Nancy’s Big Adventure

I set Bob (my clock) to wake me up bright and early so I could accomplish my one necessary task for the day – a visa extension.  Critical at this point, since my current visa expires Saturday.  (!!)  I hop on the #10 bus to the Municipal office, present my documents, only to be told that I need to go to the Public Service Bureau, Exit & Entry Management Center (quite a mouthful)  for processing.  No worries – Tiananmen Square appears on the map to be within a reasonable walking distance, so I decide to just swing by and take a little look-see before I go to the PSB.

On the way, I am struck again by the size of the city – Beijing is enormous. E-NORMOUS. And with a population of over 15 million, there are people, people, people everywhere.   Anyway, I walk and walk and walk but I still have not reached Tiananmen Square.  Keep this in mind – T Square is the largest public square in the world and can hold about 300,000 people … and I can’t find it.  How is that even possible?  Just when I am about to give up, there it is!

It appears the construction and renovation projects have not deterred anyone from visiting Tiananmen Square – there must have be thousands of people there and yet it looked spacious and empty.  The square is surrounded by a variety of significant edifices: Chinese Revolution History Museum, Mao Mausoleum, Great Hall of the People, the elegant and beautiful Tiananmen (Heavenly Peace Gate), and Qianmen (Front Gate). It becomes clear that I will not have time to dedicate to seeing everything in a short visit and I decide to return another day.

So, I take a short bus ride to my hotel and secure directions to the PSB (in Chinese) from the front desk personnel and hail a taxi.  After 40 minutes of driving around the city, the driver is getting frustrated (the "I am ready to just dump you off anywhere" kind of frustrated) because he cannot locate the address I have given him. Finally, I elect to get out and walk 17 blocks to the Public Service Building. At this point, I am still in remarkably good spirits – I have reached my destination and will soon have the rest of my day free for fun activities. Crazy optimism. I did not leave the PSB they were closing the doors at 5 pm, after standing in line for over 2 hours. The bad news is that I am not able to expedite the processing, given the sheer volume of applications the Bureau receives in a day.  It is a bit unnerving to not have my passport and a valid visa in my pocket, but …   the good news is that I will be in Beijing for another week and can spend time exploring with friends.

All said, it has been a good day!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.