Let off with a warning
This morning I was startled by our door bell ringing just after 9 am. Brigid had just dozed off in my lap for her first short nap of the day. I was enjoying the sweet occasion of doziness before Myles was to start his school work for the day. It was a wonderful, sunny, peaceful, dozy moment.
Our sweet peace was pierced by that doorbell, ringing and ringing while I tried to put Brigid (now awake and alarmed) down on the floor and answer the door. One ring would have been enough. Four successive was--not fun. There were four people, two men and two women, wearing photo identification badges around their necks. Two of them also wore red armbands pinned to their sleeves with yellow Chinese lettering and the English words "Security Volunteer" printed on them.
I'd been expecting they'd come, or rather someone would come, to verify the legality of our residence. Even though this is not uncommon, the checks on foreigners have really stepped up in advance of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. On blogs and in tweets I've followed various people's encounters with the police or neighborhood security, though none were quite so dramatic as this particular tweep's.
I provided them my passport and the kids'. I showed them our most current Chinese visa, the Beijing visa. All of us, except Brigid, now have very thick passports, full of Chinese visas of varying type and duration and stamps recording every border crossing between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. They asked for my husband's and I had to tell them he was at work. They reviewed them, returned them, thanked me and left.
Less than an hour later they were back. They were looking for something else, something I at first didn't quite understand. They showed me a yellow flier, identical to the ones plastered in our hallways and elevators, about foreigners needing to register with the police. A ha! I searched through the passports and showed them our loose-paper residence permits. These were something new to us earlier this year. In Shenzhen we did not have them as our visas served as permits. These flimsy (and easy to lose) pieces of paper show our name and relevant passport and visa digits as well as our physical address. Somehow I have managed not to lose anyone's.
The four security volunteers took these and copied all the information from them. Thanking me, they returned them. I hoped that now, with two visits already, they now had all they needed from us, short of Randy's passport and permit. I really did not expect anyone again until evening when Randy would be home from work. Especially after all of the trouble we went through to get our visas and residence permits earlier this year, I was really sure that we have proven to have satisfied all of the requirements.
Oh, was I wrong.
Sometime around 11:30 the doorbell rang again. Again, this was not the most convenient time because Brigid was trying to pick up her nap where it was interrupted only a few hours earlier. At the door this time, though, were two uniformed police officers, one man and one woman. I knew this meant we had big problems on our hands. I considered tweeting this immediately, just in case, but I didn't want to alarm any of my Tweeps or my mother for that matter. Also, I am quite sure Beijing City Police would not wait patiently while I sent out the text message.
They had in their hands our file. At the top was stapled Randy's business card, Chinese-side up. Under that I could see photocopies of our residence permits, the same loose-paper ones I have miraculously not lost yet (ah, paperclips---that might be the answer!). They requested our passports again, which I promptly produced for them, opening them each to the Beijing visa page. The man officer began talking to me in a formal and official way, meaning much too fast for me to catch his meaning. He had in front of him copies of our residence permits, and our passports in his hand. What else could there be. Then the woman said slower something and I caught the word hetong, contract. I called Randy at work to ask him for the rental agreement. I knew that he had told me a few times previously where he kept it, but since I never needed it, I promptly forgot. Unfortunately, the rental agreement did not help to make things any clearer.
There was so much confusion. Randy signed the lease in January, and yet none of our visas were issued until March. I showed them our visas from the previous year, and told them truthfully that on January 9 we were still living in Shenzhen. There were questions about Randy's employer; since he is the only foreigner that works for them, they had not come across this name before with respect to issuing visas. His English name and not his Chinese name were on the lease. The worst, though, and most troublesome was that for some reason, our residence permits were not issued for the apartment address but instead the factory's address.
They fortunately decided to let me off with a written warning. They filled it out the citation, identically on two sides of a perforation. I signed both sides, receiving one as my record. They told me that we had 24 hours to report to the police station, the whole family, with passports and the lease, to straighten things out.
I called Randy to tell him this, hoping we would be able to take care of this business this afternoon. A while later he called me back to tell me that the police had called him directly and asked him to come in with all the documents, my warning included. When he arrived at the apartment a little while later, he said he was taking his usual interpreter and someone from HR with him. One of them thought maybe the problem was that our landlord wasn't properly registered and was getting out of his taxes. I laughed at this, reminding Randy that they were likely unaware of the current round of security checks on all foreigners in China leading up to the big National Day celebration.
At the police station, Randy approached them contritely, apologising for all the confusion and taking full responsbility for this. He signed a statement to that effect. He was reminded AGAIN that Beijing is not like Shenzhen, with the implication that Shenzhen is loose and lawless. New residence permits were issued with the correct address and in our Chinese names (is this common in Beijing or other cities, or only in districts that have only a relative small number of foreigners?). I was very happy to hear that we were not facing ejection, though our last ejection landed us in Hong Kong for a week and a half, which totally did not suck. I was also grateful that we weren't fined either.
Hopefully, this all means that early next year when we are reapplying for residency, it will all go so smoothly I won't even notice it happening. One day I'll open my passport and *poof* my 2010/2011 visa will be there. I can dream, can't I?
