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Bert

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Everything posted by Bert

  1. And be sure to record the tracking numbers so you can track the packages. You can go to any post office to get them. We got two labels and an envelop. It cost 3 RMB. I don't know what the mailing fee is, but it is not much. There is an English version of the tracking site. I think the whole idea is to have the return label in Chinese. It should at least help to have it in Chinese. I had my fiancee fill out everything in Chinese. It wasn't so easy to explain what to do. It sounds simple. In the first attempt, she got two labels, put one inside an envelope and mailed it to somewhere with nothing else included. It might help to go to the EMS site and get a copy of the label and fill out a mock version and tell her to do the same in Chinese. It only takes about ten days to get the tax transcripts and that seems to be the preferred method for them. I have heard of them asking for copies of all receipts as well to verify the information for a copy of a return. I highly recommend getting the transcripts. They accept it as proof of what was actually filed. Anybody can make a fake return, so they will likely be skeptical of a copy.
  2. I've been the Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). The mountains are very beautiful. There was white water rafting, if you are into that. Calling it white water rafting might be stretch, but it was fun. They do bus in a lot of tourist, but I am sure you could find a quiet hotel. I saw a few nice hotels; however, the one we spent the first night in could best be described as a hovel, despite being called a 3 star hotel (We were told that it was such a poor area that it was considered a 3 star there.) The people there are very gracious but dirt poor. They evidently don't benefit much from all the tourism. Our package included a stay in the mountain top. The big deal was to see the sun rise. The men sleep in one room and the women in another. We ended up not staying in the mountain top. We decided to do our own thing. We found this guy with a van that ferried us around to lesser known spots most of the day. He charged us 50 RMB. We ended up paying more. He went above the call of duty. The city itself is like most mountain cities, not that big, but it did have several restaurants. Nightlife was non-existent. My fiancee went back a second time with her parents and stuck with the tour guide and really had a great time and saw a lot more things. It's a popular place.
  3. Good stuff. Thanks. If you are GZO, you are good to go. If you are GUZ, you're in for a long wait.
  4. I can confirm that they are still sending the petitions by DHL as late as May. Some petitioners get lucky. The package sent a couple of days before ours was a small package and sailed through Customs without delay. The short delay might have been a fluke, not a change to procedure. GUZ had our petition electronically the same day. Once the physical package cleared Customs and was delivered to the Consulate, the Consulate sat on it a month.
  5. Life is a lot more complicated in the US. A typical family has 2 or 3 kids. Mom has to to Joey to football practice, Mary to piano lessons, an Mikey to swimming practice. Their lives revolve around their children, including the social circles. They simply don't have time for life outside their own family. If they do, it is usually with the wife's side of the family, it seems. A young guy's wife recently had a baby. He started applying a year before the baby was born just so he could put the baby in the best day care. There's a heck of a lot of competition to get the very best for your kids. The younger generation is very family oriented, yet even more selfish. They put their family before work. They don't mind coming into work late and leaving early. I couldn't have gotten by doing that at that age. I had a colleague schedule a meeting with about 8 people. He calls while we are all sitting around waiting for him and explains that he forgot that he had to read to his son in class that day. "Sorry." But, they are not to concerned about there brother's and sisters families, nor their parents. The same guy's wife's mother, literally kidnapped her own mother, got power of attorney, dropped her mother off at a nursing home unannounced, sped off as fast as she could, and spent the money as fast as she could. There is no sense any more of taking care of your parents anymore, no dependency like in China. This is mostly due to the government safety nets. Social security is there to take care of your parents. If they get old and demented, taking all their assets and dropping them off at a nursing home seems to be the way it is handled today. The government will take care of them. I just saw Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino on the way back from China. He seems to make a similar social commentary. If you loose your job, the government is there to help. You don't have to depend on family. I suppose some of it is due to the greater mobility of Americans. We are free to go any where we want in search of employment. It has scattered us over the US and the world. It is not necessarily a bad thing. I blame most of the disintegration of the American family, however, on the government safety nets. It allows us to be less dependent on family and one another. That's my two cents.
