My Mainland-Chinese visa expired in January, shortly before my trip to Singapore. Since it was so close, and I had no immediate plans to visit mainland, I decided to begin the reapplication process when I got back. So, I went to the travel agency in Shatin to reapply for my visa. The agent took one look at my passport and said there was a problem. According to her, since I wanted to apply for the visa from Hong Kong, and I'm only a temporary resident, I needed to have at least 6 months left on my Hong Kong student visa. She further explained that I can't use a visa issued from Hong Kong when I'm not legally supposed to be in Hong Kong. That made sense, so I asked her what to do about it.
Again referring to my passport, she said that my Hong Kong student visa would expire on March 6th! To me, that made little sense because I arrived on June 3rd, 2010 with a year-long visa. Nevertheless, she refused to do anything for me until I went to the immigration office to apply for an extension-of-stay. I went to the immigration office immediately after, but they wouldn't see me without an appointment. The earliest time for which I could make the appointment was one week later, so that's what I did.
That next Friday, I returned to the immigration office bright and early, and got seen within an hour of my appointment. The lady at the immigration office checked my visa, and looked at me like I was an idiot. She pointed to the expiration date on my HK visa, where it said "03-06-2011." Yes, I had originally read that as "3 June 2011" as well, but the lady at the travel agency refused to help me until I extended my stay. It turns out, I had read the date correctly all along. I don't like being treated like an idiot for someone else's mistake, but in this case I had little choice. Since I was already there, and knew that I would be in HK until August, I asked if I could just go ahead and extend my visa for the summer. Unfortunately, you can extend a student visa only 4 weeks or less in advance. My visit was totally wasted.
With a note from the immigration office saying "This expiration date reads '3 June 2011'," I went back to the travel agency to apply for the visa. Since it was a different time of day, I talked with a different agent. This time, she told me that my HK student visa status had nothing to do with my eligibility for a Mainland-Chinese visa. However, I had less than 7 months left on my USA passport. Since I wanted to apply for a 6 month multi-entry visa, and processing can take up to a month, I needed to have at least 7 months on my travel document. On top of that, I had only entered Mainland China once before, although I stayed for 11 days. The Chinese government has a policy that, for people who have never entered China, they can apply for only a single or double-entry visa. From what I had read online, it seemed that after one entry into mainland, you could apply for a multi-entry visa. According to the travel agent, this wasn't so. In fact, I would have had to enter China 3-4 times before qualifying for a multi-entry visa.
Since, again, this was a Friday, it was too late to make an appointment for later in the week. I called the US Embassy to see if they had any walk-in appointments. They did, but the time for walk-ins was 1:30-3:00pm, the embassy was in Central District, people who got seen usually came as early as 12:30pm, and it was already 11:30am. It takes between 45 minutes and an hour to get from Shatin to Central. To make things even more fun, the person I spoke with said I needed to come with the form I needed already printed and filled-out if I wanted to get seen. Due to my lack of portable printing apparatus, I had to go back to CUHK, catch the bus to the library, print the form, take the bus back to the MTR station, and take the MTR to Central. I filled out the form on the train, although I changed lines 3 times and it was peak lunch-hour. I got to Central around 12:20pm, and got my lunch to-go from MX (HK-style fast food). From the station, I spent the next 10 minutes shoveling chicken and rice into my mouth while walking up a super-steep hill, at the top of which was the US Embassy. I got there right at 12:30pm, and the line was indeed already quite long. I actually got seen right about 3:00pm, so I was one of the last people. However, I did send in my application for a new passport, which would be ready in (again) one week.
The next week, I came to pick up my passport. The email I received indicated that the time for passport-pickup was between 3:00-4:00pm only, so I arrived about 2:30pm. I got my passport right at 3:00pm, and headed to my next destination. After swearing never to apply for a Mainland-Chinese visa from that travel agency again, I had investigated other options. The visa-application process requires the travel agency to send your passport to the Chinese Embassy and then have them send it back. Once I realized this, it made more sense to see if I could go directly to the Chinese Embassy. As it turns out, I could, so I did. Also, in a convenient stroke of luck, the Chinese Embassy happens to be in Wanchai, which is two MTR stops away from Central. However, it would close at 5:00pm, and the afternoon lines are always super-long.
