All manner of technical difficulties

Hmm.. something went wrong; I meant this to be posted two days ago!

Instead of going to school on Thursday and Friday, I spent three hours each day at the police station with my landlord. I had to change my residence permit so I don't get tossed out of the country when they find out I don't live at the Donghua residence anymore. It was your typical Chinese administrative procedure: on Thursday, my landlord fought for attention amidst the crowd of other recent relocaters, waving my passport at the one police officer - a bored-looking woman with a number of shiny gold stars across the chest of her immaculate blue suit, presumably indicating a rank high enough to take her time doing her job but low enough to enjoy the suffering of others. Eventually, she took my passport, examined it carefully, and gave it to another officer, who looked at it with two others before taking it to the break room - clearly visible behind a glass door - where he smoked a cigarette and flipped through its pages. He returned it to us five minutes later, briefly glanced at my change-of-residence form, and told us to get a letter from Donghua University stating I was a student there and to come back tomorrow. (Even though I had already shown my highly-official student card and a form filled out and stamped by the university.)

Friday: we return with the letter, typed and stamped specially, and are told after about half an hour of waiting that we need to make photocopies of the letter, my other form, and my passport. My landlord goes away and comes back ten minutes later with copies in hand. The officer (same lady as Thursday) takes the papers, puts them on her desk, and helps the three people standing behind us in line. Then she makes three more copies of all my documents with the photocopier that is on her desk (!!!). She produces an impressive array of rubber stamps from a drawer, and an orgy of stamping follows: every page seems to get at least three, each a different shape and size. This is all intermittent - various people shove their way to the front of the "line" and are helped instead, sometimes for up to fifteen or twenty minutes, before returning to my file. This must be the reason there is plexiglass between the officer and the visitors - it keeps me from leaning over and yelling, "Focus! Focus!" and possibly hurling a steamed bun or two just to get some attention. The system here is so different from home, and I know Westerners are criticized by Chinese people - especially in business - for being too up-front, for rushing things and lacking subtlety. I know I'll have to get used to this way of conducting business if I'm ever to have a career here. I just hope the "getting used to" will happen sooner rather than later.

Happily, I did change my residence permit. I am registered as living, for free, as a friend in my landlord's spare room at his own apartment. Apparently this is standard for foreign renters, so don't worry.

No pictures - I had to delete the two I took in front of the police station's security guard. Yikes!