old

A good place to start the story of the last month since I’ve updated is with a phone call I received a few days after returning from Hong Kong.  It what was the Public Security Bureau (the PSB), the Chinese Police, and they wanted to sit down with me and have a chat. 

It wasn’t a fun chat.

Two officers came by work the next day, and for the next hour riddled me with questions. They wanted to know everything:

Where and when I was born.
To whom?
Where and what I studied, why.
When I came China
Why I came to China
How long I plan to be in China
You studied in China? Where?
The Southwest University for Minorities?
Do you have any Minority Friends?
What are they names? Where do they live? What’s their contact information?
Do they support China and the Olympics?
Do you support China and the Olympics?
Have you ever traveled to Tibetan areas?
When? Why? Who did you speak to? Where did you stay?
Are you planning to protest?

And so on and so forth. They wanted to know everything. A few things could have caused their suspicion, other foreigners living in the city had been contacted but never outright investigated. The PSB is now among the readership of my blog. Others got a phone call.  This was the only time I was bothered. Before they began their ceaseless inquiry, I showed them my flight itinerary. I was leaving China three days before the Olympics. Therefore, all their paranoia was miss-placed.

Flying back to Chicago was a long and tedious adventure. A 13-hour flight that takes off and lands at the same time makes a 37-hour day, and I didn’t sleep much. I landed at 330 on Tuesday the 5^th, and a good nine days later I’m still fighting jet lag.

Being home is strange. While living abroad I watched (or stalked if you’re going to be a jerk about it) friends and family. I kept little tabs on them. Across that timeline some people’s lives wound up exactly where they expected it to; others seemed to have turned to stone; and still others have found themselves in places both new and entirely unexpected. I am biting my lips to see what happens next.

My time at home is, unfortunately, an hour-glass.  I will be gone soon, back to life in Chengdu. To those of who read this that I know and love that I do not get the chance to see (for whatever the reason), god bless the life and the journey; somewhere down the line I will see, love, and embrace you.

Various factors long in the making came into alignment last week as my visa, and a large number of others were ticked down to their last few days.  Mine expired on 7/15. The ensuing adventure led me to back alleys of the city to find hidden government buildings, to my university to plead for an extension, and finally, a last minute flight to Hong Kong, which while was given back to China in 1997, is still by law, another country. 

But it was more complicated than that. I need hotel reservations, plus a flight that I was leaving China, not to mention the application itself and pictures. But that wasn’t the tough part.  A close friend of mine, Oliver, was to fly out of China on Tuesday. His goodbye party, a big, big, big party, was Saturday night. My flight was the very next day at 850 AM. So I decided to just not sleep. It was a wise choice. 

So I partied and partied and partied some more. Then end of the night, a Frenchman (also named Oliver) lost his girl to another guy and threw a tantrum. I said goodbye to my friends, and, left for the airport. 

After officially exiting the country, I bussed to a random point in HK. The stewardess said she’d drop me in the middle of the city, Kowloon. I said “Okay.”

So the bus stopped and I climbed out, tired, hungry and no clue where I was in relation to anything else. A stop at Seven Eleven later, I got myself some caffeine and a map and found my way to Chungking Mansion.

I’ve tried describing Chungking Mansion a good 10 times. But I just can’t do it. Here’s the wikipedia entry. I suppose you could compare Chungking Mansion to the marketplace from Disney’s Aladdin (In fact, on the 7th floor, there’s an Aladdin’s restaurant). The first and second floors are a teeming market place full of people from nearly every walk of life possible, but particularly the shady variety.  It’s the sort of place that parents don’t bring their children and everybody hides their wallet. The mansions themselves are about 14 stories tall, and, after the first two floors the rest are filled with either random stores or hostels. I stayed at Yan Yan’s “Ei Have Room For You” Hostel (literally), and an Rasheed’s Opal Emporium (literally).  Two things are true about Chungking mansion 1) the longer one stays, the higher the risk of crime 2) it’s awesome.

The next day I had to find the Visa office. Turns out, Kowloon is on the tip of mainland China, the Visa office is on an island across a busy, busy, busy channel. So I took the ferry. Found the place, waited and waited and waited. Handed in documents to apply for a business visa, they said “come back tomorrow,” then I left.  The rest of the day I read in Kowloon park, which is a nice chinese garden/ aviary place to relax. Then, had dinner at a cantonese food joint which looked a 50’s themed diner, and then hit they.

My last day in HK involved another cantonese diner, which seems to be a popular theme, then wandered around, snapping pictures before heading to pick up my visa. During this time, I also booked my flight back to Chengdu and considered (briefly) taking a helicopter from Hong Kong to Shenzhen. Note: Most often, people living on the mainland will fly to Shenzhen when going to Hong Kong because the cities are so close together. But, Shenzhen is officially apart of the PRC, Hong Kong is not, so flights to HK are much more expensive.

When I dropped the visa off, the receptionist failed to write the price of the Visa on my pick up slip. So I guessed. And I guessed wrong. So I had to wait, and wait and wait. Twice. And, the second time around the security took my sandwich. Jerks.

Directly after picking up my new visa, I hopped a bus to Shenzhen, and a flight to Chengdu. Got home at 9 PM the day that my student Visa expired.