In “Casablanca,’’ foreigners covet letters of transit that allow them to travel through Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. In China, foreign teachers prize work visas and residence permits that allow them to stay in the country for at least a year.
I obtained a work visa before coming to China and then got a one-year residence permit shortly after I arrived. Many teachers aren’t so lucky. For various reasons, including age, lack of work experience and bureaucratic bungling, they come with short-term visas that must be extended during their stay.
To extend a short-term visa you must temporarily leave the country, which explains why teachers are always shuttling to Hong Kong. (Although Hong Kong has been under Chinese control since 1997, it’s a Special Administrative Region that has a different political and judicial system than the mainland. So, even though it’s part of China, going from the mainland to Hong Kong is considered leaving the country.)
My colleague Kristina just endured a nightmarish, three-week, 3,400-mile trek in a futile attempt to get a work visa and residence permit. She’s now back in Zhengzhou, but will soon have to leave again because she still doesn’t the proper documents to stay in China.
The 27-year-old American came here in late September on a 30-day tourist visa. She tried to get a work visa but couldn’t because Henan Province, where our university is located, wouldn’t recognize her experience as a private tutor. She hoped to get a residence permit while in China by applying in another province where her tutoring background would be accepted.
After a seven-hour, high-speed train ride from Zhengzhou to the outskirts of Hong Kong, Kristina spent several days obtaining a work visa. Then she had to wait a few more days to get a three-hour flight to Yantai in Shandong Province, where she planned to apply for a residence permit that would allow her to stay in China for a year. But when she arrived in Yantai, she discovered that her passport, which also contained her visa, was missing. She thought she left it on the plane, but the airline couldn’t find it.
A foreigner in China without a passport is like a non-person. You need it to do almost anything, including staying at a hotel, buying a train ticket or getting money from a bank.
Traveling alone and unable to speak Chinese, Kristina spent five days in Yantai filling out police reports and dealing with various agencies. She slept in a university dorm room and used a photocopy of her passport to buy a train ticket to Beijing, where she applied for a new passport at the U.S. Embassy. However, she was told her photos were too large and that she would have to come back the following day.
Running out of money and unable to get a hotel room without a passport, she again had to stay in a college dorm. She returned to the U.S. Embassy the next day but the printer was broken, forcing her to wait several hours to get a temporary passport.
Then it was back to Yantai on a 12-hour overnight train to sign a paper related to her lost passport. Kristina stayed there for five days, but all she could get was permission to stay in the country for another 10 days. She returned to Zhengzhou on Sunday, still awaiting word on her fate.
Kristina had to leave her passport in Yantai while they review her reports on the missing documents. When the passport is returned, she’ll have to go back to Hong Kong and start the whole visa process over again.
I get a headache just thinking about it.
