Not a good day

So, I spent the night out in Songshi township. Songshi is really small! The "zhaodaisuo" was actually just a room with a couple beds in somebody's house. The beds were actually made of hay, with a pad placed over top of it. Very interesting. There is really only two streets in the town - the main road (the highway) and a road that goes off of it. Anyways, I had a quick dinner at the town's restaurant, and went to bed shortly after Melanie called that night.

This was my bed in Songshi

This morning, I woke up ready to head out to Huluguan Village. I grabbed breakfast, and while talking to one of the locals, they mentioned that the party secretary for the village was actually in town. I interviewed him in the town restaurant, and got a sense for the village - it is in a forestry district, and the elections there aren't really run very well. But the party secretary was a very friendly person. Anyways, he said he was going up to the village in about an hour (it is 10km away, and apparently a road does connect to it), and said that I could go up with him. I thought that seemed fine.

In the meantime, I went to my room to wait. About a half hour later, he told me that some other township officials wanted to see me - and not to tell them that I had interviewed him. Immediately, I knew that something was wrong. Anyways, the police were there, and I was interviewed for about 2 hours. The fact that I had permission from the Provincial Ministry of Civil Affairs, the local county offices, and the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences did not make a difference to them. They said that I had entered China on the wrong visa (a tourist visa) and was not allowed to do any research, and that I had to destroy all of my research materials (ok......). I just checked on the internet, and it seems like to me that a tourist visa was my only option for this research - the only short term visa offered is a business visa, usually for people that are investing or something like that. The student visa (which is what they said I should have) is actually only for people that are doing studies in China lasting for more than 6 months. Anyways, the end result was me be escorted by a police officer back to the hotel in Zixi (where I had stored my luggage) to tear up my past research results (one sheet of paper on which I had scribbled some of my conversations that I had in Paishang village) - I think that they were disappointed at how pathetic it seemed.

All of this made me extremely angry. This taught me a few things about doing research in China:

1. I should have gotten an official letter from the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences. I asked if they could do one for me, and they said that I probably didn't need one - I could just show people their business card and they could call them if they had any questions. However, when I said that, people would not phone the JASS and just said "I don't know them." One of the first questions I am asked by anyone is "do you have a letter of introduction" - if I had one, there would have been no problems. I think I will need to go back to Nanchang to get one - I'm fairly certain they would do one for me - I just needed to press them a little bit more.

2. I should have been more aware of visa types, so that when the policeman here pressed me on the subject, I could have told him that I had the correct visa. (He had asked me directly "Why are you here doing research on a tourist visa?" I didn't have an answer, and that made me toast).

I guess that's about it. The whole experience made me super angry. It will probably be good for me to get out of here. Really, I don't know if the police actually had the right to do this to me - I had approval from the "relevant" government offices - my problem was simply that I couldn't prove it to them.

So I've learned my lesson. Today, instead of going to Guangze, as had originally been my plan, I am going to Fuzhou, the capitol of Fujian Province to get a letter of introduction from them. That is the ticket I need to get things to work. Hopefully I can get things taken care of there - the international cooperation people in Jiangxi took some convincing........ Tonight, I am taking the night train to Fuzhou, and I'll get there at 6am tomorrow morning - Tomorrow I'll be going to the Fujian Academy of Social Sciences people to ask for help - I tried to find a phone number to let them know I'm coming, but they didn't have a number listed on their website, so I'm just going to show up there tomorrow. Wish me luck - I feel like I need it.