Parents come to stay...

I was having a busy month, I moved house, the company moved offices to a new location, which I had a large hand in organising and both moves were scheduled for the same week, I then spoke to my parents on Skype and they mention an upcoming time when they both had holiday and that they hadn't decided where to go, as we talked they googled plane tickets and found a return for 600gbp each way, a very good price, however the only time my mum had off was 10 days, which included the week of my house and office move! They booked their tickets anyway and a few weeks later landed in Shanghai.

I took the morning off work and went over to meet them, took them on the maglev and helped them find their hotel and grabbed a tasty spicy chinese lunch before heading over to work the afternoon.

That evening we met for dinner and to see my house, they left a few things in my house before their travels.

 

The next day I had to work so they amused themselves in Shanghai and after work I met them in peoples square and we went to pick up their train tickets at the station and had a dinner at coco curry, then I had to rush out and go to Chris's leaving party (work Chris) and they shot off to Beijing and Xi'an for a few days. I spent the weekend working on the office move and so got two days in lieu to use at a later date. Mum and Dad arrange to visit Beijing and Xi'an themselves and then get the train to Hangzhou. I would hire a car in Shanghai and drive to Hangzhou to meet them, we could then have a day in Hangzhou and drive down to Wenzhou on Thursday night, have Friday in Wenzhou together then drive back up to Shanghai Saturday.

Since there were not enough problems this busy week my visa also expired, so I had to send my passport off to the visa office to renew my short term visa whilst waiting for my full visa to come back. The office found a company to help me with that so I picked up the rental car in the afternoon, then dropped my passport back at the office for them to extend, then could leave for Hangzhou. So I set out Wednesday night to drive to Hangzhou.

 

I got an hour of Shanghai using the most random route, I was using my GPS and it was taking me everywhere but the expressways, it drove me through the central square of Shanghai at rush hour (luckily I escaped without getting stuck in the huge traffic jams that are common there) and then drove me out on tiny back streets carefully avoiding all high speed roads and stopping at traffic lights every 500m. Eventually I stopped and asked on the outskirts of town the way to Hangzhou. The guard I asked said to drive on and join the motorway at the next junction, my GPS said straight on so I switched it off and joined the motorway, I drove towards the Hangzhou signs for half an hour and finally made good progress. I stopped at a service station for a break and while I was stopped tried turning on my GPS again, it tried to find a new route then flashed an alert that it was impossible to plot the route because of my settings. I looked closer and found that for some reason avoid toll roads was ticked, and all motorways in China are toll roads, so it was driving me 200km on the backroads! Disaster! I changed the setting and knocked an hour off the estimated time, yay! After that I made good time to the hotel my parents were staying which had a carpark, I checked in and then we all went out for dinner at grandmas kitchen, a famous restaurant in Hangzhou near Westlake.

The next morning we went to Westlake and climbed the leifeng pagoda before taking a boat out into west lake, we looked around the island before heading back to the city, grabbing some food and picking up the car to head to Wenzhou.

The drive to Wenzhou was about 5 hours and we left about 2pm. We got about an hour down the road and my administrator phoned to say that my visa had been declined, the new laws in China are tough and they had decided not to grant me a visa, so on the Thursday night I was told I had to leave China by the Saturday night. Wow.
I had a couple of calls as the office went into panic mode, desperately finding an excuse for me to fly to Hong Kong and work from there for a week whilst I worked out what to do next, the only other option was that I make an appeal in person in the visa office and try to get a short term extension with the reasoning that I had to help my parents whilst they were travelling China. The only problem was that the visa office and my passport were in Shanghai, and I was in Wenzhou, 700km away, and this was Thursday night, and the visa office took it's last applications at 4.30pm Friday and wouldn't open until the next Monday, by which time it was too late.

I had a meal with Elaine my Chinese teacher and my parents then copied their passports and hotel receipts and got to sleep at 1am in the fantastic Linxi international hotel, that we had look at so many times but never dared to go to.

At 5.45 I woke up and left my parents to spend the day in my old hometown with Elaine whilst I grabbed a few pastries and downed a cup of coffee and left the hotel at 6.20 with the hire car. I drove all morning, stopping for a 15 minute break to grab a mcdonalds lunch and by 1.30pm was on the outskirts of Shanghai. I had a great run that far but then I hit traffic, and for 2 hours queued all the way across town. I got to the road outside my building and there were cars and a bus completely blocking the street which had the entrance to the office carpark on it, no way in, it took 20 minutes to get into the carpark from 20meters away as people just sat in their cars and refused to move whilst waiting for their children.

It was nearly 4 when I got into the office building, the admin woman ran down with my passport but we couldn't get a taxi, we ran into the metro, ran across to change line and power walked to the immigration office making it at 4.20 and getting a number, we had made it.

 

We didn't wait for the number but went straight to the appeals desk and I felt so tired I didn't have to put on a bedraggled look, we pleaded the case and he gave me 10 day visa extension, with his writing on the visa form we had done it, we got 10 more days to prepare a plan.

 

I was very pleased and Mina also came up to Shanghai to see me, when she got the train she didn't know if this was the last time before I had to leave the country! A shame I didn't get to spend more time in Wenzhou with my family and Elaine but at least I got the visa. My parents got the train up that evening got a hotel in Shanghai.

 

The next morning we moved them to a Chinese style hotel for 25gbp a night very near my house, not as nice as before but perfectly adequate! Then the four of us took the hire car and drove out to one of the water towns near Shanghai, it was about a 2 hour drive but when we arrived there was no foreigners there and it wasn't busy, the sun came out and the pollution was down and we had a lovely day in various little museums and climbing over bridges and exploring the little town. We also took my parents for Korean Hot Pot, a cook it yourself bbq in the town which was very fun!

Saturday night we returned the car and then went for dinner in BiFengTang, a chinese restaurant near my house which was very tasty.

Mum and Dad's last day in Shanghai was spent shopping and exploring, we went for a late breakfast of fantastic xiaolongbao near peoples square, worth the 20minute wait for sure, and then got the metro to the computer district, yay! We looked at some cool phones and got a coffee in Pacific Coffee before walking down towards the old town. We found a small antique street and bought many random things, bargaining hard for cups and various other antiques, fresh from the antique factory.

 

We made out way down to the city god temple and a famous tea house which was heaving with people but nice to see before walking my parents back to their hotel.
We said goodnight as they had an early flight, but since I only have 10 days left on my visa I may well be seeing them soon!