Regarding Chinese L class visas, which are supposedly (post-May 2008, even) still not that difficult to get, at the Sydney embassy.
Some things that your average travel agent and TRAVCOUR visa processing probably either don’t know, or won’t tell you. Unless you’re booking through a China specialist, but hey, more info out there can’t hurt. The few travel agents I’ve spoken to this time around were happy to admit they didn’t understand what was happening, so nothing too bad to report on that front!
Only tick the bare minimum. If you’re going for sightseeing, just tick that box. If you tick the relatives box you’ll have to prove they exist. You need to prove everything exists. The whole process is an existential nightmare!
A certain security guard at certain consulate (hint: I haven’t been outside of Sydney since February and have been told in the last month to do this, which certainly narrows it down a bit!) will not let you in without perfect documentation. He’s not Chinese (they use a private security firm at least for public areas), and not very understanding. If you’ve filled in a form before you get there, pretend you haven’t. If you need to go inside and try to talk to someone this is probably the best strategy. Call me naive, but this is preferable to faking documents using a travel agent, which was the course of action he recommended. I kid not. Let it be noted: The other security guard at the embassy is fantastic and nice and helpful… but only speaks English. Must be hellish for Hua Ren (with not-great-English) trying to get in!
Don’t actually fake your papers if you can avoid it. I was (again, probably naively) shocked at being essentially instructed to lie as a matter of process, and obviously this isn’t a course of action that actually should be recommended by anyone. The process is difficult enough without added complication brought about by fraud!
If your travel plans are uncertain, don’t worry about documenting other cities too much.
If you need double-entry, for example because you’re traveling to Hong Kong and back into China, be aware that you will need to document a destination back inside China. Again, the specifics of this don’t matter too much — but you are meant to produce tickets for travel along with your visa application. Specifically speaking of Hong Kong, you can circumvent this requirement by writing in the itinerary field “Destination (by train)” or similar method of transport that is very unlikely to be documented months in advance. You will need proof of accommodation at your first destination, but beyond this it doesn’t seem to much matter.
If you’re staying with family/friends that may complicate matters. You may or may not need booked accommodation for the duration of your stay… I didn’t test this one out!
Hong Kong SAR isn’t a problem at all re: accommodation or anything else if you’re an Aussie. So don’t bother with this for your visa application… it’s part of China, sure, but not for the purposes of complicated bureaucracy!
The actual Chinese staff at the embassy are really nice and really helpful, once you get past the trollish security guard and figure out at least roughly what paperwork you need! If in doubt, figure out a way to get inside and stand in the visa queue and ask them, and they’ll probably be able to help you with whatever question. That’s how I discovered the (by train) itinerary flexibility!
Finally, this is just my experience in one place in Australia, and will probably change. Even in 悉尼 :P
many of these things will not last, should not be expected to last. the lack of permanence is characteristic of volatile information, preserved only fleetingly even at a minus 25 degree boiling point.
we forget.
sometimes not soon enough, painlessly enough, loudly enough. as though our protest will make it sooner, easier, clearer. clearing these clouds to what end? dispelling an illusion alone? concentrating precipitation at some other time, in some other place? seeding rainfall is an imprecise science, you know. beijing would like to think otherwise — will have the world think otherwise, but we will have to wait until the eighth hour of the eighth day to learn — or at least observe the culmination of many factors not totally understood.
our control is at best imprecise.
rumours of tesla weapons and unheeded seismologists and toads are one thing, but the burial of thousands and grief to families and subsequent suicides and infertilities and abandonments are quite another. as, too, are rescues and outpourings of compassion and global relief efforts and prayers of thousands, at least some of which are being heard.
the opportunists? the profiteers?
“no man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death” (Ecc 8:8) — so let them lie and cheat. let the cheaters lie. they are digging their own pit.
why do good things happen to evil people?
it was not always like this. it will not remain like this.
“he [Jesus of Nazareth] is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42)
but he, too, makes us at peace with him through paying the price for us on the cross. “[God] reconciles to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Col 1:20)
Google.cn search queries for May 19th at 2:27pm took a bit of a hit, as follows:
Three minutes of national mourning for earthquake victims. Taken seriously and moving in a way that is a little difficult to imagine an analogue for in Australia — tongue-in-cheek about re:cessation of Google-ing… but intended as a broader comment on national displays of stuff in all seriousness. Perhaps unfair as Australia hasn’t really had any disaster of this magnitude in recent times, I know.
Everyone was outside as traffic stopped to remember and share in the grief of millions. Some things are more important than search.
Must play with this HTTP server/load-balancer/mail proxy/bundle of awesome sometime soon. Looks like a pretty awesome option for VPS environments and other places where there isn’t heaps of spare resources going around! My cupboard-bound SSH oasis and occasional webserver is, of course, a likely candidate… but I’m a tad concerned I’ll screw myself over with PHP. Not because it particularly gets used for that (there’s like… a few wikis and a handful of lines of PHP code easily replaced by something else that get semi-regular attention) but mostly for the “just in case” I wanna test run something. And yeah, I know, that’s what virtualised stuff should be for… but I still haven’t quite caught up to that. I’ve got an Ubuntu thing running in a virtual PC instance on the computer I use most of the time, but it just doesn’t cut it for actually trying to test something out with, you know, other users and real Internet connectivity. In other news, can-we-have-IPv6-moar-plx? Just because it’s absurd to have to pay more to run real SSL on dedicated IPs when there is SO MUCH SPACE just waiting for us to broaden our horizons and start to fill it. I’m not heaps fussed if pre-Windows XP users can’t use it, actually, because they’ve likely got bigger security problems on their hands from their network-connected 10-year-old OS than any regular web interaction is likely to give them, properly secured or not — that is, even if their web traffic is secured, their desktop is probably a botnet zombie with keyloggers and trojans abounding.
