Some people ask if I ever feel like I am in a communist country. The answer is hardly ever. Actually, Shanghai feels more like a capitalist country than the US. There are people doing anything and everything they can to make money. From impromptu ‘bike repair shops’ on the corner (guy sitting on a chair surrounded by tubes and chains and grease) to the ‘corner video store’ (no copywrite laws, so movies show up on our corner within 2 weeks of their debut in theatres in the US), everyone is doing whatever they can to ‘make a buck’.
Shanghai is first and foremost about money. It’s called ‘the Western facing part of China’… It’s known as the ‘financial capital of China’ while Beijing is the ‘government and cultural capital’.
The only time I feel like I am in a capitalist country is when it comes to getting anything done with the government.
Case in point is when we have visitors come into town. If you are not Chinese, the government wants to know where you are. We are supposed to take our friends and family to the local police station to get a visitors permit within 24-48 hours of their arrival. Repercussions of not registering and being asked for paperwork are unclear, but urban legends include hours at the police station sorting it out, and in extreme cases, people’s visas being taken away.
This story is a classic example of bureaucracy and paperwork for the sake of bureaucracy and paperwork.
When we arrived, we were issued ‘Residence Permits’ by the Chinese government. They are pasted into each of our passports. Olivia’s passport was set to expire last summer, so when we were home in June/July we got her a new passport. Now she has a new passport, but the residence permit is in the old passport. So I contacted the company Intel uses to handle our immigration issues in PRC and asked for them to take care of moving the permit from one passport to the other… pretty straightforward, right? Well, not if you are in China!
In my discussion with the immigration company, he explains that I need to get new temporary residence permit in order to get the residence permit moved from one passport to another. I ask the obvious question: why would I need a temporary residence permit, when we all have permanent residence permits in our passports that are valid until July 31 of 2009? After a 5 minute conversation, the answer boiled down to: “I know it makes no logical sense, but to move the residence permit, we basically need to start the whole process over, and your actual valid residence permit is worthless”.
So then I resign myself to go get new temporary residence permits. Normally the same immigration consultant takes care of this, but since this is ‘out of cycle’, I am on my own. I am told by an acquaintance that she had to do the same thing and it was easy. She simply went to the local police station with her driver with all their passports and the police gave them new temporary residence permits. She said the driver basically took care of the entire conversation. “No problem” I think to myself.
I get in the van one day and ask Daniel to take me to the local police station so I can get new paperwork. First police station sends us to a second police station saying they don’t do this type of paperwork. The second police station tries to send us back to the first one (which Daniel was prepared to do, until I got very angry and loud – it’s the Chinese way to get things done). So the second police station gets on the phone to a third police station and confirms they do this type of paperwork there. So off we go to police station #3. Once at this police station, the officer explains there are 2 problems. This station does not handle my neighborhood, and I must go to a station much farther away from my neighborhood than this one to get what I need… That’s right – this station is closer to my neighborhood, but doesn’t handle my neighborhood. I was initially flabbergasted, but then realized this really isn’t any different than the Beaverton High School district, and the fact that I could hit Driver – 4 Iron to Sunset High School, but will have to take the kids to Westview, which is practically in Hillsboro!
The other problem is that there are lots of things I need to produce to get the temporary permits: Rental contract, passports, copies of the landlord’s Chinese ID and a letter from the property management company. When I explain that a friend walked in and got what she needed without any of this, the person suddenly spoke no English and just pointed at the list of what I needed.
A week or so later, once I had successfully collected the required documents, I headed to police station #4. I walked in, confident that I had what I needed, and I would finally get this crossed off my ‘honey do’ list.
I hand the officer all the paperwork and she starts to explain to my driver that I am missing something. Daniel translates and says ‘you need copies of specific pages of your passport’. I point to the list that I was given at police station #3, which just says ‘Passports’. He points to the much longer line above in Chinese and basically says ‘they don’t really know English and didn’t know how to translate everything, but in Chinese this says you need copies of specific pages of your passports’. I decide not to blow my top, and say ‘well, can they make copies here, do they have a copier?’ ‘No’, is the simple response.
So once again, I come away empty handed.
Yesterday I was working from home, and I decided I was going to get this taken care of for good. I made copies of the required pages of our passports, along with other pages I thought might be important, just in case. Off Daniel and I went to the police station. I think he was tired of having to translate for ‘angry white man’ as he didn’t accompany me in this time.
So in I go. I hand over everything, and the officer takes it all and hands me 4 forms, asking me to fill them in and sign them. While I am doing this, I notice that the officer is scanning in our passports to the computer. All I can think is ‘why do you need my copies if you can simply scan these things in?’
Anyhow, I was happy at making this much progress, so I just focused on filling out my forms. Once I am done filling out the four forms (same info for each family member), she hand me 4 forms to sign. They are the EXACT same forms I just filled out by hand. The computer had taken the information from our scanned passports, combined with her entering the information into the computer and printed out the exact forms, which she pushed through the glass and asked me to sign.
I had not been able to fill in all the information on my hand written version of the forms, as they needed some information from the passports she had. When I tried to explain this, she simply said ‘no problem’. She took all the forms and all my copies and shoved them all together, not in any order, some parts intermixed with other parts, handed me my temporary residence permits and said ‘all finished’.
On days like this, it is clear to me I am in a communist country… but most other days, not so much.
your blog is so good......
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