Getting There

I arrived in China less than a week ago...getting here is a story in itself so let me start with that.

It starts with the cats. I have three of them. I wasn't about to move half way around the world and leave my kitties behind so I started making arrangements for them to move with me. A little web research made it clear that it was possible, but not easy so my first order of business was to engage the services of World Care Pet Transport. The first thing I discovered is that Beijing will only admit one pet per passport (my husband and I make two people, but there are three cats...you do the math!). Note that this restriction is unique to Beijing. If we brought the cats in through, say, Guangzhou we'd have no problem. Too bad you can't fly from New York to Guangzhou...at least not easily! Not to worry...World Care assured me they had a system (use your imagination) by which they could arrange for three cats to be admitted with only two passports; the only hitch is that the cats would have to travel as excess baggage. Ok...no problem...or so we thought. Continental has a particularly good reputation for pet transport and I've taken the cats on Continental in the past and had good experiences so I negotiated with the military travel agent to get us on Continental and made reservations for the cats. Oops! Continental only flies animals as cargo...they must fly as excess baggage for the import trick to work. The difference??? Beats me! (Well...probably you collect cargo somewhere different and it goes through a different customs office, but they travel in the same part of the plane so it's a little silly.) So...I ask World Care for an airline recommendation and they think United will work. Lucky for me, military travel is flexible and the agent was very nice about rebooking us on United. I called United to make reservations for the cats and...you guessed it...a new snag. Chinese regulations say one pet per passport so United will not accept more than one pet per traveller period, end of story. It also emerges that United flies into the new international terminal Beijing has constructed in the runnup to the Olympics and customes there is somewhat tighter. Now I'm really in a panic until a b-school friend makes a fantastic suggestion...maybe one of the students heading to China in mid-May for a class in Beijing would take the cat. Sure enough, email to members of the Facebook group for the trip brought in a flood of offers (thanks to all you fabulous Sternies!). The first cat successfully traveled to China about a week and a half before we did. We arrived last week and all three cats are safely at our apartment. Whew!

On to the visas...naturally the week before we went to get our visas, China severely tightened the restrictions on visa issuance and, of course, we hit a place where we fall through the beaurocratic cracks in the system. My husband is traveling on his tourist passport, rather than his government passport for obscure reasons that I don't understand and therefore can't explain. As a result the military passport/visa people won't assist in obtaining visas. My husband found a visa agent who does exclusively Chinese visas located just a few blocks from the Embassy. My husband was to apply for a tourist visa which he'd convert to a student visa once he arrived in China and received the complete paperwork from the university he'll be associated with. The visa agent initially told him not even to bother...he had no chance of getting a visa. When he explained the situation the visa agent agreed to give it a try if my husband included a letter explaining that I had a job and an apartment in Beijing. It worked an my husband got his visa. Then I needed to get my work visa. Fortunately, the nice travel agent (see above) was able to convert our one-way tickets into roundtrip tickets and we had, by the time I applied, signed a lease. With an invitation letter from my soon-to-be-employer, round-trip airline tickets and a lease I was able to get a non-resident work visa. As it stands, we're scheduled to be here for 14 months. We're each holding 12 month visas which allow us multiple entries into the country but do not allow us to stay more than 30 days at a time. My husband anticipates converting his visa into a resident student visa this week, but I may have wait until after the Olympics before I can get a resident work visa. In the mean time, we'll be making monthly trips out of China. If it weren't for the LOOOOONG waits at immigration it wouldn't be so bad.

Then there's the saga of the official passport. Both my husband and I are supposed to be carrying official passports (pursuant to his orders). Although we're not traveling on the official passports orders say to have them in our possession. An official passport has a brown (or red depending on who you ask) cover. My husband got his with no problem. I had timing issues. The first problem (from a passport standpoint only!) is that we got married in December which meant I needed a new tourist (blue) passport with the correct name. My travel plans for the winter/spring looked something like this: Bermuda at the end of December, Germany in mid-January, Tanzania in mid-March, China at the end of May. That mean there were two gaps long enough for passport processing. I changed the name in my passport between the Germany and Tanzania trips. No problem. As soon as I got back from Tanzania I took my regular passport to the military base nearest my home (an hour and a quarter away) to start the processing for a government passport. When early May arrived with no word I called. The passport wasn't in. Miraculously, the next day it arrived and I trecked an hour and a quarter out to the base to pick it up. The agent hadn't opened the envelope. We discovered that instead of the brown (or red...) passport orders required I'd been issued a second blue passport with a special stamp (more common for military spouses). Fortunately that passport could be used to obtain the brown one and I was able to take my regular passport home to start the visa process. Unfortunately, the "rush" job on the brown visa wasn't so "rush". A week later when it should have arrived it hadn't. The agent was unreachable for days. When I finally reached him he swore he'd been calling the State Department every ten minutes to no avail. I left for California (a 10 day trip immiediately prior to the China departure). The agent had instructions to FedEx the passport to me there. Nothing. Voicemails unreturned. Email had an out of office response. I'm now in China sans official passport with no idea where it might be or where it might get sent (it's tough to pick it up in Brooklyn, as of today my apartment is occupied by tenants, and FedEx-ing it to my uncle's office in CA won't help much). Keep your fingers crossed for me...hopefully it will eventually reach me (preferably before I actually need it for something!).

And then there's the furniture...my husband was in a somewhat odd situation. He had to move out of his home in CA in November and put most of his things in storage (some marked to move, some to stay in storage until we come back from China). He went on temporary assignment until the big move at the end of May. Way back in November, though, there was no way to guess whether we'd be getting a furnished or an unfurnished apartment so he labeled his furniture to ship. When we finally signed the lease it was for a furnished apartment. We were saved by an error that would otherwise have been infuriating. The moving company somehow failed to ship our stuff on time. My husbaned brilliantly told them the way to turn a bad experience into a good one was to take the furniture off the shipping manifest and keep it in storage instead. They agreed. We'll see what arrives and when.

At any rate...we're here...cats are here...mountain of luggage is here...apartment was ready for us (sort of, but that's for another day). I think I've gone on long enough. Stand by for more...