Burton's on the Go! Shenzhen, China

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Whatcha Trying To Say?

As I'm walking down the street I see this sign. Hmm... what's the message here?

A Chinese friend said - oh that's a very racist sign (with a chuckle). It says don't be like a fat

westerner when you can look like a beautiful thin shapely Chinese lady.

It's for a spa that does acupuncture for weight loss.

Nice.

Shenzhen has a pretty nice subway system with a stop about two blocks from my apartment. The part I rode in (which I understand is the newer section) was nice, clean and easy to use. The other great thing is that the website is very friendly. You can highlight where you are starting on the map and where you would like to end up. It will give you a price and estimated route time.

Subway token

Another new mode of transportation is not for me, but for my groceries - a shopping bag on wheels.

I must admit when I first saw the shopping bag I was a bit unsure about his excitement and enthusiasm for it, but now I understand. We have a number of small stores on the block in front of our building that carry a decent assortment of international items, a small supply of produce and drinks. This little shopping bag allows me to buy drinks and heavy items without having to carry lots of bags to my place. So yes - I am a bag lady.

An Escalating Situation

Kenney consoling Cole - devastated that we are leaving the mall...

Life has it's ups and downs - literally. For some reason escalators have brought out some of the best (delighted to ride) and worse (when it's over) in Cole. Fascinating thing is that he had ridden escalators before moving to China, but here it is an obsession.

Cole loves riding them and all the malls here have tons of them. Most malls seem to be about 4 or 5 floors and have many options for getting up and down throughout. As soon as Cole knows we are at the mall it's all he talks about and all he wants to do. At first it was cute, but it's gotten to the point that he will throw a grand fit if he doesn't get to ride them - over and over and over. We don't have a stroller here which compounds the problem - hanging on to ever roaming Kenney while Cole is crying in the floor, sprawled in the floor, or kicking and punching to get away from you. I'm a little old school and will deliver a little swat on the butt to motivate a crazy young child, but Cole is typically undeterred in these moments of heightened exasperation.

I try to be patient - we are all transitioning and having our "moments" and he's three (the magic number) flexing his independence. Until this resolved though not planning too many single adult trips with the kids to the mall.

Electricity - Electricity

I mentioned my electricity woes in the apartment in a previous post. Well to date they have not been resolved yet.

Some outlets have no electricity (my bathroom) and some have some electricity, but not enough to work heating appliances like my blow dryer or flat iron (all other bathrooms).

It's a bit shocking this apartment has these issues for the price we pay. It's also a bit shocking that Stan has been here for half a year and hadn't resolved - although he is a guy and sometimes they just make do and on top of that he's not using the blow dryer or flat iron very often...

We've put in a request with the owner so hopefully this will be resolved this week. Until then I get to use the outlet in the guest room floor which seems to have the most "juice". Luckily my electronic devices with forward facing cameras can be my portable mirror.

Passport Please

Part of moving to China is getting residency with the government. This will allow us to move freely in and out of China for the year. This is especially important since we border Hong Kong.

Some of you are thinking - but Hong Kong is China. This is a misconception American's often have. Hong Kong is Hong Kong, the rest of what people think of as China is China. Hong Kong was under British rule from the 1950s until 1997. After it was turned back over the Chinese they opted to leave in place the "freer" rules than the rest of China has. So Hong Kong is a lot more "western" than other parts of China - find more products, more English, unrestricted use of the internet, etc. As part of this arrangement though, to go to Hong Kong there is a border where one must present their passport/ visa (if required). If you're American you don't need a visa to go to Hong Kong, but if you are Chinese, you must have a visa to visit HK. I'm guessing this controls what mainland China is exposed to some degree.

So back to my point - we need to have residency so that we can go into Hong Kong and not have a limited number of times we can get back into China where our apartment.

The process for getting residency involves a bunch of paperwork, pictures and questions. This is all done through the police. If you are wise you hire an agent or at least take someone who can speak Chinese because they don't really speak English and it's a complicated, sometimes lengthy process. Fortunately the office manager here made arrangements for both her and an agent to help us.

Waiting for our turn to be interviewed

The office manager and an agent

We made our first attempt the first Monday we were here. We packed up snacks, ipads, and other entertainment in case it took a long time. The station we needed to visit was about 45 minutes away from our home so either way it was going to be a bit.

When we arrived they had this picture chart showing examples of what types of passport photos they would accept (you had to leave several for them). It was pretty amusing - Can you spot the problems? Can't figure out what's wrong in the last picture in the fourth row on either column...

We were there for about 30 minutes and were told they were rejecting us because they wanted to check out Stan's office first to make sure it was legit.

We returned a different day for another attempt. This time took about an hour and a half in the station. Stan and I each had different times to go to different desks and answer questions, sign papers, smile, not smile and nod. At one desk they asked me to write Stan's company name on three different documents in Mandarin... I looked at Stan's office manager and said " they want me to write that?!" She said yes and showed me on a piece of paper what I needed to write - must have been about 18 characters. I laughed. This was a bad joke. Just like in English you are taught certain strokes to write letters, there were ways to write the characters, but I had no idea. I tried to start - okay let's see that looks like a power line tower with three short lines across, then there's one to the side, a little line poking out of that, now make a bench next to that one... It was ridiculous. We were going to be there for an hour just from me trying to copy correctly what I saw. Fortunately both the officer and manager realized it was going to take forever so they let the manager write it out for me and I just got to sign it.

Waiting...

This Chinese lady opted to read the Bible while waiting

While in the station there was another western family with small children. I went and introduced myself. Turns out they are from the Midwest and were just moving down from Beijing. Their kids were happy to see my kid's Ipads and visit. The lady gave me a few helpful websites and tips for the area as they had been here a bit longer than us.

When all was done we were told it would take until the end of the year (about 2 weeks) to process and get our passports back. This was a bit of a bummer because this meant we can't go anywhere outside of China for Christmas/New Year, enroll Cole in school yet, visit HK, get my sim card for my newly returned Iphone, etc. because all of these things require your passport. So we shall enjoy our time at the apartment until they come back. Kind of strange thinking we can't leave even if we wanted to...