Thursday 16th - Passport daySunny's father had come to Wuhan with us to mainly assist with the passport process in Gongan as it is an arduous process and apparently prohibitively expensive normally (equivalent of several hundred euro so Sunny told me but I'm not so sure, read on).
In a nutshell she need to bring a letter from her boss stating that she was in a full time job, of good character and was full time there. She also had to bring her Hokou and her colleague degree and her various other certification in originals.
So we got up early and got a bus from Gongan to Yangjiachang where the head police station was for the area.
The bus journey there was pretty amazing, all along the roadside small farmers had rice, soybeans, sesame spread out to dry in the hot sun. On the motorway one whole lane was taken up with this! As the roads got narrower and narrower they just spread it out over the whole road and the cars and trucks just drive over it!, rubber and rice, a tasty mixture I am sure. Alongside the road every house seemed to have cotton laid out in front of it to dry also.
Back home in agricultural areas the houses are far apart with fields in between but no here. All the houses were detached ramshackle affairs but all were together. Every land owner seemed to have a small narrow long plot of land behind the house, or that's how it seemed to me. So many houses and no shops. Rural life is different here. The road was extremely narrow and one way. The bigger the vehicle seemed to determine right of way. Potholes were almost deep enough to stand in and I imagine in rain this would be tricky indeed as it would be hard to judge deep from shallow pothole.
Cotton dries alongside the dusty potholed road close to Gongan
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Yangjiachang turned out to be what I expected Gongan to be, one long dusty pot holed road with many small shops open to the elements, chickens and sleepy sweaty dogs running around the place free range.
Sunny wasn't hungry but i was so she got me two lovely hot baozi with a kind of herby pork meat filling inside. I wonder if any lao wai had trodden these dusty streets recently before?, everybody seemed to stop and stare was we walked along. We went into a shop to buy a (comparably) expensive brand of Chinese cigarettes to help with the passport process (more later)
As we were walking along Sunny's father, who was waiting for us, spotted us and we went together to a shop where his friend was waiting. The friend apparently would help us with the application as the Big Chief. So off we went to the local police station, after a bit of wandering around and talking to various people it was determined that the Big Chief was not in just yet. So we waited in the blistering heat for about an hour it seemed and eventually he arrived.
His arrival caused quite a stir, as soon as he arrived, locals surrounded him all presumably needing his seal of approval on something they were applying for.
We followed him to his office and Sunny's fathers friend chatted to him jovially for a while and threw the cigarettes behind his desk and wouldn't take no for an answer when the Big Chief tried to give them back.
The Big Chief asked to see all Sunny's documentation , our red books , everything. He then asked for the paperwork to sign.
It seems that it never occurred to anyone that they would actually need to bring the paperwork filled in and personally signed to the station
?!!! The police station didn't have the application forms so we would have to go all the way back to Gonan to the "County Administration Service Center" to get the forms. That is about an hour away over really bumpy dusty hot roads, great..
Yangjiachang is a pretty isolated place, there doesn't seem to be any taxi's and the bus service is very infrequent, this was a major setback. Sunny's father and his friend walked along the main street deciding what to do, eventually they saw a guy sitting in a chair in the shade in front of a small shop. There was a van parked out front. The fathers friend offered him some money if he would drive us to Gongan which he accepted and we were on our way.
At the administrative center we got the forms and were about to lave when a lady behind the counter saw me and declared that I must register with them there. I said to Sunny to tell her that I was already registered by our hotel, but people here appear to blindly follow whatever any official tells them, Sunny said no , I must register because the official says I must.....So about another half an hour of form filling , passport checking etc ensued, of course all this was totally pointless as the hotel already did it (I had to sign the same form in the hotel)...but what can you do?, i wasn't going to kick up a fuss with her father there, and anyway would have gotten me exactly nowhere anyhow..because_the_official_said_so..it is dogma.
Once the forms were filled in etc. our man with a van took us back to the Big Chiefs office, he signed the forms and said we needed to go to another office in the police station to get them forms officially stamped.
However, and there is always a however....
When we went to that office they said we needed a picture attached to the form (again..this would have seemed obvious to me to have done already...but it seems nothing gets filled in or done unless someone in a uniform says it needs to be here).
Sunny even told me she was so nervous filling in the form in front of the Big Chief that she found it hard to focus on the words on the page!!
Luckily in Yangjiachang there was a marriage photo studio there (every town in China seems to have at least one or more of these). So Sunny got her face done up again and her picture taken and off we went back to the police station to the the form stamped...
However..and there always is a however!
The person authorized to do the form stamping had apparently gone to a meeting or something and we would have to go back to Gongan again to get them stamped.. So off we traipsed again with the man and a van back to Gongan.
