Under the Care of the Chinese Government by Rev. Tom Schade

Sue and I went to China with a group from the Worcester Art Museum this month.  The group was led by Professor Paul Ropp of Clark University and we had a great time.  Travel broadens.   When I first arrived in China, at the Beijing International Airport, I was denied entry into the country.  Some of you may have heard something about this incident.  I posted it on my facebook wall at the time, but without much detail.  And as Facebook is not available in China, I was not able to update the incident. This is the whole story. There was a mistake on my visa.  I had applied to enter China before May 10, 2011.  My visa however, said that I was to enter China before May 1, 2011.  I arrived on May 09, 2011.   Oops.  I am a decent sort of fellow with a friendly face.  I am an American citizen.  I am white, middle-aged and prosperous.   "A decent sort with a friendly face My first instinct is that people will give me the benefit of the doubt in ambiguous situations.  I sort of expected that the Chinese Immigration officer would look me in my eye, see my lack of guile and benignity and conclude that this was a minor technical error, a clerical transposition of two numbers,  He would wave me through. No, that did not happen.  Sue had been waved through, but I was not.  Of course, a couple of supervisors also examined my papers and they all concluded that I did not have a valid visa to enter China, and so, therefore I could not. A representative of China Airlines explained that they could book me on a flight back to the United States.  Or, he suggested that I do what some people in this situation do: go to Hong Kong and re-apply for a visa there and try again.  Sue contacted China Advocates, the organization that was making the arrangements for the tour we were on, and soon, they had a representative, Dave,  at the airport to talk with me.  (Chinese people who are in the tourism business refer to their "Chinese Name" and to their "English Name.".  Do you have a Chinese name?) Dave arranged for me to get some necessities from my baggage, which had already entered China.  And he got me on a flight to Hong Kong the next morning.  Meanwhile, I was going to be under the care of the Chinese government.  Their care consisted of an orange chair, on which I was instructed to sit.    It was in a waiting area of the large room where people lined up to present their visas.  I watched wave after wave of people pass through the room into China.  After a while, somebody brought me the Chinese equivalent of some Little Debby cakes and a couple of candy bars. At midnight, a Chinese border guard accompanied me into China to a small hotel facility inside the airport.  I was given some soup, and shown to a small bedroom.  I could take a shower but I needed to sleep with the door open, so he could keep an eye on me. In the morning, it was back to the orange chair for another couple of hours.  And then, I was walked to the plane for Hong Kong, given my passport and boarding pass and put on the plane.  None of it was cruel, or mean, or even uncaring.  It was simply impersonal. When I landed in Hong Kong, I was met by Randy from China Advocates.  We went to a photobooth and made some pictures of me for the new visa application.  He booked me into a hotel, took my passport and said that he would be back in 24 hours with a new visa and my boarding pass for a flight back to China.  He was good to his word.  Exiled in beautiful Hong Kong.  I had 24 hours to spend in Hong Kong, a fabulous city.  All in all, the whole experience was a little nerve-wracking at first, and then a little boring, and then ultimately kind of exciting.  It did feel good to get back to Beijing and see Sue again. The story has been going around that I was delayed because I am a minister.  Not so.  I think that the origin of that story is this:  because I listed "Minister" as my profession on my visa application, I was asked to provide a letter by some authority figure that I was not going to China to convert Chinese people to Christianity.  Our moderator David Spanagel graciously wrote that letter.  I am sure that he was quite persuasive about my inability to convert anybody to Christianity.  That never came up again. I will have more about my trip to China along the way. Thanks for the chance to go.