A Life in Fuzhou - An Unexpected Trip to Hong Kong

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A couple of weeks ago, I was toying with different ways to start this blog, and I wrote this as a possible first sentence: "Things here in Fuzhou seemed to go from 0 to house-classes-job in about 10 days flat."

Now I think I can write the second sentence: "Then, things here in Fuzhou got dangerously close to resuming houselessness, classlessness and joblessness in another 10 days flat."

Dangerously close are the key words there: I was about one paperwork technicality away from a completely botched year abroad. Talk about toeing the edge. But thanks to some fortuitous intervention from powers on high, and a good deal of luck, the most recent bureaucratic oracle bones point in my favor: the life I had in Fuzhou looks like one I will be able to return to. Thank ye, thine gods of Chinese visa fortune. And damn ye all the same. Five days ago, my being able to go back to Fuzhou was still very much in question. And no matter what, I've missed a solid week of classes, a teaching position at a kindergarten, and ....

Let me explain. How did I end up in the Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong (a place no doubt worthy of a blog unto itself), while my classmates wondered wheremights the American be? And how, after being marooned there for a week, did I get back? It will only do to begin at the beginning.

This is a story in my ongoing relationship with China, but specifically it is a story of my love for Mandarin. There are many other factors and figures in play here, of course, but of all the candidates for protagonist, Mandarin hands down wins it. Mandarin is why I came to Fuzhou—to pursue my passion for it as far as it may take me in 11 months time. I am hugely fortunate to have the opportunity to do so. I have traveled in China, and I have taken Chinese classes in America, but never have I taken Chinese classes in China. That, I know well, is what my Mandarin requires: intimate saturation with the language, in both life and study. Hopefully, at the end of two semesters in Fuzhou, I'll have tasted the sweet, hard-won nectar of fluency, or at the least be well past the rind. That is my present crusade.

And for the first few weeks at least, Fuzhou was very receptive to this crusade. Between classes, accommodation and friends, it was a veritable nest-egg for my language study. It, with few exceptions, was exactly what I wanted out of it.

Take, for example, the house.

Nestled on one side of "turtle ridge," a residential street snaking around the backside of our university's campus, is a small but beautiful yard, and a photographer who watches over it. How we found this yard, met the photographer and managed to secure one of the surrounding rooms is a long story, but suffice it to say that the international dorms offered by the school were enough to send us looking. Imagine the sterile, faux-lavish atmosphere of a building that literally used to be a hotel, and you will have the international dorms. Not only expensive, but mandatory if you want to get accommodations through the school. Doubtless we would at least have a crack at finding a place on our own.

By "we" I mean myself and the other Reedie who has come to study Chinese at Fujian Normal University—Ben. Ben and I didn't know each other very well before China, but it was clear once we met here that at least that our sensibilities for accommodations agreed. Intensive study thrives on a certain asceticism, and we both felt the dorm-hotel was much too lavish. And if disenchantment with the dorms was mutual, so was our enchantment with the yard on turtle ridge. In fact, it took us quite by surprise.

A beat-up iron gate opens onto a brown-tiled yard which, though small, entertains a large tree, a tiny garden, an outdoor kitchen and a dining table. The table rests against the wall of a house, and everywhere on this wall are simple, but tasteful decorations. A flask of sake. Slices of a tree trunk, each about a inch wide. Flowers—both real and unreal—and animal hides, definitely real. A narrow bamboo ladder leads you to a roof recreation area, where there is small table, and a supremely cute wooden swing set. You can see descending vegetation and buildings for a ways into the distance.

The housing compound rests on a hill (as does the whole university campus) and so to reach it from turtle ridge, you have to descend about a dozen steps. To get from the yard to our rooms, it is another half a dozen. There are four rooms at this lower level, and if I can boast on their account at all, it is because they are big. They are about a third bigger than a single at Reed (score!), and are all singles themselves. The walls are a bad case of off-white after years of spackel jobs and dirt accumulation, but the floors are a nice, clear tile. The furniture looks like you went down to the Portland bins and paid about five dollars for everything. There is a bathroom in each room, and that's where it gets good:

There's only a squat toilet, no sit-down. You can't really hold that against the landlord though because squatties are the rule and not the exception in China. Even now, I'd say the ratio is about 80-20 between squat and sit-down toilets across the country, though sit-downs are ever more on the rise.

