A Karmic Lychee @ rah-kun.net

Ooh, I’ve gone all official with the numbering and titling. I suspect that my foray into New York City today (in this post-baccalaureate phase of my life) to procure the visa that will ultimately grant me access to the wide, unknown future of China that awaits me counts as well as (if not better than) anything else I could do as an official opening into my extended hiatus from Real-Life. And as generally tends to be the case with the inaugurating moments of any undertaking, today could have gone far better.

My first step was waking up. I elected to aim for a later train into New York from good ole’ Bridgeport. Bridgeport has often been my point of origin when making trips to and from New York for various reasons – from a weekend film class at NYU during my Junior Year of high school to my freshman year as a fully matriculated NYU student, to a couple of cleanup trips to pick up odds and ends after my departure from said school. It would figure that, at the beginning of yet another phase of my life, it starts at Bridgeport. Or maybe I just like thinking in cycles; who knows? Either way, Bridgeport it was and, with my need to spend as little money as humanly possible, a later Off-Peak train at that.

That was my first mistake.

In the process of saving myself five dollars, I managed to arrive at the Chinese Embassy at exactly the middle of lunchtime. With half the windows closed, I found myself doomed with a wait time of approximately one to a million hours. It was a hot, surprisingly small, stuffy room that served three functions – visa application drop off, visa pay/pickup, and something called “living document verification,” whatever that was. Bewildered, I stumbled into the “living document verification line” trying to get a sense of what the hell was going on around me. Luckily, and ironically, some guy asked me if I was in the visa line, to which I answered “I have no idea,” whereafter he promptly informed me of its actual location. Why he would ask me a question to which he already (confidently, I might add) knew the answer is beyond me, but I ended up in the correct line after only wasting 5 minutes of my time.

20 minutes pass. I move about 3 paces.

I hear a man behind me advise someone else that he needed to “make sure you have the ‘Contact in China’ section filled out, or they’ll reject the application.” I find this odd, because my own contacts in China insisted that this field was unnecessary for the puny little tourist visa I was applying for. Nevertheless, my gut inclined to the direction opposite of the advice I had been given in favor of the random bit of conversation that managed to reach me in this loud, crowded room. This makes me nervous, because if my application gets denied, that means yet another trip to New York and yet more time spent sitting in line.

Another 20 minutes pass, I move another 10 paces. I’m almost inside the rope aisles that formally constitute the “line.” Prior to this, I had been in the morass of gently-yet-desperately nudging people vying for a spot closer to the entrance of the line than the one they had. Remembering my lessons from India, I remain strong. Unfortunately, I also have to pee at this point.

30 minutes more. 3 more paces. I’ve entered the roped-off walkway now, but my mind has been racing the whole time – should I get contact info? Do I need it? How will I get it while standing in line at the embassy? I grow more nervous. To pass the time, I send neurotic, plaintive texts to my sister and Kelly describing the extreme wait. For the next hour, I equivocate on how to attain contact information and fearful that calling anyone while in line will attract the unwanted, judging attention of those around me: “What kind of idiot comes to the visa office without proper contact information?” etc. I decide to wait on it. By this point, I’ve passed through the roped barricades and I’m nearing the rows of chairs that make up the last few passes in the visa line people-chute. These seemed more to be a test of one’s health than a respite from standing. Once a person sat down, they were afforded only about 30 seconds to 5 minutes of sitting time before having to stand up again, shuffle sideways another foot and a half, then sit down again. It was absurd. By the time I reached the end of the colonnade of chairs, my attempts at reading* were thwarted by the need to get up and sit down every few minutes. My stomach tightened into a ball when the next person called was me; I imagined the following situation:

“Sir, no contact information. For your idiocy, you are hereby blacklisted from China. No entry. You are a fool and failure, EVERYONE knows they need contact information. Go away.”

Turns out, I wasn’t far off. She took one look at my forms, yelled “HOTEL” several times (through my attempts to say “multiple hostels…. backpacking!?” to no avail) and sent me away. Then began the frantic search:

I called the number that Angus’ Skype had left on my cell phone – theoretically, it should have rang on his computer back in Xiangfan, but… to no avail. He was a victim of a recent snafu I had read about where Skype has been distributing phone numbers that already belong to people. Needless to say, I was more irritated when I got a voicemail belonging to a high-pitched young southern girl instead of the Tom Mayo-like British accent of my school’s manager.

Next try: Seth. He might have known a few people I could have put down as contacts, but… alas, he wasn’t home. With Eric’s family being based in Hong Kong (which, though Chinese, does not really count as China for administrative purposes), I was running out of options.

So I called home:

“Hi. Jos? I need a hotel in China. Any hotel. Now.”

I had her search “Dalian Hotel” on google and feed me the contact information of the first thing that came up.** I jumped back in line (cutting a few people, which kind of pissed them off, I think. And not the small Chinese people, but these two beefy looking Italian guys with leather coats, chains, and greased back hair to boot). Nevertheless, the address and stuff seemed to pass, but then I discovered my third mistake, following the getting on the later train and the lack of contact info.

I put my job as “freelance writer/illustrator.”

Go me, putting “writer” in my job description on my way to a censorship-happy country. I got grilled, a bit, for that – but luckily, I had a copy of my graphic novel on hand (fortuitously) and was able to convince her that I just wrote and drew crappy little kids books. I had to put a special declaration that read: “I am a freelance writer for children’s stories but this trip is for tourism only.”

Aaaaannd visa application flagged. Good job me.

Anyways – after taking so long, the option to have it processed in the same day had expired, forcing me to return to the city next week some time just to pick the damned thing up. Oh, and the visa will cost me $130 US; payback for some kind of trade policy the US either agreed to or didn’t agree to, I don’t know. But any American citizen coming to China must pay the price of our foreign policy.

So. I managed to get out of the consul office by exactly 3 PM after arriving at 12:30. However, Peak hours start at 4 PM and go until 9 PM, meaning I had exactly one hour to get to Grand Central, at the MOST, to get the last train before getting stuck in New York for another five hours (unless I wanted to buy Peak time ticket and sit on the Grand Central – New Haven local for a sweaty eternity). After a few close calls and strange, serendipitous timing, I managed to get to Grand Central at exactly 3:30 with the last off-peak train until 9 PM leaving at exactly 3:34.

First day on the road and all I have to show for it is the horrible, lingering stench of the MTA on my skin, clothes, hair, and inside of the nostrils. Now I have to head back in a week for the actual visa, which at least gives me something to do between now and Si’s wedding.

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* I should mention that my choice of reading was similarly brilliant as my lack of adequate contact information. I had on my person my copy of Jonathan Spence’s Search for Modern China, which, while an excellent read, is about a smart choice as when I traveled through India and Malaysia while reading Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.

** Perhaps its a bad thing that I can neither find the hotel that I put down on my Visa form anymore or that I can’t really remember its name, at this point…