A run in with the law...

When you're in another country, you usually go out of your way to avoid unnecessary contact with the authorities. When you're in China, you especially go out of your way to do that. After all, it's so much harder when you don't speak the language.

We had all of our passport, visas and resident permits synchronised - everyone's expired at the same time, be it passport or permit. This was meant to make it easy to remember to renew such things.

Until Alex was turning five...and her US passport (containing said visa and permit) was to expire as well. So we organized to get a new one (good for another five years) while in Australia last. All was good, only her residency permit expired a couple of months earlier than ours...and all good intentions aside, she was in the country illegally.

Not.a.good.idea.

Thankfully Brett had one of the university staff go with him to the official interview that he had at the entry/exit bureau to discuss his transgressions (on Alex's behalf). I'm hoping that he'll chime in with a comment or two on this to provide details. But the first I knew of it was when he arrived home - with a red thumb!
Apparently when you "confess" to breaking the law, you sign your confession with your thumbprint - and in China, red ink is the appropriate colour for all "signatures" - be they chops or thumbprints. In the end he had two interviews - paid a fine that wasn't the maximum - and Alex had a new residency permit. Now he can smile about it...
It helped our cause that hers was the only expired one - and currently all of them (except hers) are being renewed.

Time to crawl back under our rock.