In addition to the toilet I found: no shower head, a tiny sink, and the real coup-de-grace: no hot water. Well, that wouldn't matter too much in the summer months right?

...There would be an asceticism aside the aesthetic, but that's kind of what Ben and I were looking for anyway. Even with these shortcomings, Ben and I were expecting at least six or seven hundred RMB a month. The old Chinese landlord, who we call Auntie Ke, asked for 300RMB. Factor in electricity and WIFI (which we pay for ourselves) and that's maybe 400RMB. That's about 60 USD a month. One look between Ben and I, and it was settled. We signed a contract and moved in the very day we found it....

It was not just the look of the place or the rooms that made our dollar worth it at the turtle ridge house though. Very soon after moving in, we met one of the compound's long-time tenants: Teacher Yi (Yi Laoshi). An early retiree from a career in engineering, Teacher Yi now devotes most of his time to photography, a passion that nicely complements his ease and magnanimity with other people. His demeanor is utterly simple and charming, he is fond of jokes and he approaches difficulties with a straightforward and earnest tact. He is fearless in befriending strangers and will often invite new friends back to our home to dine, to drink, to share stories and to partake in photographs. Ben and I joke that Yi Laoshi is basically a bachelor, and that this is his pad, and that there is a disproportionate number of lovely ladies in addition to male friends invited back to the house. This...may well be true. But it is certainly true as well that Teacher Yi is through and through a fountain of goodwill, that he is both extensional and kind, and that he has a large and ever-widening circle of friends for a good reason. Ben and I were, of course, immediate recipients of his hospitality; in fact we probably received it several fold considering the fact that we are Americans. I cannot account for how many meals or how much tea (or liquor) we were treated to because of Teacher Yi, or how many new Chinese people we met at different intersections of his social web. Or, indeed, how many times we were at the other end of his camera. This warm and seemingly perpetual social atmosphere, along with near ubiquitous chance to practice Mandarin, were perks Ben and I could not have foreseen.

Owing in no small part to Teacher Yi, and the fact that Ben and I have ended up next-door neighbors, our house is not just a house, but a home. And putting a price on that is surely next to impossible.

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If you asked me two months ago how I'd imagine the classroom dynamic in a typical FNU class, I think one of the last things I would have imagined is 10 or so mostly Indonesian and Filipino girls rowdily cracking jokes in broken Chinese as our teacher tries desperately to keep them on task. Thankfully, by the grace of good teachers, this dynamic still manages to work, and even work well. It turns out most of FNU's 100 or so international students hail from Southeast Asia, although in my class there are sprinklings of Koreans, Japanese, Mongolians and even one girl from Kyrgyzstan. We have classes five days a week, three hours a day, all in the morning. A few days out of the week we have electives in the afternoon, like calligraphy or Tai Chi, but they are completely optional. My regular classes are five in total: speaking, reading, grammar, writing and Chinese culture, all conducted in Mandarin. I have the same classmates, and the same classroom, for every class. The teachers rotate.

In so far as work load and work ethic, students here can work either very hard, or get away with minimum effort and little repercussions. This suits me just fine, not because I'm apt to slack, but because I like room to personalize my work when I work hard. FNU definitely gives you that room...but it also gives a solid faculty who know what it takes to learn a language and are ready to dole as much rope as we dare pull.

A pleasant compliment to the quality classes is the fact that we get to take them in a stunningly beautiful building. I mean, I was prepared for a blocky, impersonal, nondescript Communist cube, where the sides of the buildings look like they are crying after years of dirty water leaking from air conditioners. In fact, we have the pleasure of taking classes in one of FNU's oldest buildings, a stately thing that looks like a cross between Reed's collegiate Gothic Eliot Hall and a Chinese pagoda. So I was blessed on two fronts it seems, in so far as beauty: the pageantry of an old brick school, and the quiet delight of the turtle ridge yard.

