Dongbei Park

The kids at my school love Dongbei Park, just across the river from me in Songyuan, so we went exploring the other day.

Saddest, most rundown carnival/zoo/park I have ever seen.

And we almost got in a fight. Some Chinese gangster man (stitches on his face ladies and gentleman) said, "Fuck you" to one of my friends and then proceeded to follow us around all afternoon.

Prooobably not going to frequent this place.

Don't ask, because I have no clue.

This is a monkey enclosure.

Fattest pug ever.

If you can get the basin to land directly on a bunny you get to keep in.

sidewalk dangers

Walking down the street in China can be dangerous in ways you might not expect. When I first got here, I had heard about the girl that unexpectedly fell through the sidewalk and was saved by a taxi driver and the woman who fell through the sidewalk into scalding water and died, but you don't really think these things are common place. Turns out they are.

Sometimes it's the sidewalk that collapses, sometimes it's an uncovered hole, sometimes it's a manhole that doesn't have a secure cover. I took both of these pictures on my 10 minute walk to school the other day, it's a very short distance to see two open holes if that gives you an idea of frequency.

Out of the 20ish foreigners I know in Songyuan, two of them have fallen in manholes. Sounds like a small amount, but think about those odds. One of them fell through the other night on the way to a friend's, he stepped on a manhole cover that wasn't secure. The end he stepped on went down while the other end flipped up and he fell in. Luckily he caught himself when he was about waist deep, so only his shoes and the bottom of his pants made it into the sludge below.

What might be equally scary is that he abandoned the shoes due to the smell, and within 30 minutes someone had come by and taken them.

visa lording pt 2

At my hypothetical friend's school there are four foreign teachers that have been there for at least three years each, all with valid Z visas. There are three teachers on loan from another school in Changchun, all with valid Z visas through their primary school. Then there are six foreigners that have started at various times in the past six months that all are working illegally on tourist visas, my friend being one of them.

Earlier this week, she and two of the others traveled to Hong Kong to get their visas. They were warned by other foreigners in town to make sure they had all the proper documents when they went, even though the school is technically in charge of this, because someone from their school had gone in the past missing a lot of paperwork. My friend checked and everything seemed to be in order.

They were in Hong Kong for two days, to drop off their paperwork one day and pick up their visas the next. They got to the visa office the first day and literally not a single one of them could get a visa. My friend had all the paperwork, but her invitation letter told her to go to an American Embassy, not a Chinese Embassy, so because of this typo  on her school's part she wasn't eligible. One of her coworkers had a physical from a foreign country which is ok when you're doing the visa application by mail, but once you are actually in China, you visa physical must be from Hong Kong or mainland China (turned out my friend also had this problem) and the third member of their group had no physical at all. That one had told her employer as much before they left and apparently he had said she could get it when they returned.

The second day they were there their employer and emailed some paperwork that was supposed to help. He had sent a letter from the school saying my friend was ok (the visa lady basically laughed at her for this), sent forged physical papers for the girl with no physical (she declined to use them) and nothing for the guy with the physical from another country.

At this point it was clear that no one was getting a work visa, but by now everyone at the visa office knew who they were, and the Chinese man from the school that had accompanied them was completely oblivious to the fact that what they were doing was illegal and they could all potentially get in trouble.

This also left the girl with no physical in a bad spot because her tourist visa was only good for one entry, so to return to Songyuan she needed a new one, but everyone at the office knew she really wanted a Z visa, so it was clear she was lying. She ended up going in again without anyone else from the group and successfully applying, but the group did have to extend their stay an extra day to pick up her visa so she could go back to Songyuan.

When the group got back to Songyuan, the school owner informed the group that since they did not get their visas, the trip was actually not for school purposed, so the money for it would be deducted from their salaries. Even though they couldn't get their visas because THE SCHOOL didn't have the proper paperwork and requirements in order. Such bs.