Our sweet peace was pierced by that doorbell, ringing and ringing while I tried to put Brigid (now awake and alarmed) down on the floor and answer the door. One ring would have been enough. Four successive was--not fun. There were four people, two men and two women, wearing photo identification badges around their necks. Two of them also wore red armbands pinned to their sleeves with yellow Chinese lettering and the English words "Security Volunteer" printed on them.
I'd been expecting they'd come, or rather someone would come, to verify the legality of our residence. Even though this is not uncommon, the checks on foreigners have really stepped up in advance of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. On blogs and in tweets I've followed various people's encounters with the police or neighborhood security, though none were quite so dramatic as this particular tweep's.
I provided them my passport and the kids'. I showed them our most current Chinese visa, the Beijing visa. All of us, except Brigid, now have very thick passports, full of Chinese visas of varying type and duration and stamps recording every border crossing between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. They asked for my husband's and I had to tell them he was at work. They reviewed them, returned them, thanked me and left.
Less than an hour later they were back. They were looking for something else, something I at first didn't quite understand. They showed me a yellow flier, identical to the ones plastered in our hallways and elevators, about foreigners needing to register with the police. A ha! I searched through the passports and showed them our loose-paper residence permits. These were something new to us earlier this year. In Shenzhen we did not have them as our visas served as permits. These flimsy (and easy to lose) pieces of paper show our name and relevant passport and visa digits as well as our physical address. Somehow I have managed not to lose anyone's.
The four security volunteers took these and copied all the information from them. Thanking me, they returned them. I hoped that now, with two visits already, they now had all they needed from us, short of Randy's passport and permit. I really did not expect anyone again until evening when Randy would be home from work. Especially after all of the trouble we went through to get our visas and residence permits earlier this year, I was really sure that we have proven to have satisfied all of the requirements.
Oh, was I wrong.
Sometime around 11:30 the doorbell rang again. Again, this was not the most convenient time because Brigid was trying to pick up her nap where it was interrupted only a few hours earlier. At the door this time, though, were two uniformed police officers, one man and one woman. I knew this meant we had big problems on our hands. I considered tweeting this immediately, just in case, but I didn't want to alarm any of my Tweeps or my mother for that matter. Also, I am quite sure Beijing City Police would not wait patiently while I sent out the text message.
They had in their hands our file. At the top was stapled Randy's business card, Chinese-side up. Under that I could see photocopies of our residence permits, the same loose-paper ones I have miraculously not lost yet (ah, paperclips---that might be the answer!). They requested our passports again, which I promptly produced for them, opening them each to the Beijing visa page. The man officer began talking to me in a formal and official way, meaning much too fast for me to catch his meaning. He had in front of him copies of our residence permits, and our passports in his hand. What else could there be. Then the woman said slower something and I caught the word hetong, contract. I called Randy at work to ask him for the rental agreement. I knew that he had told me a few times previously where he kept it, but since I never needed it, I promptly forgot. Unfortunately, the rental agreement did not help to make things any clearer.
There was so much confusion. Randy signed the lease in January, and yet none of our visas were issued until March. I showed them our visas from the previous year, and told them truthfully that on January 9 we were still living in Shenzhen. There were questions about Randy's employer; since he is the only foreigner that works for them, they had not come across this name before with respect to issuing visas. His English name and not his Chinese name were on the lease. The worst, though, and most troublesome was that for some reason, our residence permits were not issued for the apartment address but instead the factory's address.
They fortunately decided to let me off with a written warning. They filled it out the citation, identically on two sides of a perforation. I signed both sides, receiving one as my record. They told me that we had 24 hours to report to the police station, the whole family, with passports and the lease, to straighten things out.
I called Randy to tell him this, hoping we would be able to take care of this business this afternoon. A while later he called me back to tell me that the police had called him directly and asked him to come in with all the documents, my warning included. When he arrived at the apartment a little while later, he said he was taking his usual interpreter and someone from HR with him. One of them thought maybe the problem was that our landlord wasn't properly registered and was getting out of his taxes. I laughed at this, reminding Randy that they were likely unaware of the current round of security checks on all foreigners in China leading up to the big National Day celebration.
At the police station, Randy approached them contritely, apologising for all the confusion and taking full responsbility for this. He signed a statement to that effect. He was reminded AGAIN that Beijing is not like Shenzhen, with the implication that Shenzhen is loose and lawless. New residence permits were issued with the correct address and in our Chinese names (is this common in Beijing or other cities, or only in districts that have only a relative small number of foreigners?). I was very happy to hear that we were not facing ejection, though our last ejection landed us in Hong Kong for a week and a half, which totally did not suck. I was also grateful that we weren't fined either.
Hopefully, this all means that early next year when we are reapplying for residency, it will all go so smoothly I won't even notice it happening. One day I'll open my passport and *poof* my 2010/2011 visa will be there. I can dream, can't I?
Comments
Last year, shortly before the Olympics, we/our company was busted for not having proper registration documents. I don't really know what happened because I was in the US at the time, but we got kicked out of our city for 2 months (we had to stay at the Qingdao airport at our company headquarters) while the whole business was sorted out. We had already been living in Linyi for 2 years without any interaction whatsoever with the police... Now when we pop over for re-registration after intl. travel, they know us by name. I guess it's a good thing we weren't kicked out of the country altogether. It is super-stressful when all of this happening and you don't have a good understanding of the language.
Becky