  6. Why wouldn't you go? Many travel half way around the world to go there at great expense. You only have to travel a short distance to show your support.
  7. My fiancee's big theme is cleanliness, but her idea of it is different from mine. As someone posted earlier, my fiancee doesn't mind letting food set out overnight. That won't work around here. Also, she doesn't mind handling raw pork. In some of the markets, you can sift through the pork you want to buy, along with everyone else. And then there are the glasses. Sometimes, she just rinses them out. They can have so much milk residue on them sometimes you can't see through them. I was a little embarrassed when she gave a guest a glass like that. But, boy, if I touch something I shouldn't after taking a shower, it is back to showers, preceded by a whack to the back of the head. The same with slippers. And then there is the no heat policy in the winter. She says it is bad to go from a warm environment to a cold environment or visa versa. It can be in the 40s in the apartment in the winter. She unplugs the refrigerator in the winter. Might as well.
  8. It does seem like they made progress with the name checks: http://www.visajourney.com/news/2009/03/10...check-backlogs/
  9. Now that this thread is in the toilet, instructions on putting the lid down might be useful while in the us. Don't know if my woman is unique or not, but she always leaves the lid up, and it's not because of me. It's great. I don't have to remember to put it down. One less reason to get hit by a mop.
  10. It appears that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is attempting to make the filing and review process more uniform. If only they would propose changes at the consulate level .... http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/cisomb_..._42_5-15-09.pdf
  11. Yes - I think just go with the flow there, your SO should be able to steer you correctly, per local requirements, on that. Most likely, the SO doesn't have a clue, unless she has run into a problem before. There may be additional local requirements, but I believe this is a national requirement.
  12. Hotels can get into big trouble for not registering you. In my limited experience, they always ask for passport or Chinese ID. They are usually satisfied with my fiancee's ID. However, when I went to Suzhou, I didn't take my passport. No hotel would let me stay there. My fiancee got the room with her ID (with me waiting outside) and I had to sneak in. The hotel knew; they just turned a blind eye. I always give them the address at immigration. If they want me, they know where to find me.
  13. If you stay in a hotel, the hotel will handle it, when you use your American passport. I've never registered when not staying in a hotel. I had a little scare the last time and thought I might get reported. Security paid a visit. I had to given them my passport and my fiancee had to show her ID. They took down the information. Apparently, I wasn't reported to the police.
  14. Mine always wants to know what the plan is, then promptly changes it. But, if I say I am going to do something, no matter how trivial, I had better do it. I had a colleague whom she previously liked, but he canceled out on dinner one night at the last minute because he was sick. He is off the list now. Sickness is no excuse. Actions are everything, but they don't apply to her. She is probably the most disorganized person I have ever met.
  15. Anyone want to take a crack at explaining the EMS label to my fiancee in Chinese? She speaks English well, but something is still getting lost in the translation. The instructions on the 169 form are not enough. I explained to her before to get two EMS labels: one to include in the P3 package and one to send the package. We haven't received the P3 yet, but it could come any day now and I want her to be prepared. She did go to the Post Office and got two EMS labels. The best I can figure is that the Post Office put the return label inside the envelope addressed to GUZ, nothing else, and mailed it. She took the instructions in Chinese with her to the Post Office. I am with her now in Shanghai, but I leave Sunday. As luck has it, it is a 3 day holiday and the Post Office is closed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
  16. Han people are free to have more than one child; they just have to pay more tax. A few families do it, but to what I've heard others at my office share, there aren't that many Han that have a second child. I am certainly no expert on China's policy, but according the the article referenced above and my fiancee, if both parents are the only child, they are free to have another child without penalty. The idea is that the two children replace the parents without increasing the population. My experience is limited to Shanghai. I'd say most of the people i know have a sibling. My first gf had a sister. My fiancee has a sister (as I understand it, her father was jailed for this offense until the relatives bailed him out). Most of the people at work have a sibling. True, many of these are before the policy was implemented. They can indeed have more children, but they pay a stiff penalty.
