am expected in Nanjing University.

29 days to go.

Maybe I should buy flights to Korea and wait out the visa processing there?

Flooding in Beijing which was exacerbated by a woefully inadequate sewerage system