The 26th Floor

I left without waking Theo and Rosa. My train was leaving at 7.11 and I wanted to be early enough that I had some explaining time built in. I ordered my DiDi (Chinese Grab) filled up my water bottles and waited outside on the pavement.

I had me some snacks and my big girl pants on. I was ready for this.

There was no reason to refuse our visas – other than political sensitivities, mistakes we hadn’t spotted in our applications, general ambivalence towards the West …and then there was the stunt we’d pulled at the Embassy. I didn’t think that moving a sign a bit to the left (or was it the right?)! was grounds for refusal…

‘Igor if they can move our waiting room sign six inches to the right!’

‘Who’s right?’

‘My right.’

‘As you are looking towards the lift or away from the lifts?’

‘Away! …but that’s not the point Igor – if they are capable of the indiscriminate moving of signs then what damage could they do in Mother Russia?’

It was raining hard when I arrived at the station so I legged it across the road into the shelter of the stalls selling breakfast to the early morning travellers. Something smelt good but I was too nervous to eat and headed for the main entrance.

I wanted this first check over with as soon as possible. If they weren’t going to let me onto the train then the quicker I knew the better – plan B was an expensive £150 taxi ride to Guangzhou and there was no point going until tomorrow, it was a five and a half hour journey to the Embassy and my appointment was at 11.00… What we didn’t know, and couldn’t find out because they didn’t answer the phones, was if they would accept me picking up the passports on a different day.

I really did need to get on the train.

At the luggage check in security had gone up a notch. They were making everyone drink from any water bottles they had with them. A smart way of making sure no-one was carrying 500ml of poison or acid…as I drank my water and was allowed through I wondered briefly what would happen if someone refused…or drank their poison?! Could get really messy…

There was no-one in the ticket check queue for foreigners so I stopped and got out the trusty photocopy and walked slowly towards the desk.

There were two officials sat together and as I got closer I could see they were getting on really well, they were quite close to each other, heads nearly touching, chatting animatedly about something. He took my photocopy and keyed in the number as they carried on their conversation.

I would love to have known what they were talking about. More motivation for learning Mandarin…

He smiled at me as he gave me back the photocopy – I smiled as I took it back. Neither of them could tell my heart was pounding fast and they probably didn’t care, their shift had them sat next to someone they obviously really liked, maybe they had heart pounding issues of their own…

So far so good.

I had twenty minutes until train boarding and no actual train ticket to wave at the official so I contented myself with checking that I had all three visa receipts and got on with some Mandarin study (oh how I missed my game!).

I decided I would try and figure out what the advert ahead of me said by drawing the characters in my ‘character drawing app’ – I got eight words in before the call came to board. I suspect it wasn’t exactly how the advertisers hoped their advert would come across but I was proud of my efforts, and I needed the distraction.

‘More complete repair outfit, good as well as not expensive!’

Catchy…

I stood up and headed over to the queue. This was it, if they let me on here I would make it to the Embassy in time for my appointment.

The guard was older, less ‘by the book’ and more ‘worldly wise’, on balance I decided that was a good thing. Maybe he’d encountered British tourists trying to get transit visas through Russia before… He looked at my piece of paper, checked my likeness and nodded.

I knew I wasn’t looking my best but that was really a bit of an insult…it is the worst passport photo of all time, and he could have at last taken slightly longer over it…

While I was feeling miffed by his quick assessment of my ‘early morning’ face, he was typing my passport number into the system, proving to himself that the person carrying this piece of paper had booked a ticket.

He gave me back my photocopy and opened the gate. I was through, heading along the wide corridor to platform 11 then down the stairs to coach 7 seat 12C – the sound track from Mission Impossible accompanying me the whole way down to where the train was waiting.

So far so double good.

Rosa had an 8.20 lesson so she’d be waking up soon. I could let her know I had made it on to the train.

My ‘ticket’ was checked within five minutes and the photocopy did its magic again. No problem at all.

I wrote, I fretted, I drank my hot water, I did some homework – I started planning our journey home, both with and without our visa’s, I looked at my photos and I talked to Igor in my head…

‘Once again, sorry about moving the sign Igor, we were nervous and it was just a bit of light hearted humour!’

Silence.

‘Yes, perhaps it wasn’t the best place, or time, for a bit of light hearted humour.’

Silence.

‘No! Of course we won’t go around moving signs if we travel through Russia!’

Silence.

‘Yes, I am very happy to apologise to the official who had to come out and move the sign back…’

…any chance you might say something Igor?!

I went back to my Duolingo character drawing practice – only an hour to go now.

I actually enjoyed the subway, figuring out how to pay electronically, working out the best route, which two lines I needed, they are all colour coded so not difficult, and then remembering the end of line station names so that I went in the right direction.

I changed from the green line to the orange one, only three stops now, then a twenty minute walk from the subway to the Embassy.

I went the wrong way out of the subway, four choices and every time we get that wrong… what were the odds?

I headed towards the river, recognising one of the incredibly shaped skyscrapers I had seen last time.

I turned onto ‘Embassy Road’ – three minutes away… I crossed my fingers involuntarily and slowed down a little. I was early. No need to rush.

