Greetings readers!

I have just come back from 香港(Hong Kong) because of an issue with my 签证(visa). A multi-entry visa will let you 多次入境, but only for 60 days at a time. I went to the 出入境管理局(border entry-exit administration) at Andingmen, where I found that they could not effectively 延(extend) my visa because I didn’t have a 住宿证 (or 暂住证, which means temporary residence certificate) nor did I have proof of assets in China.  It’s a simple matter to set up a bank account, but time was running out on my stay and I couldn’t be bothered to do it until I got back.  If you’ve never had to go to a visa office, consider the experience to be something like going to the DMV/RMV. How long you must wait on line is determined by how urgently you must get your task completed. Moreover, you need to provide multiple photos which you take on the second floor but pay for and retrieve on the first floor.   Since my only option was to leave the country and come back, I had to quickly decide between 蒙古(Mongolia- US citizens need a visa), 韩国(Korea – the boat ride from Tianjin takes 20 hours), or 香港 (acceptable price for the plane ticket- plus I could always make the money back at 澳门/Macau, see next entry!) 香港 it was!  Ordered my plane tickets on Friday night and I was out on Saturday morning, free to explore HK/Macau until Tuesday.  It was a remarkable experience being in HK. Being able to speak Mandarin was not the advantage that speaking Cantonese could have been, although I’ll write a little more about that in the Macau entry.

Readers, does it work better for you to have me put the pinyin in the text so that the words become contextualized and you can guess at the meaning or does it work better for me to have the explanations there too?

香港xiang1gang3 – Hong Kong
签证qian1zheng4- visa
多次duo1ci4 – multiple times
入境ru4jing4 – enter the borders
出入chu1ru4 – exit-entry
管理局guan3li3ju2 (note that the tone in guan3 becomes 2 here) – administrative office
延yan2- extend
住宿证zhu4su4zheng4 – residential certificate
暂住证zan4zhu4zheng4 – temporary residence certificate
蒙古Meng2gu3- Mongolia
韩国Han2guo2 – South Korea