Surviving China: Paperwork

So after a night that left us all, professors included, wondering what exactly we had signed for when we agreed to go on a study abroad, it was time to make our stay in China a little more comfortable. Fully aware that our students were about ready to jump on the next flight to Beijing, we met up with our students first thing that Friday morning, and laid out the different things we were going to accomplish that day: Food, internet, and a room change for the students who'd spent the night on plywood boards.

One would think all of these things would be easily achievable. After all, we had a Chinese speaking professor with us, we were all fairly well-educated, eager to learn new ways of doing things, and, most importantly, we had brought every singly document that could possibly be of importance to our stay in China with us, in triplicate.  What we did not have, however, was an understanding of how much bureaucracy is a way of life in China. How it isn't just a necessary evil one accepts in going about one's daily life, no, bureaucracy is daily life.

If you want to buy train tickets, for instance, you need to "queue"at a designated spot at the railway station, have an acceptable ID with you (i.e., passport or residence permit), and if you're a student, a very specific kind of student ID. You can't just have a normal handwritten student ID, as all foreign students have, no you have to have one with a bar code. Otherwise the railway employee can't swipe it. And if the railway employee can't swipe it, you can't travel on a student ticket. And if you're a student, you'll want to travel on a student ticket.

Or "free" wifi. Beiing airport advertises its "free wifi" with a vengeance. It's everywhere, on billboards, signs, buses, people movers, you name it. What they neglect to mention is that in order to get this "free wifi" you have to go a specific kiosk (of which there is one in each terminal. Yes, one), swipe your passport, and type in your name, address, and date of birth. You then receive a stub with a user name and ID that is valid for one hour. Assuming the wifi lets you on in the first place. Because most Chinese wifi does not appear to like the Mac OS. Or many other random PCs. Or smartphones for that matter.

I wish I could tell you that things are different when it comes to basic necessities such as room and board, but I can't. Obtaining the e-card necessary to purchase food in any dining hall or store on campus involved a long, hot trek across campus to an obscure administrative office where they, based on the amount of time it took them, memorized the little sayings at the top of each visa page in all of our passports, and then an extended stay at one of the many banks on campus to set up a local bank account. The bank tellers (each of whom sported a little communist party flag above the tag that displayed a number instead of their name) looked as though they had just been told Chinese New Year was canceled when they saw a large group of loud, sweaty Americans walk into their building. But they hid their dismay well, and simply shoved lots and lost of forms at us to fill out. In Chinese. In spite of the scary-looking uniformed man with nightstick hovering over us (and who turned out to be none other than the "lobby manager"), and the four signed copies the tellers needed of everything we filled out, including our passports, we did finally get our bank accounts set up.  And once we realized that, although the e-card charging machine was all in Chinese, all we had to do was remember to press "1", "3", and enter the amount of money we wanted to transfer, we were all set to have lunch like real Chinese people.

Finding new rooms for the students who had the great opportunity to experience what it's like to sleep on a piece of wood was an equally daunting undertaking. There appeared to be nothing less than a fundamental disconnect between an American and a Chinese point of view of "acceptable sleeping arrangements". Add to that the fact that the building manager had already turned on the utilities for those rooms, and thus started keeping track of their usage (as one does pay for one's own water and electricity in Chinese dorms), and you'll understand that changing rooms was seen as pretty much impossible. After all, how on earth were they ever going to be able to figure out what to charge our program if some of our students had stayed in two separate rooms? The math was simply unfathomable. In the end, it took an act of divine intervention, i.e., the appearance of a Swedish exchange student who not only spoke perfect Chinese, but was also friends with the entire staff in the building, to resolve the issue.

The last thing on our list was obtaining internet for all the rooms. Ah, yes, internet. That thing that keeps you connected with your own personal slice of reality. That thing that even the most remote military locations seem to have set up. That thing that everyone on this side of the pacific takes for granted. I won't go into the details of this particular adventure, but let's just say that while it started with what we thought would be a quick stop at the local China Telecomm office, it quickly devolved into a multi-legged adventure involving  a trip to the international office for a specific ID (up four flights of stairs), a trip to the local convenience store for pictures for this ID (down four flights of stairs), a trip back up to the office to pick up the ID (yep, same stairs), a trip back to the China Telecomm store (down the stairs again), a trip to the little electronics store near our building (up two flights of stairs) to buy a cable (as in China rooms come with a modem but not an ethernet cable), and another trip back to the China Telecomm store, with our now famous Swedish exchange student, to finalize the contract. Four hours after first stepping into the store, I finally had internet. Yep, just me and one of my fellow professors. We still had all of our students to take care of as well.

And that people, was day one of our stay in Xiamen. It got better, it really did, but let's just say we had some kinks to work out first. Tomorrow, let's talk about water, and the numerous ways in which that can complicate your life.