However, and there is always a however..............
The person authorised to do the form stamping there was now back at the police station in Yangjiachang, wonderful_just_wonderful. We called the man and his van back and he took us to Yangjiachang once again. We went into the police station but the stamping office had nobody there... Luckily Sunny bumped into an old school classmate there and while chatting to him someone else passed by and he asked them where we could find this stamping guy. They directed us to what seemed to be the police canteen. Sunny seemed extremely nervous and to be honest I really didn't feel comfortable there either. Anyhow she asked one of the guys there where the form stamping guy was and he told hr which office to go to. So we went there, got the forms stamped and I thought, FINALLY_WE_ARE_ALMOST_FINISHED!!!
However..
And there is..
Always a however here!!!!..
There was one more twist to the tale of course. So back to the administration office to have the documents processed, all stamped and signed, pictures, attached, what could go wrong right?, wrong!
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Just for starters it was closed!! The office had the shutters all boarded up and the workers in the food stall beside it told us they were on lunch. So we went for lunch and came back for when the office lunch was supposed to be over, of course that was about 30 minutes later than we were told. Its not much fun standing around in 37C heat outside believe me. Anyhow they eventually opened and we got started..
First of all the application is vetted by one person then passed to another and then finally to payments. The first vetting person said Sunny needed to bring her English certification to the office, the one piece of certification she didn't bring. Sunny called for me loudly in English and we went out the door her explaining to me what was needed to my incredulous sounds. The first vetting person obviously heard this and relented and called her back and said it wasn't needed.
Finally a break!
So we passed to the second vetting person, one billion questions later, intense scrutinisation of my passport later they decided that photos we got made earlier in the day were not sufficiently clear but amazingly there was a photo studio two doors down that could do them. Wow what a convenient surprise.... While we where there another person came in to get his photos taken too. I had seen him in the queue behind us earlier and to my eyes his pictures were perfect too...
Anyhow...with the "right" pictures, stamps, signatures ..we finally moved on to payments and a mere 15 minutes or so later they processed our payment (there was one person ahead of us in that queue and they left as we arrived).
The passport application was finally done. They will (hopefully) mail her passport and Hong Kong visa to her workplace in Guangzhou and all things going well Sunny can see me off at the airport in October that dreaded day when I fly home again.
Sunny gave some money to her father and his friend to go back to their respective villages. We would meet up with her father in her original family home tomorrow and meet some of her relatives back there.
Exhausted we had a rest and freshened up at the hotel then went for dinner. There is a KFC in Gongan and Sunny had seen some advertisement on tv about some junk food there that she wanted to try so was all for it. I really didn't want to eat junk food here but thought OK, why not. I just wanted a regular meal burger, French fries and a sprite, with a sachet of ketchup for the fries. Not a big deal you would think in a KFC right?, wrong!!!!
The chicken burger would take a few minutes to make but they went ahead and served me fries anyhow to sit on the counter and go cold. They I noticed when i tasted one that they were unsalted so i asked for a sachet of salt. The serving person didn't understand, so I asked Sunny to translate, and she said they don't have them. I said of course they have them this is a global fast food chain, the must have them. Then she said the fries were already salted, I said, no they aren't, i want a sachet of salt, they must have this (I'm tired, hungry and dont want to eat this junk food and they cant even get a basic order right...OK so I was bitchy, but if you guys had had the day we just had you might have been a little twitchy too!)
Eventually they put some salt into a sundae lid for me. I decided it wasn't worth complaining about the stone cold fries by now. The meals come with a flat soda, or at least that's what the alleged fruit juice tastes like. So i had decided if i was gonna drink some sugery crap it should have bubbles in it so i wanted a sprite. Eventually i got my sprite. Then came the ketchup saga, eventually I got ketchup..it tires me to just type this never mind read it (well done if you made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back from me).
One thing I have learned in China is that 9 times out of 10 western food tastes like crap here or is an ordeal to get. The only exception being McDonalds, its easy to order and tastes the same and they generally have the same stuff as back home, except they don't do quarter pounders with cheese in Guangzhou or Wuhan. I told Sunny that I didn't want to eat any more western junk food again on this trip.
We then went for a romantic walk around the high street and went shopping for stuff to bring her uncles the next day. (cigarette and mooncakes) . The street food in Gongan is...authentic, you can get turtles in there shells, head and all to eat, ducks heads, basically everything looks like it was just skinned and dipped in the frying pan, i didnt try anything.
After that we headed back to the hotel, our long tiring passport day finally over.
The next day we went to Sunny's family home and met her extended family there, and that's another tale to be told...