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At the end of the first week I managed to land a very decent part time job teaching English at a local kindergarten. I won't go into it much here (I think the picture says most of it anyway), but suffice it to say that it would have made another chapter in the educational exploits of Teacher C...or put more directly, another chapter of my learning the hard way what little bastards kids can be. But that is the nature of the beast when you are dealing with spoiled brats, although their kids can be pretty nice too sometimes. Did I mention that the parents would sit in for 15 minutes of "door check" at the end of every day of school to see what their kids have learned? Don't look at me mom and dad, I'm just the only white face here.

It was good work. Was good work.

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Between school, work and home life, I was increasingly busy, but decidedly satisfied. In truth, I think I could hardly have asked for better (unless, of course, I was asking for hot water).

Thus it is with equal parts comedy and tragedy that the gods of Chinese visa fortune decided my lot in Fuzhou was too nice, and proceeded to threaten me with compulsory removal from my life here altogether. Here is the story, the whole crazy story, of my unexpected trip to Hong Kong.

Make that trips to Hong Kong, in fact.

One day a few weeks ago, I was pulled out of class by an administrator, and told that we were going to go take care of my visa. Now obviously, I already had my student visa, else I couldn't have entered the country in the first place. But we had been told by the schoolmaster in charge of us foreign students, Professor Lin, that the school would take us in due time to the local visa office to do something like “register our visas.” What we were in fact doing was registering my residence permit. Since I plan to be studying here for more than six months, I do not have a traditional visa day limit; instead, I have 30 days once I arrive in China to register at a local visa office for a residence permit. This fact is printed in small letters at the bottom of the long-term visa when you receive it. If I have known that the affair would take the course that it did, I would have plastered that little notice in large capitals across the front door to my room here, and demanded that the school take me to the office in a timely fashion. Not being more mindful of this deadline was surely my first mistake. As it stood, the school assumed total responsibility for the trip to the visa office. Considering they do this every semester with each batch of new students, I figured that leaving the affair in their hands was a matter of course, and to be honest, the whole thing rather left my mind as school, work etc. picked up....

That was my second mistake.

The administrator who took me to the office that March day, Miss Lu, happened to be just as green as I was at FNU. She started work there just this February. So when the Chinese visa official promptly told us that I had already overstayed the visa time limit for dealing with the residence permit by 4 days, and that this was a serious affair, she was dumbfounded. Miss Lu immediately gave Professor Lin a call, but between the two of them...absolutely nothing happened. Two hours of discussion between administrator, professor, myself and the clerk later, and the visa office still maintained the same strict line: my overstay could not be overlooked, regardless if I was under the university's wing, and regardless if it was their fault. I had one option if I wanted to continue my studies: to leave the country and then come back. In the meantime, I would have to be issued a temporary 10 day visa.

As I would find out in the next few days, several factors conspired to make this situation especially difficult. In addition to the fact that my administrator was completely green, the FNU employee who specializes in dealing with foreign students' visas had been sick for a month. So even though the school had been made aware of when I arrived in the country, and should have known when I would have to go to the visa office, they dropped the ball. Fortunately, once it became clear that I would have to leave the country, they accepted responsibility for this blunder, and agreed to pay for the visa and traveling fees for a train trip down to Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, insofar as actually resolving the affair, the school proved completely incompetent. Not only was their staff sick and green, but none of them, in fact, had dealt with an overstay under China's new immigration laws, which have only gone into effect in the past year or two. Accidental student overstays are actually not all that uncommon, but before, they were weren't as big a deal. Some years ago another American student at FNU overstayed their time limit for dealing with the residence permit by 30 days, and wasn't required to leave the country at all. A few phone calls between the school and the visa bureau, and it was swept under the rug. Now, the rules are stricter, the guard has changed, and overstays are treated with all the inane tenacity and unmitigated punctiliousness that Chinese bureaucracy can muster. And the school, for its part, would be figuring out how to deal with this (with me as their guinea pig) as things went along.