Once I had my passport, I quickly made my way to the Chinese Embassy, and got there by 3:45pm. Again, I was one of the last people seen, but I did manage to get my application in. I'm even more confused by the travel agency now because I spoke with several employees at the Chinese Embassy. They all agreed that I was eligible for a 6 month multi-entry visa. Take that, travel agency! (By the way, I'm deliberately not slamming them by name on the Internet. I know some of the future IBCE kids read this blog, though, so if you want to know which travel agency to avoid, just send me a private message and I'll tell you.)
Of course, my visa wouldn't be ready the same day. I had to go pick it up on a Wednesday morning. That's all right, though, because I don't have class until 1:30pm on Wednesdays. I went and was able to get my passport (with the visa) back in a matter of minutes. Actually, I even made it back to CUHK by 11:30am. It was such a relief to finally have my visa in hand. So, if you wondered what I've been up to lately, now you know...and probably wish you didn't.
As you can imagine, with all that going on plus 3 weeks of academic crunchitude, there hasn't been much time for fun lately. By last Friday, I was going stir-crazy. After all, my only outings had been errands and waiting in line at government offices. It turns out Magda was equally ready to get off campus, so we decided to spend our Friday in Sham Shui Po.
Sham Shui Po is perhaps one of the less-visited tourist areas, but it's chock full of local goodness. It's also most famous for it's computer and electronics market. Computer geeks take note, this place is a mecca for those looking to build crazy hybrid Hackintosh computers from spare parts...or if you just need cheap repairs. You have to speak some Cantonese, though, because when I said "local," I meant it:
Naturally, the market does offer more than just electronics:
Magda likes Hello Kitty, especially her many incarnations at the Hello Kitty Store (one of many). My favorite over-the-top Hello Kitty product was the set of tiny stickers with her face on them that you're supposed to put on every single key of your keyboard. Yikes!
Magda also likes kitties, and who could blame her? Especially when they're so friendly! There were so many store-cats in Sham Shui Po, especially at the snake-soup restaurants for some reason. I think we managed to pet and play with 90% of them.
No petting the other wildlife (and there was plenty!), but we did admire from a slight distance:
Cantonese specialty food: Thousand Year Egg. It can be used as an ingredient in congee, sliced on top of tofu or (fresh egg) omelets, or eaten by itself as a snack. Fun fact: It's not true, but to this day many people all over Southeast Asia believe that the preparation process for thousand year egg involves soaking them in horse urine for several weeks or months. The Thai and Lao words for this food literally mean "horse urine egg." Makes you want to try it, right?
Live frogs. Reason #1 why I'll never live on a raw foods diet.
Shanghaiese Water Crabs. Reason #2.
The Sham Shui Po Police Station:
More local specialties that are hard to find at Park 'n' Shop: Snake Wine and Deer Tendon Wine. HK$13, by the way, is less than US$2. That's quality stuff right there:
We wandered around Sham Shui Po so much that we actually ended up on Apliu Street, which is a separate famous area. Mostly, we saw a ton of electronics repair places, which somehow seems out of place at a street market.
By 1:30pm, we both felt extremely hungry so we found a small steamed-food restaurant. Of course, I was happy to see they had one of my favorite foods: zongzi! That's the green leafy lump on the left. It's a big ball of glutinous rice with stuff (usually meat or red beans) on the inside. It's wrapped in a lotus leaf (sometimes banana or bamboo leaves) and steamed. Most people eat it with a little sugar, but the store owner suggested we try it with sweet chili sauce. I now have a new preferred method for enjoying my zongzi.
After checking out almost everything in Sham Shui Po, Magda and I both felt that it was too early to go back to CUHK and study for midterms. Instead, we decided to go to Lok Fu and check out Kowloon Walled City, another popular tourist destination. The walled city itself is about a 10 minute walk from the MTR station so we passed some places on the way. The only one we stopped at was the Hau Wong Temple, which was built over 250 years ago.
