Extended China Trip

[Capstone]

I already had a 3 week trip to China planned starting Feb 5 but a perfect storm of factors have come together at work and I have decided to extend my trip to 3 months now. I telecommute and work out of a home office and only travel to work in the company office about 4 times a year plus our implementation schedule for the first half of next year was finalized recently and I am not scheduled to travel to work at a client's site until the end of May - so I have a good window of time in which I am not going to have to travel at all. My company just switched our telephone system over to a total VoIP system - I now have Cisco Communications software loaded onto my laptop which allows me to make & receive calls via my business number anywhere in the world as long as I have an internet connection.

So I have decided to extend my trip out until early May and see how things go. I will still take the 3 weeks of vacation time that I already had planned in Feb. and then go ahead and go back to work while still in China after those 3 weeks are up. It will require me to be a vampire for much of that time since I will need to still work during US business hours but I don't think that will be too much of a problem. 

My wife has been back in China for the past month now and one of her friends owns an apartment which is vacant at the moment so she is going to rent it out to us for those 3 months at a pretty decent price. At this point my only concern will be how restricted my internet connectivity maybe (blocked sites, etc.) but I really don't see too much of a problem as I will be connecting to my Remote Desktop back in the US via a VPN connection which means that I will actually be connecting to most things via my system in the US rather than via my laptop in China - so I think that I should be fine.

I thought that the airline was going to give me a very hard time about changing the return date on my ticket which I had already purchased but surprisingly they were very accommodating. Because of all my trips that I have made to China and the traveling that I do for work I have Platinum Medallion status with Delta so I am sure that is why they did not give me a hard time and did not make me pay any cancellation or re-booking fees.   

I am going to give it a go and see what happens - if for some reason my connectivity with the office will not cut it then I will just head back earlier but at this point I think that I will be able to stay the entire 3 months without any issues.

[sean126]

Way to go you lucky dog.  3 months in a different country...that will be definitely be nice.

[Capstone]

Way to go you lucky dog.  3 months in a different country...that will be definitely be nice.

Yea, lucky is right because I don't often have a 3 month window in which I don't have to travel for work, so I figured that I had better take advantage of it while I can.

[jm21-2]

3 months? Damn. Very lucky. I think living there for a bit will probably give you some great insights. Well worth living as a vampire.

[Capstone]

I just got another bit of good news - FedEx delivered my passport back to me from the Chinese Consulate in Houston and I received a much better visa than what I was expecting. Most visas for US citizens are multi-entry visas that allow stays of up to 60 days and are valid for 1 year. But if you are married to a Chinese National then you qualify for a 2 year multi-entry visa that allows for stays up to 90 days or in some rare cases up to 120 days. I had spoken to the guy at the visa service who was handling my visa application and he did not think that the Chinese Consulate would issue me a 120 day stay visa but said that he would try to get me one anyway and it turns out that is what they issued me. So now I don't have to worry about keeping my trip under 90 days, it can go a little over if I want. This is great news because my new visa cost the same as the regular 1 year visa does.

[Jeff S]

I did a little experimenting with the internet to see how it worked, on my last trip there, and everything I usually access was no problem. Porn sites are out as are some political sites - but Fox News, BBC, etc are no problem as are all of the hobby, foodie, music, etc. sites I frequent. I've never found any kind of business site blocked.

Sounds like it should be a blast. I'd love to make an expended trip there. Earlier this year I was in top contention to run a factory near Shanghai, but they hired a guy who already lived there. My wife isn't interested in living there, but I could commute weekly to Japan. Keep up posted on your adventures.

Where will you be in China?

[Capstone]

I did a little experimenting with the internet to see how it worked, on my last trip there, and everything I usually access was no problem. Porn sites are out as are some political sites - but Fox News, BBC, etc are no problem as are all of the hobby, foodie, music, etc. sites I frequent. I've never found any kind of business site blocked.

Sounds like it should be a blast. I'd love to make an expended trip there. Earlier this year I was in top contention to run a factory near Shanghai, but they hired a guy who already lived there. My wife isn't interested in living there, but I could commute weekly to Japan. Keep up posted on your adventures.

Where will you be in China?

I will be in Xiamen which is right across the strait from Taiwan - on a clear day you can sometimes see some of the outlying Taiwanese islands from the shore. In fact the Chinese government erected some huge red Chinese characters on the shore that are probably about 100 feet or so tall for propaganda purposes in hopes that they can be seen by the Taiwanese. It is actually a very nice city by China standards and is considered to be the cleanest city in China - I really like it there a lot.

You never can tell which websites that the Chinese government is going to decide to block on any given day. You can never access Google there - instead Google made a version specifically for use in China which filters out a lot of stuff during searches. I was there last June on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square and most foreign news sites such as CNN, MSN, Fox news etc were blocked for about 2 weeks.  All of the social sites such as Facebook and My Space are blocked and for some unknown reason they just started to block Windows Messenger which I find really odd because almost everyone in China uses an IM client called QQ and it is not blocked - but I guess that is because not too many people outside of China use it. My wife has not been able to log into Messenger in over a week now.

[jm21-2]

I have a couple old penpals on my messenger who still pop up..so that's a little weird. I guess I haven't been paying too much attention lately.

I remember for a whil there they were really cracking down on blogs.