I made the trip to Hong Kong as soon as was possible. Fortunately, there is a five and a half hour bullet train from Fuzhou to Shenzhen (which borders Hong Kong), so I was able to head south and cross the border in a timely fashion. I walked the streets of Hong Kong for the better part of an evening (quite an experience, actually), and was on my way back to Fuzhou in the morning. Come Monday, I presented Professor Lin with my visa, and she gave a start. A confused look crossed her face, she made some phone calls and before long the reality of the situation reared its ugly head: my trip to Hong Kong had been completely in vain. This was maddening, you might imagine. I had been told by both the school and the visa office that I would simply need to leave the country and come back in. But the visa clerk was listless, and the school hadn't a clue themselves. The notion of mere exit and re-entry even made sense to me, as my original visa was multiple re-entry, and could be renewed. But all of this was a complete misunderstanding: my original visa had been canceled, and I would have to do more than just leave and re-enter the country; I would have to apply for a whole new visa in Hong Kong.

So I did what I had to do: prepare for another trip to Hong Kong. I left on the 26th hoping things could, again, be resolved quickly and cleanly. I should have known better. I arrived in Hong Kong, checked into the cheapest hotel block on the Kowloon side—the Chungking Mansions—and went to the HK visa office. But it quickly became clear that the school (and myself) had totally underestimated how strict and rigorous the application process in Hong Kong would be—particularly for those who have an overstay on their record. To make matters worse, the school equipped me with the wrong application forms. The HK visa office made it clear that I would need the original student visa application form (which goes by the name of JW202), not the copies the school gave me. In addition, I would need a letter from the school explaining my overstay.

This would push my date of application back at least a few days as the school prepared to mail the necessary materials. I was shocked and furious that, once again, the school messed up royally on my behalf, but I was also hopeful. Once the materials arrived, I would be able to apply. It was troublesome and inconvenient, yes, to have to waste time and money in Hong Kong, but at least it was not critical. It was not until my next visit to the visa office that I felt I could be in serious trouble.

As I was waiting for my materials to be sent from the school, I went back to the office to ask a few clarifying questions. On second look at the copy of my JW202, they pointed out a troubling fact: the JW202 I would be applying with prescribes a specific deadline for registering with the school, a deadline which would already have passed by the time I used the form for the new visa application. So even though I would use the original form and not a copy, the office insisted that the fact that the registration deadline will have passed by the time I apply would also be grounds for refusal, and that the school had better issue new forms with new dates. I immediately contacted the school. Their reply, however, was simply that we had better find another option, because no matter what they do, such new forms would take at least a month to be processed by the Chinese government.

My stomach dropped. That “other option” basically entailed getting a tourist visa, which would allow me to enter the country long enough for them to work on getting me another residence permit. But the Hong Kong visa office is notorious for denying anyone who has overstayed their visa, regardless of the reason. When I brought up the option to apply for a tourist visa, they told me that I would outright be rejected. I need not even try to apply.

It was quickly becoming clear that the Hong Kong visa office was not bound by any force or person to accept my application, and that not Fujian Normal, not Reed and not myself had any real power to persuade them. Realizing that a whole year abroad along with mountains of time, money and effort were on the line, I went to the US Embassy in Hong Kong to plead my case. They empathized with me, but ultimately threw up their hands. “We do not advocate individual visa cases,” they promptly stated.

One possible back-up option was to send my application back to the US where, because it's my mother country, I would have better chances of being accepted. The trouble with this is that it would take at least two weeks to get the application back. Not only would I be missing classes etc., but it is illegal to be in Hong Kong without a passport anyway (of course, one must submit his/her passport with the visa application). And successfully getting the visa would not be guaranteed anyway.

The nuclear option, of course, would be to simply fly back to the states, and act from there.

I sat broiling in this catch 22 situation until Monday, when my materials arrived from the school. It was then that I made my third trip to the Hong Kong visa office, where against all odds, I found some luck. I had no intention of applying that day; I wanted only to ask a few final questions. I stood in line for a solid hour and half and on finally making it to one of the windows, presented my documents. On looking at the original JW-202, the lady clerk told me what I already knew: that I would be rejected if I tried to use it. In fact, she added that even if the dates were correct, I would be rejected anyway, because apparently JW-202's are one-time-use-only forms (why was I not told before?), and I had already used this one to get my original student visa. She was about to hand my materials back when I threw out a question: what if I applied as a short term student? It was an option I hadn't considered much before seeing as I'm planning to study for a whole year, and short-term visas are only good for a semester. Surely at this point though, anything would be a godsend. She paused, got up and went to go talk to her supervisor. Apparently short term visas do not require a JW202, only an acceptance letter, so there was some gray area around my question. I figured they would probably still reject it because of the overstay. Then again, I did have the explanation letter from the school. She came back several minutes later, and I detected the smallest of smiles on her face. She told me the office would approve the application “just this once.”

