I can't think of any other city in China where I've faced so much bureaucratic frustration and failure. For reasons unknown to me, every time I venture into downtown Wujiang, I feel as if the whole trip is going to be a wasted afternoon. Given that I'm now about 3 for 20 when it comes to accomplishing something productive in Wujiang, it is no small wonder I dread even thinking about that place now.
What's the deal with Wujiang anyway? As a friend said, the place hasn't been very good to me. Moving out of that cursed place and back to the promised land of Shanghai was the best choice I could have made.
To get some idea what's going on here, we need to understand a few things about Chinese administrative hierarchy. Wikipedia is an excellent source of information, combined with my past experiences living and working in a very unique area of China: the remote part of Wujiang prefecture which bordered on two other provinces. That's how I learned all the stuff on administrative hierarchy in the first place, or else I wouldn't have bothered.
What the Chinese call a 'city' is actually a prefecture -- a very large area of land. This can lead to somewhat humorous contradictions like I saw in the recent paper. One article read, "The city of Shanghai plans to hold a competition to attract tourists to its villages."
One would obviously ask, how can there be a village in a city?
It makes sense if we look at the original language. The Chinese use the word 'shi' to call a city, but it basically means a prefecture. The urban core of the prefecture is the actual city for which the entire prefecture is named after. So in this sense, Shanghai contains many small villages.
In my blogs, I often refer to the urban part as 'downtown Shanghai' or simply 'Shanghai' while the whole area I refer to as 'Shanghai province' to distinguish it from neighboring areas, even though Shanghai is not really a province.
Next door is Suzhou 'province', again not really a province, but it's about the same size as Shanghai province and plays a similar role. Suzhou contains several other smaller prefectures, similar to how Shanghai contains smaller districts. So in the case of Suzhou, we have: Kunshan, Changshu, Taicang, and Wujiang prefectures. Each of these prefectures still covers a significant chunk of land and has, in turn, smaller township governments .
So you might be thinking, why does this kind of thing matter anyway. I didn't give the whole land division system much thought until living near the border of 3 provinces. Then, it suddenly mattered a lot !! Actually, the longer I spend in China, the more I realize how important this kind of thing really is.
Two years ago I was working for a school in the remote regions of Wujiang. For all practical purposes, I used Shanghai as the downtown reference point. But to be consistent with the importance of jurisdiction, the school was actually part of Wujiang, and so "downtown" meant there, not Shanghai.
So, downtown Wujiang was about 30km away from the school, and the only time we went there was for administrative purposes. Such as:
1. Doing health checkups
2. Applying for residence permit and visa
3. Trying to replace a passport (what a nightmare)
4. Drivers license testing
Each one of these tasks required multiple trips, and multiple setbacks were encountered.
This experience got to be so common, that every single trip to Wujiang I would dread, just expecting that something wrong would occur and that hours of time would be wasted. That is exactly what did happen.
The stories are too numerous to recall in detail, but here are just a few:
-- The school was trying to process our work visas in time for the national holiday but there were numerous setbacks and delays in making this happen. One afternoon we got there, and the administrative office told us we had to go to Suzhou office first and take care of a matter, then come back. We did that, but the traffic jams caused us to arrive back in Wujiang just after 5pm when we saw a whole convoy of government vehicles drive off. At that point we knew we were doomed, and would have to come back again tomorrow. That we did, but by then my tourist visa had expired. We ended up having to spend the whole afternoon in the police station writing out self-criticism notes and my secretary bore the brunt of the burden trying to explain why we were now overstaying our visas.
-- On our way to a health checkup, our driver had barely enough fuel just as he pulled into a gas station along the rural road. The attendant said 'mei you' meaning there was no more fuel at the pumps. We drove a little further along and ran out of gas.
-- While trying to report a passport lost (the first out of two losses) the policeman at the Wujiang office said I had to go back to Dalian to report because that's where the passport was lost. But I told him I couldn't because I needed to work, and my job was in Wujiang so reporting here would make sense. He then asked how I managed to get back without a passport and I told him I took the bus. Then he put together a list of 3 places I had to visit first and obtain 3 reports: Luxu town, Wujiang prefecture, finally Suzhou prefecture. After going to all 3 places and doing as I was told with my secretrary helping me, the Suzhou office rejected my case. Finally I said screw all this, crossed the Shanghai border, and solved the problem by myself with an office that was much more accomodating. Eventually I got a new passport, but it still needed to have a replacement Wujiang residents permit.
-- After about 6 attempts, I finally got that residence permit in my new passport. By the sixth trip to Wujiang I was almost ready to give up and just quit China if it didn't work. Or failing that, survive on tourist visas from Shanghai where it would easier to get them, and then quit my job in June. In fact, I did eventually quit that job.
