The Alien Employment Permit

On Friday Bill and I had to attend an interview at the Changzhou police/immigration office for his  ALIEN work permit and our residency permits.   Yep, we are considered aliens here!  That's a nice feeling. ha
Our day consisted of taking the train to Changzhou, a man from the immigration firm processing our documents picked us up at the train station and drove us to the immigration building.  Here's Bill waiting for a taxi outside our compound.  (He has a business meeting after this interview - hence the dress up clothes!)

 Lovely day outside the Changzhou train station.

 Going up the steps into the immigration building.

 Once we arrived and Sam parked his car we had to go across the street to get passport pictures taken.  Here's the across the street from the nice looking immigration building.

This picture place was crazy.  It's a hole in the wall building where you step down off the street and sit on a little box while some lady takes your picture.  Some man sits at a copy machine making copies of your passport and other information that only God knows what they will do with it.  

 There's Bill in the background - there were a lot of people in this tiny little place!

 The desk when you walk in!

 Neckties!

They even had pre tied neck ties in case a man needed one.  I was not allowed to wear my earrings, necklace or my cardigan for these pictures.  Very odd.  Bill and I figure the people running this shop are probably the brother/sister to one of the higher ranking government officials in a scam for the Chinese to make more money!
Finally we get back to the immigration/police station to start our interview process.  I'm not really sure if it was a police station or not, however all the employees were wearing uniforms with badges that stated in English "Police".

 That's the guard at the entrance smoking his cigarette. Yes, you can smoke inside buildings in China!

These are the chairs we had to sit in for our interview.  Bill went first and sat in front of the man, he did a lot of computer work, took Bill's picture and then took Bill's phone number and signature on a form that was all in Mandarin, I hope we didn't sign our lives away.   Then we were told - well Sam the immigration man was told that we didn't have the correct business license paperwork so Bill made a call to his Charter co-worker in Changzhou and we sat for an hour waiting for him to show up with the documents.  After an hour I told Sam I had booked a train ticket home at 3:45 so he asked the police man if I could do my interview and leave.  Bill had a work meeting and a dinner in Changzhou that evening so he was staying and I was flying solo home.

They agreed, thank goodness!  I got in the taxi with 25 minutes to spare before my train left the station and it took 20 minutes to get to the building - without traffic.  It was 3:25, traffic was CRAZY.  Luckily Sam told the taxi driver I was in a hurry so I had a wild ride and made it to the train station just as my train was arriving to the platform.  It's not everyday the Chinese in Changzhou see a Western woman running for a train! But I made it!

Hopefully in 5 days our passports will be back to us and we will have Alien Residency Permits and Bill will have an Alien Work Permit.