The Beijing visa crackdown has come to an end, and with it, I hope, the endless whining and complaining that I have been hearing from Americans and Western Europeans around any willing audience in the past few weeks. “China has the most outrageous visa process. This would never happen anywhere else in the world,” said a disgruntled Spanish guy waiting in line next to me in the Public Security Bureau last week when I went to get my visa renewed. Believe me, I have an Olympic gold medal in visa-related whining, and yet I nearly smacked this guy in the head.
I happened to try to get a visa to go to Spain last year. I was in South Africa at the time, I was going to a conference in Paris completely paid for by my university, and I wanted to spend two weeks in Spain after that. Both the Spanish embassy and the French one (both countries are in the common Schengen travel zone) insisted I had to travel to my home country, a mere 7000 miles away, to apply for the three week travel permit. No exceptions. After desperately emailing every single Schengen country with a presence in South Africa, I was able to get a visa through the ever-efficient Swiss. The list of required documents was so absurd, you’d think I was requesting they grant me a diplomatic passport. I even had to purchase special insurance to make sure that if I died, my body would be shipped back home. Oh, and they gave the exact number of days I had a hotel reservation for (sorry, no cumbersome dead bodies or couch surfing allowed for people from poor countries!).
I’m from Colombia, you see. That’s the country whose mention will prompt even the least internationally aware toothless Chinese old man to bring an imaginary joint to his lips and pretend-smoke it (just for the record, it’s cocaine that Colombia exports in record numbers, which you don’t actually smoke). This means that people with a passport like mine, along with Afghanis, Saudis and probably North Koreans, are well near the top of the black list of would-be visitors for any country.
People from developed nations are so used to having visa requirements waived anywhere they go that they immediately dismiss the Chinese visa requirements as the absurd whims of an autocratic regime. I have traveled to five different continents in the past two years, and China is, without a shred of a doubt, the easiest, most flexible, most welcoming country as far as visas are concerned.
Most countries have visa processes that are expensive and complicated, and at times even humiliating. To wait for four hours in a British airport terminal on the way elsewhere, I had to travel to a city with a British consulate and pay 530RMB to register my fingerprints. Oh, and the transit visa would not allow me to stay longer than 12 hours, or leave the terminal AT ALL. I’ve even sworn, the way you’d swear you won’t drink again during a particular awful hangover, that I’d never travel internationally again (I had the same success sticking to that).
Look, I’m as much in favor of free movement for all people as anyone else. But anytime I can sign up for a couple of hours of cheap Chinese classes and get a student visa (try getting an American one sometime), I feel like kissing an immigration officer, if only they weren’t growling so much.
北京签证的抗议活动现在趋于平静了，我希望我的那些美国和西欧的朋友们能够停止他们在过去几周内的无休无止的抱怨。＂中国在签证的手续和程序上是这个世界上最粗暴最可恶的，这样的事情在世界任何一个国家都不会发生＂上周在公共安全局一个愤怒的在我旁边排队的西班牙人如是说，我当时是去更新我的签证的。相信我我在抱怨签证的领域里是奥运冠军级别的，而且我当时恨不得抽那个男的脑袋，因为我去年那段曾经为了去西班牙尝试过申请西班牙签证的经历。当时的我在南非，要去巴黎开会，我们大学对这次会议的一切开销都会给我报销，所以我想开会之后去西班牙待两周。但无论是西班牙大使馆还是在法国的西班牙使馆（这两个国家都在申根旅游区的范围内）都坚持要我飞回远在七千英里的祖国来申请三周的旅游许可，无一例外。在绝望地给每一个申根区的国家里有南非大使馆的国家发送了无数的邮件以后，我终于能够在最有效率的瑞士拿到一张签证。所需文件的列表是如此的可笑不堪，你会认为我在要求他们给我颁发一个外交护照。我甚至不得不买一个特殊保险来保证如果我死在他们国家，我的遗体会被运回自己的祖国。噢对了，他们会具体要求我必须预定多少天的宾馆（哦对了不好意思我忘记提了，他们会说明对于来自贫穷国家的人是不会把笨重的遗体运回的）。
我是来自哥伦比亚的，你看，那是一个一提起来都让人觉得最没有国际性的国家，在中国那些老掉牙的老头听到这个国家的时候就只会撅嘴唇和假装吸烟的动作（但据记录显示，以哥伦比亚的可卡因出口的数字来说，其实你是抽不到的真正的哥伦比亚香烟的）。这意味着，如果有人拿着像我这种国家的护照的人，像阿富汗，沙特阿拉伯或者北朝鲜这样的国家，可能会是入境黑名单国家的前几名之列。
来自发达国家的人们已经习惯了各种各样的签证豁免权，当他们在中国遇到了一些签证要求的时候，就立马恼羞成怒，立即荒谬的不分青红皂白地称有这样签证要求的国家是独裁的专制的政权。在过去的两年中，我已经走过了5个不同的大洲，毫无疑问，中国是最简单，最灵活，最友好的签证国家。
大多数国家的签证的过程都是昂贵的，复杂的，有时甚至是带有屈辱性的。从英国去别的地方要在英国的机场航站楼等上4个小时，我旅行到一个有英国领事馆的城市支付530块钱的人民币仅仅是为了注册我的指纹。哦，过境签证不允许让我停留超过12小时以上，或者离开航站楼等等。我发誓你一定在某次的宿醉过程中会发誓以后你再也不会喝酒了，就像我会发誓我以后再也不想出国旅行了一样。
你看，我很支持一视同仁的规则。但是，任何时候当我能够注册了几个小时的中国廉价课程，并获得学生签证时候（在某个时候我也曾尝试过获得美国的签证），我都想亲吻签证官员，要是他们看起来没那么凶的话。