I was ecstatic. As long as the supervisor was good for her word, I would at least have the opportunity to get back to Fuzhou and resume classes. They took my materials and passport, and told me that I could pick them up again in four days....

Of course, even if my application was processed successfully, this still left the question of what to do at the end of the spring semester. Would I have to leave the country come summer? If I went back to Hong Kong, would I encounter the same difficulties all over again? Would it be even harder to get a short-term student visa a second time? Would I be forced to return to the states in a matter of months anyway?

Here is where the real dues ex machina of this story came into play. About five days prior to that day in the visa office, my dad had been helping a long time client of his, Tom Brown, repair a car. They ended up at a mutual friend's house to address other car issues, and after work sat down to chat about this and that. Eventually the conversation arrived at my recent difficulties in China, and my dad told the whole story.

As it turns out Tom's cousin is married to Darrell Issa, a California congressman. Tom empathized with my situation and called his cousin that day to discuss the matter with her; Mrs. Issa, in turn, brought it to her husband's attention. That evening, Congressman Issa gave my dad a call, got more details on my case, and, showing legitimate concern, promptly promised he would have some of his staff assigned to it. Staff would try to work through some “channels in Washington” to see if anything could be done for me....

At this point, my dad and I were somewhat incredulous, and extremely curious as to whether or not anything would come of this. My dad gave me Issa's staff email address, and I sent them a blow by blow report of everything that happened, including scanned copies of all my relevant documents. In the next few days, we exchanged any new info. They updated me on attempts to contact different departments and consulars, and I updated them on visits to the visa office.

Thursday, the day I would to pick up my application, bore very good tidings. In the morning, I received an email from Issa's staff explaining that the Congressman had met with the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco—for tea. Issa proceeded to explain to my present situation. The Consulate General, Mr. Luo, by sheer luck happens to have been the former chairman of the commission on visa adjudication in Hong Kong. Now he works as the SF Consulate. After tea, Mr. Luo...pulled some strings. Who he called and what he said exactly may be left to the imagination, but regardless of the machinations Issa's staff email assure me that: "all the arrangements had been made.” I was told I could pick up an approved visa on my next visit to the office.

Lo and behold, on arriving at the office that Thursday, a long-term student visa was waiting for me.

I was across border, and on my way back to Fuzhou, that very evening.

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So, moral of the story...have friends in high places?

Yes!, but slightly less crass would be: take matters into your own hands and be extremely scrupulous when your fate lies in the hands of the great beasts that are modern day bureaucracies. Then maybe you won't need such friends to bail you out in the first place....

I had only been gone a week, but Fuzhou was a sight for sore eyes. It was hot (even hotter than Hong Kong, somehow), but at least people speak Mandarin, not Cantonese, and at least a mango drink doesn't cost 5USD a pop. I had a hell of a story for everybody on turtle ridge, but lord was it challenge for my Chinese to explain it all! Fortunately, Ben was there to absorb those exclamations I couldn't help but blurt out in English (how, for instance, do you translate “channels in Washington”?!). We drank some tea, had dinner and I was, to say the least, glad to be home.

The kindergarten job had evaporated in the boiling calamity of my week abroad. But it is understandable: I didn't know how long it would be before I could come back—whether it would be one week or three (or at all)—and I told them as much. I was a new higheree, and they looked for and found a replacement while I was gone. I'm sure another job teaching English could not be too hard to find.

As for classes, well, after a week of being gone...I have some studying to catch up on, to say the least. But that is the studying I came here for, the studying I know I have the fortune to do.

Barring any more technical difficulties, I'll have 9 more months to savor it.



With love from Fuzhou,

Chris

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Photos

Squattie
Complete with makeshift toilet cover~