Piles of Paperwork

Tim and I are in the final phases of obtaining all the necessary paperwork to live and work in Harbin, China. When we are finished we will have three documents: The Z-Visa (work visa), which is glued into the pages of our passport, The Work Permit which we received a week ago (this looks like a passport but authorizes us to work in China), and the Final piece the Residence License to live in Harbin.

Upon entering China, we had 30 days to file for the other two pieces or we would have had to leave China and start over. Due to some unforseen delays, and the upcoming Chinese New Year’s Holiday (called the “Spring Festival” here), last Friday was the last day we could file for the Residence License.

So, here is what our Friday consisted of:

At 10:00 a.m. I was told that we must file by the end of the work day at the Harbin Public Safety Bureau which was thought to be open until 3:00 p.m. (because we had originally thought we could file as late as Monday). Normally, you cannot file for a Residence License in Harbin on a Friday (Tuesday and Wednesday only). If this starts to feel like a DMV story to anyone, that’s probably cause there are many parallels. However, our immigration partner, Lylian, at Fragomen, called ahead and cleared us to do so. Unfortunately, due to the last minute notification, Lylian, was unable to get from Dalian, where she lives and works, to Harbin, as all the flights were booked. To further complicate things, she had all the filled out and completed paperwork (16 pages for each of us), with her in Dalian. So, the day began with her trying to fax the documents to us. When the office fax machine downstairs was not working, the next attempt was to e-mail the documents to Tim and I. However, my printer is very slow, so we had to transfer the documents to the downstairs computer to print. Then, that printer would not work as their computers could not read PDF files, so we began the process of printing the 32 pages on my 2 page per hour 1990’s Epson Ink Jet printer.

The next hurdle was photos. We had taken all the necessary photos a while back, but those too were with Lylian in Dalian. I was able to find the two that were needed among some of my reserves, Tim was not so lucky. He had to walk up the street to the Kodak store to get more taken.

After that, we found out that we needed to register with the police. That registration form was the last needed form to apply for our residence license. Unfortunately, the only policeman that could register us was not available until after 3:00 p.m. Dilemma? Well it seems that the Public Security Bureau (PSB) was actually open until 4:00 p.m. and they would wait for us.

Enter the tall man! Who, by the way does have a name, Mr. Cui, but when they say it, it sounds like Mr. Tree, so we will stick with “tall man.” He knew the policeman, so he took our passports and headed down to register for us. Unfortunately, he did not realize that we had more papers to file after that, so he did not return until 3:30.

When he returned, Tim and I, accompanied by Pei Ying from the Islanders office, jumped in a cab to head to the PSB. Pei Ying is the “justa maybe” girl from the Islanders Office who speaks barely passable English. So we arrived at the PSB and sprinted for the door and entered at 3:55 (5 minutes to spare), but only one problem, the PSB had moved around the corner and down the street. So another sprint, stopping twice for directions, and we arrive at 4:02 at the PSB. This is where we caught a break for the first time that day, we got the nicest possible police officer. She did mention that she was supposed to close, but would process us anyway. Her father had played ice hockey and she asked us a few questions about our job and stay in China. She threw out about 10 of the pages of the 32 in the application, that took half the day to print, and said we did not need them. So, we were all set, except one thing, MONEY. We were unaware, but Pei Ying’s office mate, whom Tim and I call “Linda,” for no particular reason, was on her way with the 2500 Yuan each for the application. However, she had not arrived yet. Again, with some luck, the officer agreed to wait for her. She arrived at 4:40 with the money, all in 10’s as the bank was out of higher denominations. But we paid and we were stamped with a receipt and on our way.

There was only one small glitch, we were asking for a rush on the processing. This is because they keep our passports during the processing, and if we did not have them returned before the “Spring Festival” holiday, we could not get them back until after the 6th of February as all the offices close down. Without our passports, we could not travel on the train to Jia Mu Si for the tournament that follows the Holiday. Anyway, the office said we needed documentation of our travel to Jia Mu Si to prove we needed the rush processing. She agreed that we could provide that on Monday.

So to end the filing part of the story… This morning, Lylian drafted a letter stating our reasons for needing a rush, and we had China Hockey stamp it, and met Pei Ying back at the PSB to turn it in. We ended up with the same nice officer, who immediately recognized us and we were all set. Now, we wait until Friday morning and we can pick up our Passports and Residence License.

As an epilogue to the this already long novel… On Friday when we came out of the PSB and crossed the street to find a cab, Pei Ying informed us it might be hard as 5:00 is the change over time for cab shifts so it is harder to find them then. As Tim and I were contemplating our tough day, waiting for a cab, we found someone who probably had it worse than us.

There, 8 or 9 stories above us, dangling on a rappelling rope, was a man trying to straighten out a hanging sign on the side of a building. He was doing this task in the pitch black of 5:00 p.m., at about -5 ºF. He had two people at the top of the building and one at the bottom holding his rappelling rope. The man at the bottom may have had it even worse as the guy was barking instructions at him from on the rope and he was in the alley trying to dodge traffic, as cars were flying in and out and whizzing past him. It was quite a site after a long day, I wish I had brought my camera.

Tomorrow, I promise to add some pictures for those people who probably reached their reading limit halfway through this, good night from Harbin!