-- After multiple attempts I finally got a drivers license and it sure was difficult (see last blog) The license specifically says: Suzhou prefecture, Wujiang prefecture, Luxu Town, and then my former school address on it.
Unfortunately today's story is another one to add to the Wujiang woes.
The supposed logic here in China is that when you lose a document, you need to go back to the place that first issued the document.
In the case with my drivers license, I got it issued in Wujiang, so going back would make sense. Wrong. I figured they would have a record of it on their computers, and I had printed scans of the actual license online in case of something like this -- which I brought along with me.
The problem was that before even checking the police computers, they saw my current passport which was DIFFERENT than the old passport used to apply for the license. Worse yet, in this case, my current passport had a Shanghai residence permit inside it, as opposed to a Wujiang residence permit which my old passport had when I applied for the license.
Predictably, the clerks at the traffic police said, "We can't help you here because you have a residence permit from Shanghai, and your passport number is different than your old one."
I said, "But my license printout here says the license is Suzhou, Wujiang, Luxu, and it was issued from this office where I took the test two years ago. The license is valid until 2015, as you can see, and I got the license from this office, so that's why I am here. Besides, I came all the way from Shanghai."
They asked if I had a copy of my old passport and Wujiang residence permit. Unfortunately, I did not. They wrote down a list of things I had to do, which was frighteningly similar to what happened two years ago from the visa office:
1. Go to Luxu town and get a temporary registration form of residence from the local police
2. Go to the hospital and get a medical checkup receipt, similar to when I first got the license
3. Go to the Suzhou traffic police department office, as it is from the larger prefecture. They told me the license came from there originally, not from Wujiang.
The clerks may in fact be completely correct here about the process, but I have no confidence when it comes to this stuff anymore, and I don't even want to bother trying. All this was relayed back to my former secretary at the school I used to work with, who tried her best to help, but she could only do so much.
What happened next was the clerks at the traffic police office gave me back all the documents I had brought in. But on the way out, I noticed they ALSO mistakenly gave me the documents from a Taiwanese person who was applying for a license. They were dealing with this girl before me in the queue (if you can call it a queue) and somehow her documents got mishandled in the shuffle and they ended up in my hands.
About 30 minutes later I did the right thing and gave the documents back to the clerk, who was very grateful, otherwise it could have been a huge problem!! I kid you not, she could have lost her job over something like this. Unfortunately that nice little save didn't score me any brownie points for them to change their minds and process my case, even though I didn't hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity.
Immensely frustrated, right away aftewards, against my better judgment, I capitulated to the services of a tout who was lingering outside the traffic police office. It was problaby the same guy we saw 2 years ago. The system is so corrupt anyway, that there is nothing stopping these guys from standing right outside the testing center with their business cards where they try to solicit customers who would rather pay a bribe than take an honest drivers test.
I explained my predicament to the tout as best I could, but I don't think he got the idea of what was going on. He was used to reciting his line and said, "OK sir, for 800 RMB I'll get you that license with my help. If I get the license, you pay the money. If not, no fee. All you need is a passport, two photos, and a residence permit."
I said, "Is it OK if I use a Shanghai residence permit? And I already have a drivers license, I just need to replace the one I lost."
He didn't let me finish and said, "Shanghai residence permit, OK, no problem."
He then saw my motorcycle and said, "Did you ride all the way from shanghai? Wow!"
Yes sir, I did. He then got on the back of my bike and I ferried him and myself all around this godforsaken town.
As fate would have it, we ended up back at the very same drivers license center with the very same clerk I had already seen twice now! This time she was upset, understandably, that I had brought along a tout. And I admit, I had really screwedd this one up now. But I was desperate, damnit!!!!!!
The clerk repeated to me what she said earlier and added for emphasis, "You need to do these things by yourself." After the tout argued with her on my behalf, she told him to get lost in his face.
"Ni zou kai"
Ouch. The next 2 hours were a total waste of time as the tout directed me to all these different places to try and do the things on the list. We managed to get the health check done, but that was it. I paid him for his troubles after a lot of bargaining, and I was now out 50 RMB as well as a whole wasted afternoon. Thankfully we parted on good terms, and negotiating stopped it from becoming an even worse mess.
Oh, we also managed to visit his operation where he runs the illegal tests! He called it "studying for the test" but why study for the test using a full bank of computers with the exact same software as that is used for the actual drivers license test? No, we both knew what was really going on here. He picks someone off the street outside the traffic police center, takes them to this little secret office, and they write the test with all the help and hints they could ever need to pass with flying colors. The results are uploaded, the drivers license comes shortly after and it's a legit license obtained through fraudulent means.
F*ck Wujiang and this whole thing. I'm now going to do what I should have done the first time. Ask around locally here in Shanghai and see if the traffic police can replace the lost license from this end.
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