HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Oct. 27, 2005 It would have been very easy to smuggle Bibles into China in the years 1997 and 1998, and presumably not much has changed since then. I entered China six times in those two years. The first time I entered, I first flew from Phoenix to Hong Kong, which was still under British lease at that time. I had the address of a travel agency in the Tsimshatsui District of Hong Kong that could obtain a China visa for a fee. For around $100, I was able to get a six-month multiple-entry visa. I also bought a flight ticket on Air China to Beijing. Had I known I could have taken the train from right there in Kowloon (the continental part of Hong Kong), I’d have done so. At any rate, the next day, I arrived in Beijing after a short flight and passed through customs at Beijing Airport in about 15 minutes without a hitch. No one inspected my baggage, or anyone else’s, as far as I could see. I could easily have been carrying 10 or 20 Bibles. I was walking down the highway half an hour later, trying to figure out where I was. When I had been in China about four months, I took a short trip by train to Mongolia, where I stayed a week. I re-entered China at Erenhot, Inner Mongolia, merely presenting my passport and visa. No one checked my baggage at all. Six months after my initial entry, when my first visa was about to expire, since I hadn’t been able to renew it in Beijing, I traveled by train back to Hong Kong, now again under Chinese rule. I went to the same agency and got a second six-month visa, but this time I caught a train at Kowloon Station, in order to see the sights and save a little money. An hour or so out of Hong Kong, we stopped in a town called Changping. Everyone had to get off the train, carrying his baggage, and pass through customs. No one looked in any baggage that I could see. I merely presented the visa’d passport to someone at a computer keyboard, who punched a few keys and motioned me on. I could have had a bag full of Bibles. Incidentally, we had stopped at Changping on the way down too. My third entry into China was just a repeat performance of my second entry. Another six months had passed, and I still hadn’t figured out how to renew my visa in Beijing, so I trained down to Hong Kong and back again. I was now in possession of another six-month visa. At Changping, no one inspected my baggage. I could have been carrying Bibles. As soon as I got back to Beijing, I took a train to Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang (Sinkiang), which is in western China. From there I flew to Kazakhstan, having read I could obtain a visa for Kazakhstan at Alma Ata Airport. I was deceived in this, and I was deported from Kazakhstan. But officials allowed me to fly back to Beijing at my own expense. So once again I entered China at Beijing Airport without any problem whatsoever. No one checked my bags for Bibles. Once back in Beijing, I went to the Kazakh and Kyrgyz embassies and got visas in the usual way. So I went back to Kazakhstan, by train and bus, for a second try. This time I spent several weeks in Central Asia, traveling mostly by bus. When I got ready to return to China, I didn’t want to pass through Kazakhstan again on the bus with an expired visa. So I flew from Uzbekistan to Xinjiang, with only a stopover at Alma Ata Airport. I did not leave the airport grounds. So I entered China at Ürümqi Airport on this occasion. I went through customs at midnight in 5 minutes flat, merely flashing my US Passport with the China visa. From Ürümqi I took a train back to Beijing. I could have been carrying Bibles galore. What I would have done with any Bibles I might have been carrying is another matter. I can’t see that, if I stood out in Tiananmen Square flashing Bibles, I’d have been stampeded. In Chinese, Christianity is known as ‘Jidujiao’ and Jesus is called ‘Jidu’. I don’t know exactly why they transliterated ‘Jesus’ as ‘Jidu’, instead of ‘Jishu’ or something like that. From what I gathered from the people I met there, Chinese know almost nothing about Christianity. They know Jidu was supposed to be a prophet, and they assume that all Americans are Christians. I disabused them of both notions. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
