Hey Kids!
Do you remember the very first post I made on this blog? No? Well, it was concerned with the difficulties I faced receiving my paperwork and subsequent visa to study in China for one semester. This occurred whilst I was still in Australia. My visa was an F visa, appropriate for 180 days of study, and by the end of my language exchange at Nanjing University, my time was almost up. Instead of taking my flight back home, I decided to pursue an internship in China for a further five-or-so months. The application for an internship whilst in China was remarkably simple. I was interested in working with an NGO doing community-based work. I went onto the China Development Brief website, which has a comprehensive list of Chinese-based NGO’s (http://www.chinadevelopmentbrief.cn/?page_id=1027) After sifting through the organisation listings, I found a handful of places which appealed to me. I emailed them my plea for an internship using both English and Chinese, introduced myself and attached an appropriate resume. I had about a 50% success rate with responses. I was particularly excited by the request I got for a Skype interview from a small organisation called ‘IFChina Original Studio.’ [www.facebook.com/ifchinaoriginalstudio] After the Spring Festival/Chinese New Year period, I needed to make a final decision about which internship I would choose. I did some final interviews via Skype, and concluded that IFChina, although small (employing only 3 full time staff), was an offer that I just couldn’t refuse. Without time to reflect on my fateful decision, I leaped into organising my next visa, having only two weeks left on my current one.
The paperwork I organised went as follows, I used guidelines taken off of multiple embassy websites to prepare these: <Applying for an F Visa (unpaid work, half-year study, internship)>
Letter of Invitation from host company/school
Photocopy of photo page of passport Photocopy of past Chinese visa and entrance stamp
Form of Registration of Temporary Residence (to be requested from Hotels or YHA Hostels, showing that you are staying in the city of application the night after the visa is applied for, Hotels in smaller cities may not understand what this is and may not know how to register you. Ask them if they know before you check-in and provide an example of the form.)
Letter of Invitation from host company
A multitude of passport sized photos to use on Visa Application Forms (Forms provided at Visa Centre)
Proof of finances, 50,000 RMB equivalent (I printed out a bank statement, they never even glanced at it)
Proof of Return Flight (Never requested)
I was in Beijing, frantically trying to get this all organised, as I knew that I was already running out of time, the rules state that you should have 7 days left on your visa in order to apply for a new one. After hounding the organisation for appropriate forms and running around Beijing for internet access and printing stations, I finally was ready to face the Entrance and Exit Visa Office in Beijing (located fairly close to Llama Temple.) I filled in my application form, lined up with my ticket and was immediately denied. It was late and the officer glanced down at my paper “This company is in Jiangxi Province” She said dryly “You must go to that province.” Devastated, I left. It had begun.
Just to make sure that the officer wasn’t just trying to get rid of me when it was almost closing time, I went back again, got denied again (by a different officer) and was told that visa’s are issued provincially. I protested, “But…but…This is the capital of China…” They gave me no sympathy and refused to tell me where the visa office in Jiangxi was located, although the officer said that he would have approved the papers offered, if they were for Beijing area.
The next day, my trusty boyfriend and I left for the capital of Jiangxi Province, Nanchang. Booked into a hotel and got them to fill out the Form of Temporary Residence. There was no information online about the visa office, but I found something on a Chinese website which pointed me in the general direction. We ended up going to two separate offices before finally coming to the Visa office. I filled out the forms, lined up, and got immediately sent to another private office upstairs. There was no one in the office, because they were on their customary lunch break from 12 to 1.30pm. We went away and came back to wait outside the door, only for the door to open and for us to realise that the officer had been sleeping in the office the entire time. I showed him our forms and explained in broken, stressed Chinese that we were sent up here for some unknown reason. He looked at my papers and decided he couldn’t help. More stressed Chinese conversation ensued and I convinced him to explain why, “You hotel has not registered you as a Temporary Resident on our system.” I showed him my Temporary Resident form, it was not enough. I called the hotel and got him to explain to them the process. We waited in that office for 3 hours. Alternating between calling the hotel and refusing to leave the couch for any reason “come back tomorrow” he said, we refused “go downstairs and ask them” he begged, we refused. Finally, he relented and simply signed the forms and sent us away, happy to go back to playing games on his phone.
Back downstairs, we showed them the signed form. They sent me to get photos taken. I did so and then returned. They looked at the papers, then denied them. “The organisation is in Ji’An city” the officer said “We can’t help you here.” I was close to tears as I told them about what they had said in Beijing. They shrugged “Visa’s are Municipal, not provincial” When I asked them whether a small city like Ji’An would even HAVE a visa office they waved off my concerns, although refused to provide me with an address.
We went to Ji’An the next day. There was no information online about a visa office, although I found an address in Chinese which was a large police station. I got the Temporary Residence form from the hotel and asked them to ensure they registered me in the local system. We went to the address, but a little girl and a shopkeeper both told me that it had been relocated years ago. The shopkeeper gave me another address and the little girl gave me a smile. We went to the other side of the city to the giant police station, but it was completely empty. They were all on their obligatory 12 to 2pm lunch break. We came back and spoke to an officer, they pointed at another building in the distance and said we needed to go there for a visa. We went to the other building in the distance and got sent from floor to floor. Eventually we found an officer who gave us the address for the actual visa office. We hitched a ride with a random guy, and finally made it. I showed the papers (no line this time) and were immediately denied. I called the company I was going to work for and they spoke with them because my Chinese had become so stressed as to be incomprehensible. We were told to come back the next day with the person from my company in tow. We needed more papers from the company apparently.
The next day we returned to the office bright and early equipped with native-speaker power. We first asked the officer what papers we needed, and she sent us to another police station. We went to the other police station and fought verbally with the officer there to help us out with whatever we needed help with rather than tell us to go back to Nanchang. Finally, she told us that the hotel hadn’t registered us as Temporary Residents. We went to the hotel, they didn’t know what to do. We went to another hotel. They did. After the lunch break which ended at 4pm, we went back to the station, and got my form signed. We went back to the visa office, I had no hope left in my little heart, but when the officer started putting little stickies on the forms and gluing things together I felt victorious. The company had to provide an endless amount of forms and proof of establishment for no particular reason other than they were ‘small’ (aka, can’t provide adequate bribes.) Suddenly, the officer shook her head and started taking off the little stickies, because, unfortunately my visa was already being processed in Nanchang. Of course. And that visa office didn’t have their phone number. Of course. And their office didn’t have internet access. Of course. Answer me this, if all visa offices use the same goddamn system, what does it matter if I’m standing in Beijing or Nanchang or Ji’An? Our native-speaker power ended up having to call someone to look-up the number, so that we could call the office, to cancel the process in Nanchang so that we could start it in Ji’An. As the papers were slid to the side of the desk, and my passport was finally handed over, I paid the 100yuan visa fee and was told that my next visa would be valid for 3 months rather than the 6 I had requested. “But why?” I asked, barely caring any more.
The officer shrugged “I don’t believe that you would want to come to this city and work for six months without pay.”
She didn’t BELIEVE me, so now I will be seeing her again very soon.
(This post took me a long time to write because I felt very traumatised by the experience. It was not the nicest way to transition into a new stage of my life here in China. I could very easily start an examination of the entire bureaucratic system of not taking personal responsibility for actions and job credentials based on who your parents know. But I won’t. Because it’s tiring and all too obvious to see. I hope this post advises others of the process, and maybe they will consider going to Hong Kong rather than applying in China.)
Peace y’all
Soaring Red Bucket 