We arrived in Beijing via our flight from Bangkok, Thailand, this morning at 12:40 a.m. We were fully expecting to go through the regular immigration lines, take a taxi to a hostel, get a good night’s rest and see some sights in Beijing today. Instead, as we stood in front of the immigration officer, he asked if we had another visa. What? Why would we have two visas? Well, he replied, our present visa just expired 40 minutes ago. And, that’s a problem. We explained to him that this was the visa that the CHINESE EMBASSY issued to us after we gave them our flight itinerary last month. That carried absolutely no weight. No problem to them that we thought we had covered all our bases. It was wrong, and it didn’t really matter that it was their embassy’s fault; it was our faulty visa and we weren’t going to get into the country.
I had a thought of, “Oh, this will all get worked out.” The official told us, “Sit over there and wait.” We waited as the rest of the foreigners were serviced, and the immigration officers started to “pack up and go home”. At least, that’s what it looked like to us.
As you can see in this picture, it was a lonely, quiet place, and it was now past 1 a.m. Finally an officer came to us and said, “You will go back to Ulaanbaatar in the morning.” I couldn’t believe my ears! We had just landed and we were going to get shipped out of here because we came in 40 minutes past the date on our visa. But the strange thing was, the date, in small print, said, “Enter by February 16”. We had been told by the UB Chinese Embassy that we had to enter and exit between February 16 and 7 days later, February 23, which was going to be no problem for us with our itinerary. So, it seems, that the Ulaanbaatar Chinese Embassy and the Beijing Immigration officers interpret this little detail in two different ways. We even spoke with the Exit and Entry police; we were led to believe by the woman at the counter that it would all work out. She told us to go back to the immigration officials and they could help us. When we were accompanied by an official who explained that to the immigration official, he just looked at us, and shook his head firmly, flew his fist into the air, and said, “Impossible. Go.”
Do not to go out of the airport; Do not collect luggage; Do not pass “Go”; Do not collect 200 yen! So, we fortunately had some necessities to help make our overnight stay in the airport just a tiny bit better: two backpacks which doubled as pillows, my winter coat (which had been in my suitcase, but we had moved it to my backpack for a couple reasons!), and Kevin’s sleeping cushion to make things a bit softer. I had even moved my toothbrush over to my carry-on bag at the last minute. Nice. I also used our mini ipod to soften the airport noises (like incessant Chinese talking on the TV’s which couldn’t be turned off, nor could the volume be adjusted). Now, I’m sitting at an airport coffee shop having absolutely the worst coffee of our trip...sort of a weak cardboard tea with mild coffee flavor. But, surely the caffeine will be worth it since I only slept about two hours during a four hour period.
We’ve had to chuckle at the thought that perhaps we just aren’t meant to step into China. As you might recall, we were accepted to go to China with our organization to teach back in 1988, but we found out our daughter had a heart problem which we were told to stay in the U.S. to have fixed. Then, again, we tried to go with the same organization in 1992. We were assigned a city and then found out that I was pregnant with our fourth child. And now, today.
Maybe someday we’ll see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City…but for now it all just seems very forbidden! In a few hours, we’ll be returning to Ulaanbaatar; I must say we had a wonderful three weeks in Thailand with 70-90 degree weather. I look out the window here in Beijing, and reality is that it’s snowing. This is breaking me into reality that we’ll soon be back in our winter coat and boots, hustling to the next building. I can actually say I’m looking forward to seeing those we’ve come to love in UB; but I AM a bit disappointed that this next five days has been cancelled.
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| Banners hanging in the Beijing airport above the immigration lines. We just weren't feeling the love. |
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