The First Great Adventure of my Life.

When I received my student visa from China, I also received a piece of paper that was stapled into my passport. It told me that with in 30 days of my arrival into China I had to get my self a residency permit otherwise I would be staying in China illegally. And as it is my way I waited 28 days before doing anything about it, but do something I did. Three days ago I got up early and took to the streets to hail my self a taxi. I handed the driver an address hand written by a man working in the office. The driver nodded his head, which turned out to be a total lie, and we took off.

The cabby tried his best to make small talk with me, and I actually did understand a bit of what he was saying, but soon the difficulty of conversation muted the cab for the duration of the trip until he told me that he didn't know where I was trying to go and could only get me some where in the general vicinity. So he dropped me off and left me to find the police station on my own.

I had been there once before. A week and a half prior I had gone with a group of students and a representative from our school, but there were so many people there that day that they ran out of time, and I didn't get my chance at the desk. So the man from our school told us to come back on our own. So I knew at least what the building looked like, and the area I was in did look familiar, but i had no idea how to get from point A to point B.

I asked a few locals for directions, and not being able to understand there words I acted solely on there emphatic pointing. Now in China the only thing that out numbers police stations are government owned banks, so when I found my self in front of the wrong big blue sign I was not surprised. I walk in anyways, intending on asking directions to the other station. I handed the man at the desk the piece of paper telling me about the residency permit, thinking that might get the message across, but of course it didn't and I ended up spending 20 minutes tying to explain that I was lost and trying to get some where else. The whole time more and more people were constantly being called over to see if they could make sense of my mishmashed Chinese, and soon 10 people where all listening intently, breaking in with phrases I didn't understand to try and help me out. Every once in a while I would reach into my back pack to pull out various props, the hand written address, my passport, the piece of paper from my passport, my dictionary.

But eventually, after my point was finally understood there was a sudden response of “lets go!” proposed in English by one of the male officers in the crowd, as if they had been wanting to take some sort of action for the whole time and were jumping at the chance now.

They led me to the street and put me in the back of a squad car, which I think was unnecessary, though cool, since we only ended up driving 2 blocks and turning left. But never the less I thanked the officers warmly and shook their hands before walking into the large building.

There were few people in today so I very soon heard my number called and found my self sitting across the table from the man that would grant me my permit. As I reached into my pack to get the papers I needed, the officer leaned back in his chair so his blue uniform wrinkled and hung loosely from his shoulders, then took a long drag from his cigarette. I took out my passport and placed it in front of him. He did not pick it up immediately, but waited a second, not long just one second, maybe two, just long enough to look over the small blue booklet as he slowly exhaled, watching the wisps of smoke in his peripheral vision. Unlike most Chinese I've met, he showed his age. He looked like a man that was not defeated by life, but tiered by it. I imagined what he had done as a police officer, I wondered what his life had been like. I thought of the rouge police officer, that had been forced to sit behind a desk as punishment for not playing by the rules, but had the sole secret to taking down the Chinese mafia, if only the pain in the ass boss man would listen to him.

Calmly he leaned forward resting his elbows on the desk and took the passport. He looked it over silently, as he had remained since I first saw him. He typed my information into the computer and stamped three pieces of paper with bright red ink, then pushed one of the paged towards me. He looked me in the eye, pointed at a line and said “sign here,” in English. I signed my name and he took the paper back. And asked for 400 kuai. I handed him the money and he gave me a receipt. He pointed to a date on one of the papers and said, “come back here” the date was for the 30th. “so 3 days?” I asked. He leaned back in his chair again. “is today the 28th” he asked smoothly. “oh yeah sorry, so two days” he nodded his head and I left the station.

Theres something about a person with a story, even if you can't tell what that story is. They move differently, act differently, even if they don't want to tell their story, it shows in they way they eat their food or walk down the street.

Recently 25 new Americans arrived at our school, which is 5 times the number that here here already. When I was meeting a few of them and I told them that I had come here on my own expecting to be the only American, and possibly the only English speaker. One of them asked me what could have possibly possessed me to come to China alone. I simply told him I was a masochist. And even though I was kidding it rang with more truth than I let on. I want to have a story to tell, I want one of the most amazing stories people have ever heard, and stories worth telling don't happen in your living room, in front of the TV. They don't happen at the computer writing spread sheets or in the same old places that you've always been. They come when your in a dark ally, when you don't have money for rent, when you break an arm, or loose a loved one. Stories start with something hard, something difficult to over come, and the best stories end when you survive, and not only survive but destroy the challenge, when you struggle for so long and work so hard that you almost can't make it over the final hill, but in the end you do make it, and you not only make it but you stand up, and you look down on all the things that tried to hold you back, that now are just little artifacts down in that dark valley. Then you see the next mountain even bigger and darker, and your only thought is, “I wonder what this hill top would look like from up there.”