Don't agree to do record-breaking tricks on Chinese TV. Just don't

He juggles gentlemen?

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Have you seen his 3-ball flash?

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I travel to China frequently (26 times and counting). On one trip, I lost my passport. Learned a lot. As a tip, make sure you have a copy of your birth certificate, passport, and any other ID handy (xerox, email scan, whatever). And cash. With decent documentation, itā€™s easy to make an appointment to get interviewed for a temporary passport. It cost about $100 and I walked out after about 1 hour with my new US passport. Good for 1 year.

The Chinese government was a bit more problematic. You canā€™t stay at a hotel without a passport. I think I stayed some place that had a lot of short term evening clientele and was willing to ignore the fact that the room wasnā€™t in my name.

But the really painful part was getting a temporary Visa. It was a rush job (3 days), cost $400, and was only valid for 1 calendar day. And that took a lot of work to get. I managed to get it issued just hours before my flight. Maybe I could have gotten out without one. But I didnā€™t need the hassle and needed to be able to return.

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Interesting, but what Iā€™m wondering is if he had showed up at the airport and an immigration official had said, ā€œSir, your visa has been revoked,ā€ would he have been detained, or could he have just said, ā€œyeah, well thatā€™s why Iā€™m about to board a plane back to the USā€? It seems like when a visa is revoked, leaving the country immediately is exactly what they want you to do.

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I donā€™t know anything about the Chinese border rules, but maybe the entry visa is also the needed exit visa to leave the country legally?

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Thatā€™s kind of what I was thinking, too. At any rate, Iā€™m not all that interested in visiting countries that require exit visas (Saudi Arabia*, UAE), or require you to present your entry visa on leaving (Russia, and quite likely China).

  • exit visas required for foreigners, not Saudi citizens
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late stage communism

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If I only I lived in a country like thatā€¦

What a country!

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We had this issue with my daughter, who was born in China. You get an entry/exit card when you arrive, but this is different from the visa itself. We just had to fill in a separate card for her so that she could leave. She was born at home with a midwife though, so getting a doctorā€™s note in order to get a birth certificate was more difficult. In the end the US embassy gave us a birth certificate for American citizens born abroad, three months after her birth.

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oh that looks good, i just downloaded it to watch later. thanks!

yep. doesnā€™t just happen on record shows either.

Iā€™m sure a rich well connected show producer could land someone in jail, at the very least for a few days to a few weeks.

one would think. common sense and bureaucracy seldom go hand in hand.

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You mean like nearly every company that wants to have something electronic made?

They are buying exports from Chinese companies, not doing business in China. That distinction should have been clear from my mention of the required local controlling partner. Companies buying stuff for export certainly donā€™t have that requirement.

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I know a DJ that went to China on tour and said everything was awesome. good money, too. If youā€™ve seen any of the Public Enemy performances with the newer, not-Terminator-X DJ, it was that guy, soloā€“DJ Lord.

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married to one, keeps the second in a love-nest in a downtown apartment building, and the third is in another state whom he visits when he tells the other two that his job is going to keep him away on ā€œbusiness.ā€

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Right? I had to check that the story didnā€™t take place in North Korea.

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Edited: Nevermind.

Itā€™s definitely possible, but the attitude seems to be that itā€™s not worth the hassle. This kind of bait and switch is very common though, as is trying to intimidate you into accepting whatever they had planned. I know a number of teachers who were told that they would be teaching a small class, then they were unexpectedly pushed in front of hundreds of children for an hour while being filmed. I appeared in a TV advert once - I was a foreign businessman explaining the features of the companyā€™s laminate flooring to the board of directors. They kept changing the rules and we ended up staying there all day for something that was only supposed to take a couple of hours, then they paid us less than theyā€™d said they would. Nobody spoke any English, so my talk to the board involved me explaining all the customer complaints that weā€™d received, while I smiled and the board nodded approvingly. Sometimes you have to make your own fun (I donā€™t think my voice was actually used in the advert).

I know one guy who started a manufacturing business there, so far it seems to be going pretty well and he has about 200 employees. He gets on well with the Chinese partner though, which makes things easier. On the whole though, the game is definitely rigged for the house to win.

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I was kind of assuming that this was less about TV producers being shady because they were Chinese, and more just because they worked in TV.
Does this not happen elsewhere?

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It happens in Hong Kong, too:

[quote]As these films were pumped out by the dozen and mostly by [Godfrey] Ho alone in an editing suite, information is scant and contradictory as to what was being shot, when and who by. Memories of the elusive Ho vary wildly, depending on whoā€™s being asked. Some say he was a good-natured and enthusiastic professional, always friendly and reliable with payments. Others paint him as an inveterate liar, a dangerous conman and known Triad associate, who would kill animals on set and laugh about it.

Veteran genre actor Richard Harrison has been outspoken of how he believes Ho ruined his career. He allegedly signed up for a couple of ninja films and had his footage spliced into at least twenty (all of which had him credited as the star). As a final irony worthy of one of his own narratives, Ho retired from moviemaking at the end of 90s and now teaches at the prestigious Hong Kong Film Academy. Pretty impressive work for a guy whose films are often namechecked as some of the worst of all time.[/quote]

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Bear Grylls had gone up in my estimation a fair bit when he did that climate change thing with Obama. Now heā€™s even lower than I thought possible. What kind of person does that perverted shit? Does the Scouting Association (of which he is Chief Scout) know that heā€™s doing the worldā€™s shittest job of upholding Point 6 of the Scout Law?

WAC WAC WAC!

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