Passports

I am sure that due to the unusual international status of Taiwan, there are probably many curious, strange or just plain ridiculous procedures and situations in their dealings with China and other countries of the world. I say that because I have already experienced several.

The citizens of the ROC (Republic of China) have two passports. One is the passport they use when they go around the world, Hong Kong included. With dark green covers, it's a normal passport. But if they happen to travel to China, they cannot use it and then they carry as identification a kind of passport, issued in Hong Kong, with light green covers, which is the one they must show to the chinese police. I would say that the people from Hong Kong have something similar. Of course, both documents have different numbers.

So, we were in Chengdu airport, checking our luggage again to fly to Lanzhou, when four of the taiwanese students of our group found that, because of a mistake of the travel agency, their electronic tickets had the taiwanese passport number. Well, to be more precise, the sour-grapes-faced woman who was doing the checking told them and added that they did not recognize that number, and that was all (translated, screw you).

Fortunately, in the age of internet and electronic tickets, they could phone to Taiwan and ask the travel agency to correct the numbers of their tickets. They went back to the same counter, already when the checking should have been closed (but it was China and you know...), and the same woman checked their bags without making any comment. They must make a point of it, of course. As if we didn't know already. Incidentally, my last name was wrong in all my electronic tickets (they interchanged the r with the t), but nobody said anything about it. It is not so strange, if we take into account the different alphabet and how difficult it is for them, but they don't care, I am not important.

It was even funnier when we had to check our luggage to go back to Hong Kong. The students showed the chinese document to the air company lady, but she told them, no, no, I want the other one. They had to show the chinese one to cross the last control, of course. The nice things of these non-nationalist people!.