As I came past the building next to the Embassy skyscraper, I saw red tape fluttering across the entrance. My heart missed a beat, why was that tape across the entrance?

As I walked closer, I could see there was a bloody great big crane inside the lobby, exactly where the sign in desk had been.

I walked up to the entrance and had a proper look inside – there was no way I was getting in there.

What had happened? …and how was I going to get inside?

I stood there for a couple of minutes unable to take in what this meant …and wondering how the hell they had gotten the crane inside?

I  turned around and saw a policeman/guard/Embassy official coming towards me, when he got close he pointed round the side of the building.

There was a back entrance…

I could almost taste my relief as the receptionist checked my visa receipt and issued me with my lanyard.

It took me awhile to make the lift work I’d forgotten I needed to show my lanyard to the scanner, but three sweaty minutes later, I emerged onto the 26th floor.

I gave the waiting room sign a respectfully wide birth and went to sit down.

There was no one else in the waiting room. My appointment time was after all the visa application slots so I wasn’t surprised to be on my own. The waiting wasn’t easy. I sat there for a full ten minutes before the same well-dressed man in his clicky shoes came out to greet me.

He took all three of my visa receipts, and indicated that I sit back down and wait.

I wasn’t even remotely tempted to go and take a selfie with the sign.

After another, very long, fifteen minutes I heard the door open and I looked up.

Igor was walking towards me with our passports in his hand.

He handed them to me with a slight smile, and I stammered a thank you, and as he turned to go (he wasn’t lingering), a thought occurred to me, all very well giving me back out passports …did we have our visas?

‘Have we got our visas?’ I said.

He turned back towards me. ‘Of course’ he replied… I so wanted to hug him, but instead I went for my bravest moment of the trip so far.

‘Please tell me if this isn’t allowed, but I would really like a photo with you, you are actually one of the most important people we have met on our whole trip and we’d like to remember you…’

Unbelievably, he agreed, standing with his arms crossed in front of him, as stern as ever… And then I fumbled with the camera and some nervous laughter escaped just as I took the second photo.

There was something about that moment that made him smile, and it was like sunshine…

I shook his hand, thanked him with all my heart, and watched him turn and go back inside the Embassy.

I went past the sign and away from the Embassy door. I stood looking at the view, trying to let the effort and the relief sink in.

We had our visas.

On the way back to the lift I patted  ‘sign’, ‘no hard feelings’ I said, and headed back out into a China where I now had my passport.

I sat on the wall opposite the back entrance and sent messages to Rosa and Theo…’we’ve got them, we did it!!’

I had five hours until my train left, and anyone who knows me well knows that I try to avoid museums… not completely, I have a fondness for the Natural History Museum in London and there’s a lifeboat museum in Norfolk I like …but the teapot museum in the Blue Mountains?  That I’d given a miss (to Theo’s everlasting disappointment) …he had wanted to share the joy with us all and perhaps we had missed out, but there you go, ‘Shannon doesn’t do museums’.

Imagine therefore, my surprise when I found myself queueing up for an entrance ticket to the ‘Guangdong Museum’ ten minutes later.

It was free and nearby – and I could leave whenever I wanted, and maybe Chinese museums were a bit less ‘stuffy’.

I went at my own pace, looking at the beautiful clothes and the slightly dull pots and ornate boxes and then I went up to the fourth floor, which was full of dinosaurs!

It was awesome, and on the ceiling above, they had life sized models of whales, sharks and dolphins. I spent ages in the area, enjoying reading all the words about sustainability and caring for our planet… and loving just how big the dinosaurs were 🙂

Back outside there was a festive atmosphere in the huge square next to the museum. Children playing with toys they had persuaded their parents to buy from the street vendors, teenage girls taking selfies of their ‘cool look’, teenage boys watching them… And then at the far end an enormous fountain, spraying shots of water into the air in time to dramatic music… Fabulous, free entertainment.

I got lost trying to find a subway, which gave me the chance to buy a coconut and mango smoothie – the first food I’d had all day.

I was one of the first on the train, my quiet joy when I got to use my passport in the scanning machine to let myself through into the waiting area. I looked at my train app and remembered I had a ‘standing ticket’ – time to sit by a toilet.

When I got in the train I decided I’d give luck a chance and sat in the first seat I came to, starting to feel the tension of the day slipping away. I was moved on pretty quickly by the real occupant of the seat, and went to sit by the window in the corner at the front. Probably the seat I would’ve chosen for myself if I’d had the option… I was fully prepared to get up and join the throng of people stood outside the toilet, but no one came to claim my seat.

All the way back to Guilin.

I got a chance to rest and reflect on this four-month process that had finally worked out.

From that horrible day back in January when we’d driven all the way to the Russian Embassy in Sydney and been refused our visas, through all the countless hours filling in the application forms. After the first failed attempt we’d filled in two more, one for Guangzhou and one for the Kazakhstan Embassy in Almaty – filling them in while we had a computer in Australia…and then again when they’d disappeared into the ether.  Remembering all our attempts to try and buy bus and train tickets…

I smiled to myself, it hadn’t been easy, but it had been worth it.

We’d actually done it… us, and Igor!