Registration (continued...)

Catherine was nowhere to be found. We found her university email address on the system and tried to get in touch. On Saturday, we got a return email from her saying that she was at the guest house of the university. But Anniwar said she still hadn’t turned up, and that to stay in the guest house she’d have needed his express permission. We spent the weekend on a quest to find Catherine, with absolutely no success. On our mission we bumped into my (very briefly) former room-mate, and her Chinese friend. I told her that I’d moved out and that we were looking for Catherine, and so the four of us searched together. Sadly I just cannot remember their names, even after all their generous help. Bad Nikki. I still see her from time to time and say hello, but it seems a bit rude to ask her what her name is again now.
Finally on the Monday Catherine turned up. It turned out she’d got to Urumqi airport, jumped in a taxi, and asked for Xinjiang University. Which is an entirely different university, in the far south of the city. From what Catherine tells us, the university actually sounds more like the real deal than our university (Xinjiang Normal). The university had no record of her existence, but let her stay in the guest house anyway. From our emails Catherine had realised something was not right and had finally come to the right campus! We told her there was a room waiting for her if she wanted, and so she moved in with us straight away. Lucky girl never had to deal with the dorms!
Well now the four of us Newcastle students had to go for our medical. I may now have HIV… there was no sense of hygiene there at all! First we queued in a giant queue to be given forms to fill in, then we queued again to hand them back in and get a number, which was the number for another queue to pay in (322¥), and then finally off we trot to be examined. I had my blood sample taken by a doctor whose hands were covered with the fresh blood of the man before me, and plenty of other dried blood too. We were given a cotton bud to stop the bleeding, and the floor all around me had bloody cotton buds all over it. Then the doctor handed me a cup and said go fill it with urine. Okay, where? Toilets over there, he says. And then take it over to that room down the corridor. So there I am in a filthy squat toilet (as per usual, sanitary towels and faeces everywhere) with open skin on my arm, trying to pee into a tiny plastic cup. For some reason it took me ages to get the knack of sunken toilets – now I have no idea how I couldn’t do it – it’s so easy! But then I was still in the taking one trouser leg off, holding it off the floor and balancing stage, then pulling the trouser leg back on. Not easy with an open-topped cup of urine, y’know. But I did it without any spillages (yay!), and then carried my pee down the corridor to a room basically just full of people’s cups of urine. Lots of samples all red with blood too – lovely.
Then I got an ultra-sound from the most evil woman in the history of time. She shouted at me for handing her my forms the wrong way round (as in upside-down. Perspective, woman! Does it really matter?!), for god’s sake. Next I got an ECG in a room (where you have to uncover yourself) which was just covered by a short curtain. I’m not fussy about uncovering my body especially, but I was rather surprised to look over to the curtain and see the next woman in line, a little old Uyghur woman, with her head actually under the curtain, craning to see me! Ah well, no harm done.
Medical out the way, we just had to hand over all the other forms. Four copies of everything, they say. That included several pages of our passports, and lots of forms which seemed to have very little meaning, but had to be done anyway. Also copies of our landlady’s ID and license to rent, and a temporary residence form.
Four copies, you say? Okay, we’ll copy this document three times and give you those three photocopies, plus the original – that makes four, right? Not to the Chinese. They mean four photocopies, plus the original. That makes five. No wait, you meant six copies? No, sorry, seven? Hang on, you meant eight! Well why didn’t you just say? Oh, did we fill that in wrong (because you offered us no practical help whatsoever, might I add)? Well it’s been photocopied seven times and I refuse to go back and get them done again! The guy in the photocopy shop already hates us! I guess I’ll have to Tippex them all out then eh. Fun fun fun.
Whilst Tippexing out my mistake, I managed to spill a ridiculous amount of correction fluid all over the fourth floor office floor. And it was quick-drying. So there I am on my hands and knees, scraping dried Tippex off the floor with a staple, watched by some very amused Kazakhs. How embarrassing.
Our landlady took us off to get temporary residence permits, which was quite a hassle (of course) but eventually got done and so we were good to go. I am compressing all this so it sounds like it happened in a day, but in fact registering at the university took about two weeks. We were quite stressed by how long it was taking because we were on student visas, which meant we had to apply for permanent residence permits within 30 days of our arrival into China, and we couldn’t apply until we were registered students of an educational institution. But we eventually got it done in the nick of time. Rachel actually got taken into a police station because she didn’t have a temporary residence permit, basically because nobody had let her know how to get one. That got sorted in the end though too.
And hey presto! Finally we were registered, and living in our own apartment, ready to start life in China.