My four-and-a-half month old son is in the process of becoming British. Well, he already is British, having me as a father, but not in the eyes of the Chinese government. Even though he is registered with the British consulate and he has a British passport, that cuts no ice with the Chinese. As far as they are concerned, he is Chinese three times over - born in China, Chinese mother, living in China. Plus, as they do not accept dual nationality, they do not recognize his passport. So, in order to become British and live in China as a British citizen, he must 1, apply for the renunciation of his Chinese nationality (a process which takes about 6 months), get an exit/entry permit to leave China, go to the UK, get a Chinese visa in his British passport, fly back to China, get the visa stamped, hope that the Chinese nationality has been renounced, so that he can apply for a residence permit. By the way, our son has no Hukou - this is deliberate - it makes the changing of nationalities easier, for one thing.
After a few months of PSB (Public Security Bureau) tennis, passing the buck between Chongqing (his place of birth), and Hunan (his mother's Hukou), we finally thought we had it confirmed that he could get both processes started in Hengyang, the nearest large city to my wife's Hukou. Armed with my trawling of blogs and reading of official websites plus my wife's subtle understanding of how local officials work, we embarked on a fact-finding mission to Hunan, to see if we could 1, apply for the renunciation of our son's Chinese nationality, and 2, apply for an exit/entry visa (we know that we can only apply for the visa to start 3 months before we return from our end-of-June to beginning-of-August England trip, but we wanted to get the info early, just in case there were problems. Lucky thing we did.
Last Friday, me, my wife, and our baby flew from Chongqing to Changsha. I love Changsha - it is not trendy enough to be Westernized and not small enough to suffer from too much petty corruption. Love the food, love the contrasts, the river, the people, my wife's interesting friends. It's a city, so you have to watch yourself, but I feel pretty safe there. We stayed there for a couple of nights in a hotel near the station we have been to before, basic, 138rmb a night, took a train to Hengyang on Sunday night, so we could be up bright and early for the PSB in Hengyang on Monday morning (April Fools Day!)
My wife thinks Hengyang is a den of thieves, taxi drivers lynching people who don't pay their extortionate fares, everyone on the make, restaurants short-changing people, pickpockets everywhere. She says they were going to have an international airport like Changsha, but so many people wanted a piece of the action, back-hander-wise, that the idea was scrapped and it went to a smaller Hunan city instead. That is typical. Anyway, it is a difficult place for a foreigner to wander round alone, especially at night. On Monday at 8, we went to the Exit/Entry Police Department to be told that we needed a letter from the little police station in the village close to my wife's home village, and she could take it to the bigger town, which could deal with immigration issues. This was not what we'd been told in those months of trying to get info, but we really shouldn't have been surprised. We only had 2 days before our flight back, so we acted fast. Checked out of the Hengyang hotel (7 Days Inn) at about 10.30, caught a town bus (25 minutes) to the out of town bus station, caught a bus to the big town closest to my wife's Hukou, and grabbed lunch (it was about 1.00 at this point). My wife negotiated a price for a taxi while I hid (this always happens), and we drove about 1 hour to the tiny village police station to get a signed and stamped letter confirming my wife's Hukou. Luckily, there was someone on duty, not sleeping or drinking, and my wife's idea of a 23rmb packet of cigarettes was a real Christmas-come-early for the policeman. We met one of my wife's multitude of cousins in the village, who cooed at the baby, invited us to her house (no time), gave us a bag of soya beans and tried to slip my wife a red envelope for the baby (she is very poor and cannot afford to give us money), so there was a short game of red envelope tossing in and out of the taxi window (my wife won). We rushed back to the town to get to the PSB office just after the afternoon opening, about 3. Not many people there, luckily. This is where the fun started.
In the last couple of years, there was one local officer who had helped my wife get visas to stay with me in Hong Kong. A combination of a meal out in a decent restaurant and some nice perfume and facial products made the difference between her expediting the visa in a few days versus 20 or 30 days. This time, we had another female officer. She was very nice and efficient, and at first, it seemed that she would be happy to just do the job she was paid for. This was the first time she, or anyone else there, had had to process a nationality renunciation before, so she had to read up on it as she was doing it. The clock was ticking, because we had to be out of there the next afternoon to get our early morning Changsha flight on Wednesday. From 3.00 to closing time at 6.30, many trees died, as we photocopied endless documents, the baby's, mine, my wife's, we fingerprinted, signed, discussed, and the police woman, who had been devoting herself exclusively to this Kafkaesque red tape orgy, broke her calm professional exterior with an angry outburst at about 6.15. We stopped at 6.30, hoping to finish quickly in the morning. We checked into the poshest hotel in town, and my wife composed a statement asserting her request for the renunciation of our son's nationality.
The next morning at 8, the police woman was obviously dragging her feet a little bit, and after helping us for the first hour or so, left abruptly, saying she was busy. I was the first one to suggest that she had been got to, probably by her husband the previous night. "What, you're doing all that work for these Americans, and they're not offering you anything?". My wife, having thought that the woman was happy to work for only her wage (because she had said "Don't worry, I'm just doing my job") had to agree that we needed to invite this woman to lunch if we wanted to get this finished by the afternoon. (The station closed for 2 and a half hours for lunch (12-2.30) She came to the restaurant above a cake shop, nicely scrubbed up in civvies, her hair down, looking relaxed and happy. My wife chatted with her about stuff, the woman's university days many years ago when she studied English (thankfully, she's forgotten most of it now). My wife fielded the inevitable question about my monthly wage, as usual pitching it as low as she thinks the person listening will believe. Then, at about 1pm, she got the security guard to open the shutters and we went behind the counter to expedite our application with significantly more speed than earlier on in the day. We wandered around the labyrinthine offices of the police station picking up various forms, then went upstairs to a little room, where it became obvious to my wife that it was time to offer 200rmb ("for you to have a foot massage, as my husband thinks your feet must be tired after helping us"). After more signing forms in quadruplicate, we went downstairs just before afternoon opening time, while she put on her uniform and started "work". She took some photos of the happy family, then we went back upstairs where her superior took photos in his office of all of us (her in the foreground, pen in hand, our little family in the background. ) That was it. We had finished the application. We rushed back on a bus to Hengyang, got a train to Changsha, speed ate a nice meal and collapsed on the hotel bed, ready for a 4am alarm call for the bus to the airport. My wife needs to return to the police woman next month for the exit/entry permit, but that should be much easier.
Small but important footnote: a not-insignificant reason for our success was our beautiful son himself. He will smile at anyone, and he has a wonderful smile, and he makes the most irresistible baby talk. I do not underestimate his influence in nudging things in the right direction.
