There And Back Again

"We can't give you the visa today. We have to review your application to decide whether or not to give you the visa." The visa officer said with a stern face.

He was in his late 30's or early 40's, not quite an age for the middle-age crisis yet, but looked already experiencing it. His weary eyes and impatient voice were drenched with his disgust for this job. And apparently, he had a very bad day that day. He tortured the guy before me, also a returning student just like me, for about 10 minutes and finally sent him off with a We-have-to-check-your-background-so-fuck-off verdict.

The authoritative "we" word fanfared the whole American people's eagerness to interrogate this poor innocent-looking spectacled Chinese student, or maybe just the officer's personal eagerness to ruin some people's life. How many evil things had been done under this "we" word?

Knowing that a "background check" meaning at least a 6 to 8 weeks' delay and my spring semester would begin in two weeks, I anxiously asked the officer:"Am I being checked?"

"No. We have to review your application to decide whether to check you or not. We will contact you." With this, he threw out my passport and other documents.

I told my brain that it should probably make a little beautiful, moving, I-come-in-peace speech to convince the officer that I was perfectly harmless to the US government, its people and world freedom, but it failed to produce any meaningful sounds to convey my purpose. Instead, it directed myself to say"Thank you", gether my stuff he threw out and leave the room. Later I blame this on the over-crowded, over-heated visa office waiting room. I had been waiting in this hot room for over 3 hours just to get interviewed and no brain would function properly under this situation.

The cold air outside cooled my brain down and it started working once again. Now I fully realized my situation. My scheduled flight back to the states was only 5 days away, which meant that: a) I could get my visa within 5 days and happily come back to the States with no harm done; b) I could get my visa after 5 days and have to change my flight and come back to the States with a little delay and about $200 of the flight changing fee, hopefully; c) I could be background-checked and have to linger in Shanghai for 1 to 2 months and finally come back to the lab finding all my flies had died one week before; and d) I could be rejected the visa-application so that I couldn't come back to the States to finish my study and consequently become a janitor in Shanghai and die a non-PhD.

Of course, I hope scenario a would happen and I only had to wait for 5 days.

So I waited. Four agonizing days passed and no word from the embassy. Each day killed a fifth of my hope. Each day made it clearer that I wanted to come back to the lab to finish my experiments. I missed my flies. Really. Please don't die.

In the afternoon of the fifth day, with my flight at 7:30pm, I couldn't sit around and wait for the call any longer. I decided to go there in person and ask them "What the hell is going on?" So I rushed out of my friend's apartment where I stayed and hopped on a taxi. On a quiet street near Westgate Mall Plaza (Mei Long Zhen Plaza), where the visa office was located, my cellphone rang suddenly. It was from THE VISA OFFICE.

"Come to the visa office tomorrow morning at 10:00 am and have another visa interview. Bring all the forms and your passport."

"But can I do it today? My flight is this evening."

"No way."

The next day, after another 3 hours' waiting in the suffocatingly hot waiting room, I was interviewed by a different guy who was apparently asian and always smiling. After ten seconds of Q&A session, he said:"OK. I don't think there's any problem with your application. Please wait in front of Window 7 while we print your visa."

I didn't feel any excitement, just a little relief and a stronger desire to get out of here and go back.

Of course, I had to cancel my flight. And because it was bought on Hotwire.com, my ticket could not "be cancelled, refunded, changed, exchanged or transferred", as the United Airlines representative insisted, after I called, argued, and begged for 10 minutes. I had to buy a new ticket, which costed me $600.

"Time is money". Whoever first said this, he/she must have experienced the same situation as I did.

Anyway, I was just glad that I was back.

I went to my lab the next day. In the hallway, I met another graduate student. We chatted a little bit about my trip back to China. Family?-Great. Food?-Super. Fun?-Sure!

Then he said:"I bet you don't want to come back, do you?"

I wanted to tell him the whole visa episode, but didn't know where to start. So I just smiled, and nodded.