Anna It was time to leave the USA and catch a flight to China! We flew from San Francisco to Beijing, which was also a first for me. I had never been to Asia before. Because you can’t count the time I had a layover in Hong Kong when I was visiting my sister in Australia. The flight was really long and due to the time difference, I felt so disoriented. We left San Francisco on the 3rd of October and arrived in Beijing on the 5th. So we lost a whole day due to the time difference. I think we arrived around 10 in the evening, keep in mind that we were already awake for 24 hours at this point! Before leaving home we calculated that we wouldn’t stay longer than 144 hours in Beijing. This meant that you can apply for a visa-free transit. So off we went to the visa-free transit counter. At the same time, a flight from the UK had arrived so the line was pretty long. We waited for approximately an hour and were very happy when we finally got to hand over our paperwork. We got our stamps and were too tired to check them (big mistake!). We just wanted to get to our hotel, which was an hour from the airport.
Finally, we arrived at our hotel and checked in. Everything seemed fine at the time so we went to bed. The next morning we had our first Chinese breakfast, which was amazing! I loved the Chinese breakfast, except the fact that they drink warm juice. That was really disgusting. We decided to explore the city. It was very foggy due to the air pollution, which resulted in me having brown snot. Beijing was immense, I don’t even know how to describe it. I felt uneasy in the city though. Everybody was staring at me, wanted to touch me or took photos of me. I didn’t really like that, it made me feel like an animal in the zoo. Most of the time I was just hiding behind my boyfriend. He said that walking with me was very odd as he was European too but no-one seemed to pay attention to him because he had this tiny blonde human by his side.
What also surprised me was the amount of police on the streets. And, what made me even more uncomfortable was that there were so many camera’s and security. Before getting on the subway you had to go through a metal detector and I couldn’t even decide on which side of the road I wanted to walk or where I wanted to cross the street. This was a very strange experience for me. But, it wasn’t all bad! I loved the Chinese cuisine. The food was so good. In our home country you can eat at a Chinese restaurant but the food is tailored to the inhabitants. I always disliked Chinese food, but I came to the realisation that it wasn’t the real Chinese cuisine. So, I was pleasantly surprised with the exquisite food. Especially, buns! I simply adore them. Stuff them with anything, I’ll eat it!
We tried to visit the Forbidden City but we had no clue that you had to book tickets in advance. So, we decided to wander through Jingshan Park and Tiananmen Square. At the end of the day we went for a lovely dinner and back to the hotel as we were still pretty jetlagged. When we arrived at the hotel, the guy at the front desk asked us if we “fixed our visa”. At first we were confused and we explained to him that we had a visa-free transit because we were already leaving in a few days. He didn’t agree with us and said that our passports stated that we only had 24 hours. We tried to explain it to him again and he got his manager, who looked at our passports as well. She came to the same conclusion. The customs officer stamped our passports with 24 hours instead of 144 hours. We slightly panicked at this point as they said that we couldn’t stay in their hotel anymore. They didn’t want to house “illegal” tourists.
At this point, we didn’t really know what to do so we tried to reason with them. We asked them to help us. The manager made a few phone calls but with no end. In the meantime, I contacted our home base and asked them for help. My brother in law called the Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands but they didn’t even speak English so that was a dead end. My boyfriend called the Dutch Embassy in China but they were no help either. All they said was “you should’ve checked your stamp..”. Which was a pretty shitty thing to say, in my opinion. My boyfriend felt the same and said to the woman “that’s all you have to say to me right now? We are probably getting deported and this is what you choose to say?”. The manager and front desk employee were getting annoyed with us as they didn’t want to help us anymore. Neither of them spoke English so they translated, while talking, through Bing. The manager forgot that she was still translating everything that was being said. So this text appeared on her phone “I am so tired, I don’t want to do this anymore”. Well, isn’t that hospitable! As we had no place to go, they agreed to let us stay the night but we had to leave in the morning. You can imagine that we didn’t sleep much that night.
The following morning I had a good feeling. We had a plan, we were going to the airport and we were going to sort things out with customs. We packed all our stuff, just in case, and put it in the lobby. We told the guy at the front desk that we were getting everything sorted out and asked him if we could leave our bags here in the meantime. So we were walking towards the subway when all of a sudden I got this feeling in my gut. I turned to my boyfriend and told him that I didn’t think everything was going to be okay. He asked me if I wanted to go back and take our backpacks with us. I told him I had a feeling that we wouldn’t be back, so we got our backpacks and went to the airport.
At the airport there was absolutely no-one willing to help us. We even called a number which was called “the entry and exit office” but none of them spoke any English. There were some kind flight attendants from other countries who agreed to translate for us but once again with no end. My boyfriend decided that it was better if I’d stay with the luggage and that he would fix our problem. So I just sat there, all by myself and with no-one to talk to. After hours and hours of arguing and asking for help, we gave up. There wasn’t a single soul out there that wanted to help us or even spoke English. The only advice we got was to just stay anyway and face customs when you leave. I was texting my dad to keep him updated and he told me it was for the best to just leave the country as overstaying could lead to jail time. And going to jail in China was the absolute last thing you want. Furthermore, no hotel would take us in when they would find out that we were staying in China illegally..
So, we did the only thing we could. We left. We went to the Cathay Pacific counter and asked to reschedule our flight to Hong Kong. She asked us to when and we responded with “the first flight you got!”. The first available flight would be in an hour so all of a sudden we were on a plane that was headed to Hong Kong. So long Beijing. I don’t think we’ll be back.
