A fair bit has happened since my first post back in March. My original schedule was to be in China around late August, but the lovely Ianthe, my director of studies, expressed a desire to have me out there before July "as they could really use me". And, as I'm never one to turn down an opportunity of being used, I had to move things forward a little... well, a lot actually - two months to be precise - and I fly out on 28 June.
The visa process was interesting - three days' worth of interesting as it turned out. I travelled up to London on Monday 2 June to have my visa processed by the Chinese Embassy, allowing plenty of time before the 4.00pm closing time for processing. Unfortunately, the 4.00pm closing time, as stated on the website, is actually 12.00pm. This was inconvenient, as it was now 1.00pm. But not as inconvenient as it must have been for the fellow who had spoken to the policeman on the door a little earlier who, the officer informed me, had journeyed all the way down from Newcastle under the same impression from the information on the Internet. He went on to advise me that, realistically, to have a chance of having a visa processed the same day, you needed to be at the office for about 8.00am.
Fortunately, I have several good friends in the capital and I was able to stay with one of them overnight. As a married man with three daughters and two dogs, both bitches, the canines I mean, not the daughters and the ... oh, never mind ... anyway, I think that Cliff was pleased to have some male company. I'm not sure that the obligatory morning-after hangover was quite as welcome but you have to do these things when men get together.
And so there I was again, outside the Chinese Embassy, at 8.15am, queueing in the rain to get my visa processed. The story doesn't really change that much through 9.15am, 10.15am and 11.15am although I am of the opinion that the couriers working for the "same-day, guaranteed-processing" companies definitely know something (or someone) that the general public doesn't, as they appeared to be coming and going with bag-loads of passports, whilst the rest of us stood around getting wet. Needless to say that I have kept the leaflets that were being handed out by the aforementioned companies, to the bedraggled masses in the queue, for any future applications.
As the doors close at 12.00pm, the remaining number are allowed in and the queue is "snaked" around ropes until the room is full. I do not know if any were turned away but the numbers behind me in the queue were quite substantial and I daresay that they would have had to return the next day if they weren't inside the door. So, I suppose I should be grateful that I had been advised to get there early by the officer on the Embassy door the previous day but, somehow, after nearly four hours in the rain, I was wishing that he had advised me to pay the fee for one of the "same-day, guaranteed-processing" companies.
Anyway, I got processed at 12.15pm and was informed that you cannot have same-day service after 11.00am and so I had the choice of picking up my passport the following day, on Wednesday, or waiting until Friday. Obviously, I wanted it as quickly as possible and paid for the "express" processing.
I am indebted to Clifford (and his liver) as he offered me a bed for the second night of my "day-trip" to London and I was able to collect my visa the next day with relative ease. The queue for collections moves very swiftly but, take note, if you are ever planning on getting a visa to China from the UK, you can only pay in cash which, in this modern age of plastic and electronic transactions, seems rather archaic. So, it was quite a long, expensive, drawn-out process, but I have my visa and I fly in just over one week.
