February 25, 2024
T-1: 海口 → 官塘
Being as today—despite being a Sunday—is a work day for my friends who have office jobs or who work at schools, I won't have had any reason to stay out late last night. Which means I'll wake up at the kind of hour people who aren't night owls consider to be a reasonable waking up hour.
I'll use this time to ensure that while I'm still going to need to put clean sheets on my bed before the next time I sleep in it, the primary decoration in my living room won't be a giant pile of laundry.
As I didn't take much back with me to Haikou (basically just laptop, chargers, and the clothing I was wearing), I don't have much to pack and I'm out the door early enough that my "trying to sleep before midnight" schedule still allows me to get a Coke Zero¹ with my meal.
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Since the Smitties didn't come up with anything for me to bring back from Haikou, I assuage my guilt at being an empty-handed houseguest the first time round by bringing a nice bouquet of flowers² this time. As it will turn out though, a chance remark during a conversation where Chantel and I are swapping horror stories of times we ended up getting stitches will lead down a path that has their HR department calling the Public Security Bureau and requesting that they confirm with the National Immigration Administration that something very complicated and expensive that it seems nearly all the South Africans have been doing is, in fact, completely unnecessary.
So, getting ahead of myself in the narrative, but in terms of handling my feelings about being a bad guest who is far too frequently being empty handed, I've just saved multiple friends literally thousands of yuan apiece on account of going "Umm... I'm pretty sure that's not right."
The bag my stuff is in already doesn't fit too well in the bike basket and the flowers make it just about impossible, so I get myself a taxi to the train station. As I've waited too late to buy a ticket and insist on being on the train that stops at the smaller station near their place, I'll end up with a standing ticket, but I'll also end up finding a seat that's miraculously empty all the way up til one stop before mine.
Get to their place around the same time they're getting off work so plenty of time for socializing which leads to the aforementioned conversation where Chantel complains about how if she goes to Hong Kong to get an ought to be available in China but isn't medication that will help with an issue she has, she'll have to reregister with the police and she doesn't want to do that.
Now, I'm initially thinking that "reregistering with the police" means getting the local precinct to update her "Date of Entry" in their computer and that's she just whinging over them making this complicated, cause plenty of local precincts make this way harder than it ought to be. But, no.
She actually means getting a whole new authenticated Criminal Background Check from South Africa. Complete with the notary stamp and multiple layers of cover letters, and—since South African corruption is out of control—paying an agent to handle things including paying bribes to get the paperwork done in time.
I've been in China for 22 years. In those 22 years I've had no more than three Criminal Background Checks done. Since I'm not sure if one was done prior to when I first arrived, it's possible I've only done it twice. And the only reason I did it an extra time was cause they changed their minds about not actually needing it after the one I'd just moved heaven and earth³ to get had already expired.
So, I'm a bit gobsmacked to hear that she and her husband have been told to have one done for every single Residence Permit renewal that takes place after a trip overseas. And, I'm even more gobsmacked to find out that it isn't their language skills or a particularly stupid HR department, but that all the South Africans I'm friends with in Hainan think that this is normal.
And it's not even just Hainan either...
Now I'm burning to know why literally none of the people who have been enforcing this rule that isn't a rule⁴ on South Africans bothered to a) question why they were only doing it to South Africans or b) call a supervisory department to ask of their own volition if this was right.
Going to continue biking tomorrow...
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¹ I vastly prefer Diet Coke over all other fizzies, but it's almost never seen in China and when it is it's only in small cans.
² An idea that I got on account of Sarah and I buying flowers for last night's festival
³ Went to Guangzhou to get wet ink fingerprinted even.
⁴ The actual rule is something like if you spend more than 30 days outside China in the interval between one job ending and another job starting.
Today's ride: 3 km (2 miles)
Total: 914 km (568 miles)
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