– 请，等一下。
– 当然可以。

Wait­ing two more min­utes doesn’t sound so bad. We have been stand­ing in the small — yet over­crowded — room for about two hours, brows­ing brochures about the lat­est Shen­zhen fair trade and exchang­ing exas­per­ated glances with our unfor­tu­nate lineup mates. I went out twice for a smoke, drank about two liters of water and read all the notes taped on the wall. One of my eyes is wan­der­ing. Lack of sleep. Got to get up early if you want to make it to the Chi­nese embassy.

Excepted for the many notices (“For an indi­vid­ual U.S. pass­port holder, any visa will be charged with 130 Cana­dian dol­lars”, “The appli­cant must fill out the “Visa Appli­ca­tion Form of the People’s Repub­lic of China” accu­rately, seri­ously, and care­fully” etc.), the room is pretty bare.

Every fif­teen min­utes, some­one moves for­ward and smiles ner­vously at the offi­cer behind the glass win­dow. It’s usu­ally not long before the shy appli­cant raises his voice:

– But I need my pass­port, I could be going to the USA tomor­row!
– Sorry, not ready.
– But, but…
– Sorry,not ready. Pick up, tomor­row. Not ready.

The lord of the visas doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. He has all the pass­ports locked in his drawer. Get that, West­ern bully!

And the shy appli­cant leaves the room fum­ing and slams the door behind him.

下一个人。 Next.

The lord of the visas is very picky. He double-checks all the doc­u­ments and asks a lot of ques­tions to each per­son who apply for a visa. The slight­est hes­i­ta­tion means being sent back to the small wooden desk at the very far end of the room to fill more paper­works out, or to start another appli­ca­tion. If some­thing doesn’t match, he sees it right away. Like if you stated you would be stay­ing in “Bei­jing” but spelled out “Bei­jin” later on on the same form because you’re a stu­pid West­erner and can’t write in pinyin, he will men­tion it. And send you to the wooden desk to fill a fresh appli­ca­tion out. On which you will no doubt do your best to spell the name of your host city cor­rectly.

Peo­ple are com­plain­ing. Of course. The embassy’s open­ing hours are too short, the lineup doesn’t move fast enough, there is no air-conditioning and above all, these Chi­nese drive us crazy with their stu­pid visa require­ments — these are pop­u­lar sub­jects in the queue. Of course, the closer they get to the lord of the visas, the qui­eter they speak. Lit­tle do they seem to know that most embassies around the world only open in the morn­ing and that visa require­ment for Canada (or the U.S.A, or the Schen­gen area…) can be a headache for foreigners.

Our turn. We stand there, a shy smile on our faces, doc­u­ments in our hands. Plane ticket, itin­er­ary, every­thing that the lord of the visas needs. Apply­ing for a Chi­nese visa used to be really straight­for­ward, but you know, the Olympics: “同一个世界同一个梦想”. One world, one dream, and a lot of security.

– 对不起，需要看看你的飞机票。

We hand our plane tick­ets and the lord of the visas squints at them.

– 你为什么现到芬兰再到中国?
– 比较便宜啊！

It must sound very log­i­cal to fly to Fin­land to go to China because the lord of the visas nods in agree­ment. Phew. He is actu­ally more con­cerned about Feng going to see his fam­ily in China (not going to hap­pen) and where we would be stay­ing (Bei­jing). We patiently explain. I have a flash­back: 1999, the sixteen-years-old me try­ing to get her stu­dent card from the Chi­nese Uni­ver­sity I was study­ing at and end­ing up spend­ing about five hours going from the for­eign stu­dent office to the stu­dent office. Patience.

He takes our pass­ports and tell us to come back. Thank you, lord of the visas.

We got our visa. We’re going to Bei­jing for the end of the Olympic Games，a cou­ple of weeks between mid-August and early Sep­tem­ber. We have tick­ets for the Olympics. We have plane tick­ets. And we have a one day stopover in Fin­land — don’t ask.

I can’t wait to go back to China. Told you I wasn’t going to boy­cott the Olympic Games!

Related arti­cles:

1. Canada’s Visa War
2. 5 Rea­sons Your Visa Offi­cer Hates You
3. I’m A Legal Alien
4. Jig­saw Falling Into Place
5. Immi­grat­ing to Canada: 6 Years Later, What Changed?