Skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island

About three weeks ago, I traveled to Hong Kong to obtain a Vietnamese tourist visa for this summer’s travels through Southeast Asia.  Though it’s possible to get a visa of this kind in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province, I decided that Hong Kong would be a more interesting and exciting place to visit while waiting around for the Vietnamese consulate to process my visa application.  Considering that the last time I visited Hong Kong I came down with bouts of both food and sun poisoning along the way, I’ve long been waiting for an excuse to return to the former British colony.

As it just so happens, GXNU normally has a one-week study break in between the last day of semester classes and the commencement of final exams.  While a bit longer than the study period US university students receive, this break offers a chance to prepare for final exams, wrap up the semester’s activities, and prepare for move-out.  I decided about two months ago that I would delegate this end-of-semester study week towards securing my Vietnamese visa; since obtaining the visa requires me to travel and to wait around for my paperwork to be finalized, I knew that the task would take at least a few days away from Guilin to accomplish.

It sounds like the rest of the story should just fall right into place.  The situation was ideal: when my students were studying, I would get my visa.  By the time I was supposed to proctor their final exams and turn in their grades, I would already be back in Guilin, Vietnamese visa in hand and an amazing experience in Hong Kong under my belt.  Yet, from living for more than a year in China, I should have known that things are never quite that simple.

Tian Tan Buddha Statue, Lantau

Less than a week before I was scheduled to leave for Hong Kong, GXNU‘s administration decided that they wanted to scrap this semester’s study period and schedule an additional week of classes.  They cited the fact that spring semester is shorter than fall semester to justify their decision, reckoning that an extra week should be added to the academic calendar to make up for that discrepancy.  While I don’t think that their decision was an unreasonable one, to me the fact that the extra week wasn’t announced until one week beforehand seemed (and still seems) outrageous – after all, many teachers had already made out-of-town plans or had anticipated using that time to prepare for the semester’s end.

Facing no other choice, I decided to go to Hong Kong anyway.  I absolutely needed a Vietnamese visa, and wasn’t sure that I could count on any other block of time to obtain one.  After consulting with other foreign teachers, however, it remained unclear whether the administration would give me permission to leave Guilin during the newly scheduled last week of classes – one teacher said that I should ask them, but that they might not say yes; another said that I shouldn’t say anything, because they would definitely say no.  In the case that I asked the administration and they denied my request, I would be left without any means of getting into Vietnam; if I had gone anyway after they said no, I most likely would have been fired.  Facing no other option, I went to Hong Kong without telling anyone that I was doing it.

Now, it’s to be remembered that I rescheduled all of my class time, so that none of my students missed any material.  Not only that, but they preferred to have time during what was supposed to be their study week to prepare for their final exams.  Many of my students this semester are studying abroad for the next two years, and looked forward to the end-of-semester break to make preparations for their transition overseas.  In my mind, it was a win-win situation – I got to go to Hong Kong to get my visa, and my students got extra time to prepare for final exams and move-out without missing any in-class hours.

The View from Lantau

When I compare the American academic workplace to the Chinese one, I have found that working in China has so many more rules that no one seems to be willing to bend.  Finally, GXNU found out that I left Guilin without permission, and threatened to cut my month’s pay despite the fact that I didn’t miss any class time whatsoever.  Their reasoning was that I left without asking whether I could go; the problem is that if I had asked, they most likely would not have allowed me to leave.  If they had cut my pay, I would have received only US$110 to support myself through the entire month of July.

In the end, I escaped from the situation scot-free; however, I’ve found on multiple occasions while living in China that there is a whole system of rules and procedures which far exceeds anything I’ve witnessed back home.  While some of these directives are helpful, the majority of the ones I’ve been subjected to either don’t make sense or seem utterly pointless.  When asking why something can’t happen, the response is often: “Sorry, but those are the rules.”  For this reason, though I absolutely enjoy living in China, I don’t think I could ever live here for an indefinite amount of time – though there are plenty of expatriates who do.