My Trip to LA to get Chinese Visas

My experience with the Chinese Consulate in LA.

I flew from Phoenix, AZ to LA at 6am (I eventually got in at 7:30 am and on the road by 8:30 am) just to get visas for my trip to China for Danielle, Julie and Myself. I have over planned my trip and thought I was ready for this little adventure. I was dearly mistaken. I looked at the Chinese Consulate website many times to see the requirements. I had the applications filled out correctly, the pictures were taken in front of the light backgrounds just like they asked and I even got people’s itineraries (even though I didn’t see that as required). I quickly learned that what the website says and what they want are two entirely different things. I got there at 9:30 am and wanted to do the expedited same day service so I had to turn the applications in by noon to get that processed. I waited a little over an hour to get a teller. The place was non-stop packed. I got to the teller by 10:40. None of us had the official passport photos you get at Kinkos or Walgreens but were taken in the manner they described on the website and cut to fit the application. But that is not what they want; they want those official passport photos. At first they were going to accept two (Julie and Mine's) out of the three but once the teller checked with someone in the back about Danielle's, they were all rejected. I pleaded the whole “I’m not from here mantra” but to no avail. I don't think I have begged and pleaded with strangers as much as I did on this day. The best part of this consulate is the only place to park is on the metered streets and there is always someone checking those meters and you technically can only do an hour. So between waiting for your number to pop up, you are constantly feeding the meter. I knew I should have brought someone with me as an assistant but my goal was to lower the costs of actually getting the visas.

The whole event was stressful. I then had to go to Kinkos and try to print what I could for Danielle and Julie because Danielle lives in Tennessee and Julie lives in Wisconsin. So I'm driving through crappy LA traffic, almost getting side swiped every second light to get back in time. So when I'm at Kinko's I'm literally printing off pictures from Julie's myspace page and ended up printing one of her eating jello, but with a little editing it looked somewhat legit. Danielle's on the other hand were a zoomed in shot of her face that were way larger than the dimensions they asked for, but that's all I had to work with. I went back with one of the official photos of myself and two make shift photos. I had grabbed a number on the way out thinking they averaged about 10 numbers a half hour so I could be in line when I got back. I ended up getting back at 11:56 am and they had picked up the pace so my new "clever" number of 73 was long gone and they were on 115. My new number was 143. I had pretty much given up hope and then luckily the security guard took pity on me and gave me a discarded number of 123 so I only had to wait 15 minutes to get to the teller again. Only this time the higher ups she needed to check with weren’t there and I was left to more waiting. She finally called my back up to the window and after profuse begging, they told me the applications were okay but still looked at me with disdain. All I had left to do was to come back after 2:30pm to pick up the visas. Or so I thought.

I hadn’t eaten in 8 hours so I decided to get lunch and I returned at 3:30pm. I ran into a Chinese gentleman in the hall and he asked me some questions and told me the office had closed at 3pm. He told me to come back tomorrow, and once again I begged saying I wasn’t from California and I couldn't. He took pity on me and let me in to the office. Only they wanted me to pay in cash because they’re credit card machines were closed. I personally don’t carry $480 in cash on me so I had to leave again and roam the streets to find an ATM. The teller woman assured me that she would listen for my knock when I came back. I found an ATM and after using three cards and $6 in ATM fees, I returned. I ended up knocking at least 10 times on two separate doors and no response. My breakdown commenced. I was about to give up and then the man from the elevators appeared from some door down the hall and let me in. I groveled and thanked them profusely. I felt like an idiot but at least I got the passports back. I definitely learned a lot from that experience. For instance, it’s much easier to pay a company to do the work for you. Or that you can never trust a communist country's consulate page for instructions on anything. They were a lot nicer to me then they had to be. If this is representative of how crazy it’s going to be when I actually get to China, it’s going to be an exciting trip.