Building temples to Hau Wong is really one step up from the Taoist ancestor-worship I talked about in my last post. Still, a guy that awesome does merit some recognition. Click here to read about Hau Wong. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos inside. I took this one from the entrance.
Our stroll also took us past a Christian cemetery, a run-down shopping mall, and endless streets full of Thai restaurants. Eventually, we came to Kowloon Walled City, which is now a public park. The pillar literally says "Kowloon Walled City Park." And, if you were curious, "Kowloon" means "9 dragons."
First, a little history: Kowloon Walled City was originally a military fort. When the British took hold of the New Territories in 1898, it gained all the land around the walled city, but not the territory within. In other words, Kowloon Walled City became an enclave with no allegiance to any government, Chinese or British. Things were relatively uneventful there until World War II. During that time, the Japanese occupied Hong Kong, but they failed to establish any order in the walled city. Therefore, it remained totally lawless. Under the Japanese occupation, Hong Kong residents flocked to the walled city and the population exploded. The living situation became increasingly worse as the area became more crowded. Many of the buildings were built with little or no foundation, and some were erected illegally, crammed between even more buildings. They relied on each other for mutual support, and many of the taller buildings were known to sway in strong typhoons. Even though some buildings were 14 stories high, there were only 3 elevators in the entire walled city. Also, most apartments were without running water, and residents used a single well near the outskirts of the city. The water was unsanitary, especially because there was no formal method of waste disposal, and most residents just tossed their garbage out the window, where it collected in rubbish heaps on the streets. When the Japanese came, they actually disassembled the wall brick-by-brick, but the lack of a physical wall did little to help them exercise power over the walled city's residents. (The Japanese used the bricks from the wall to build an airport, which is no longer in use.) In the 1950s, the walled city was officially still an anarchistic no-man's land, but functionally it was under the total control of the Triads (think Chinese version of a cross between the Godfather and the Freemasons). Since it was literally governed by criminal organizations, the crime rate shot through the roof as the walled city became a center for gambling, prostitution, smuggling, and drug abuse. Fun fact: during this time (for reasons unknown), 80% of Hong Kong's famous fish-balls were produced within Kowloon Walled City. Some part of me wonders how many opium-laced fish-balls got sold in Mong Kok around then. Of course, these kinds of thoughts do nothing to deter me from eating street food. Anyway, things slowed down a bit in the 1970s, but the Hong Kong government didn't intervene until 1987. The walled city was demolished in the mid-1990s, and a public park took it's place. Some of the original buildings are still preserved, and it's fascinating to walk around the premises.
Some of the oldest buildings were the ones preserved. After all, the original Kowloon Walled City was built in the Song Dynasty (960-1279AD).
This really struck us as odd. I mean, it's a dress hanging from a tree. You don't see that every day:
There has been some archeological excavation in recent years, which turned up this interesting artifact:
The original gate from when Kowloon Walled City was a Chinese military fort:
Magda pointed this one out to me, since she is, after all, a geography major. This is a Chinese Banyan Tree. It grows anywhere and everywhere, and the wood is totally useless. It's like kudzu over here!
My new ride? Only a total B.A. would come to class on this thing:
Later on, we discovered that the whole dress-on-a-tree thing was a recurring theme. Apparently, the park had some kind of exhibit going on where it featured "artifacts" from the residents' daily lives in the city's heyday.
That also explains these floor-lamps:
Finally, we saw everything and felt pretty tired. We decided to call it a day and head back to school.
It felt great getting away from campus, even though we didn't go too terribly far. Also, while I feel like Kowloon Walled City would've been way more interesting if we had gone 40 years ago, I felt much safer like this. I'd rather learn about life under Triad rule from reading about it instead of living it.
Thank you for your testimony! Those visa/passport problems made my jaw drop - is the professionalism of HK agencies a mere delusion ? Anyway, I realised that Ficus has at least 1 use! - decorational...
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