  17. I thought these were an interesting comments: While popularly referred to as the "one child policy", the rule actually restricts just 35.9 percent of the population to having one child, Yu Xuejun, a spokesman with the commission, said in a Webcast on the government's website (www.gov.cn). Except in Central China's Henan Province, couples can have two children if they are both only children, he said. In addition, more than 11 percent of the population, mostly minority groups, is free to have two or more children, he said. http://chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-07/11/...ent_5432238.htm
  18. It can also play havoc with electronic devices. When the industry was forced to reduce or eliminate lead in integrated circuits, the result was greater risk in the growth of tin whiskers that short out the integrated circuits. Lead was a great inhibitor. The sulfur gases exacerbate the problem. I would hazard to guess that devices such as computers and iPods and TV's would fail at a higher than normal rate.
  19. It has all the earmarks of a high sulfur content. I see issues in my industry all the time, especially will RoHS compliant components.
  20. I see 5 possible outcomes, which are not mutually exclusive (1) Many Chinese males will leave China to find wives in other countries (2) Many unmarried women in other countries will go to China to find Chinese husbands (3) The current reluctance for Chinese men to marry divorcees and widows will disappear. A new reluctance for Chinese women to marry divorced men and widowers will appear. (4) Homosexuality will become more prominent and may even flourish in China (5) Women will marry at a younger age and will marry more often as they will be in demand and have no need to put up with a less desirable husband. Men will marry at a later age (since older more financially able suitors will vie for the hands of young brides) and will spend more time unmarried between marriages. Perhaps another consequence is that women gain more power and become more dominate. Women dominate in Shanghai, although there is no shortage of available women there. The men don't need to go to another country to find a bride; they just need to go to Shanghai (and perhaps accept being Number 2).
  21. My 3g phone always works in China for voice service. The 3g/2g etc. are the advanced function (usually internet access) specification. If all you want to do is talk on your phone, any quad band phone that uses a sim chip will work. Get quad, not tri band as I believe the additional band is the one used in China. As for unlocking them, cell providers (at&t) have gotten very reasonable with this. I got 2 new phones with my service plan, called at&t support and told them I was going to china, and wanted them unlocked so I could use them there. The took a minute and gave me the unlock code and walked me through unlocking the phones. I still wish I had a Chinese phone though, because my american phone wont allow me to input or receive Chinese characters. I don't have any problem with voice over GSM, which is what AT&T uses. I can usually pick up the Edge network for data, but I have never been able to pick up 3g in Shanghai. I question whether 3g exists anywhere in China. I really don't know. AT&T will sometimes unlock phones for long time customers. They did it with my Epix, but I made them agree to do it before I bought the phone. My colleagues have had varying degrees of success. If your phones is out of contract, no problem.
  22. He is probably better off buying a phone in China, unless he can't get what he wants. The phones are always unlocked in China. Does China even have 3g? I know I can't get it anywhere in Shanghai. It has been in the news alot about developing 3g networks, but I am not sure that it exists in China.
  23. I have always had a Type F business visa. I do business in China. However, I also go over purely on vacation. I have oftened wondered what would happened if I checked Tourist on the immigration form. I have always checked Business, just in case. I have been to China 11 times. I have Never been asked where I would be working in China. My guess is that it doesn't matter.
  24. Guys and Gals, For the life of me I can't understand why there have been no comments posted on the Memo blog, nor has there been much activity on this posting! All of you out there who have complained in the past about the injustices coming out of GUZ, where are you now? Splinterman I tried. It doesn't work. Are you saying that you tried to leave a comment and the 'system' isn't accepting the comments? If anyone is having trouble posting comments please let me know and I can advise Mr. Roth that something is wrong. I do know that any comments submitted must be approved before they appear on the site. Splinterman Not exactly. I tried and it wouldn't allow me to enter a comment. The comment page comes up, but it doesn't allow me to enter text. Perhaps it doesn't like Firefox.
  25. Guys and Gals, For the life of me I can't understand why there have been no comments posted on the Memo blog, nor has there been much activity on this posting! All of you out there who have complained in the past about the injustices coming out of GUZ, where are you now? Splinterman I tried. It doesn't work.
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