By HUI JIA
Foreigners Correspondent

Police respond to reports of a red-headed devil spotted lurking near a Chinese female

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – The Chinese government has launched an exciting new visa campaign, aimed at promoting better ‘inclusiveness’ for foreigners.

In a bid to make foreign nationals feel just as caught up in a rule-crazy bureaucracy as their Chinese peers, cities across the nation announced the new campaign – dubbed ‘100 Flowers for Foreigners’ – amid public fanfare yesterday.

The campaign encourages foreigners to merely approach their nearest police station, carrying their three ‘haves’ – a valid passport, visa and/or residence permit, landlord’s agreement or/and rental agreement, alien’s work permit and/or/and ‘foreign expert certificate,’ marriage license, bank details, invitation letter, plus their current thoughts on free-market socialism.

“The officers will then scrutinize the completed documents for some time, before announcing that there is a big problem,” promised Beijing public security spokesman Wen Ping. “It’ll be just like you’re authentically Chinese.”

Local communities have been asked to help encourage shy foreigners to come forward and have their day in the sun.

Expats in China can sometimes feel left out of its Communist society, experts say.

While their Chinese co-workers rush off for impromptu Marxism lessons or suddenly vanish into closed-door ‘bonding sessions,’ white-skinned employees are often left to wonder what the fuck just happened to the rest of the office.

Officials hope that the new rules will help foreigners in China acclimatize – or get the hell out.

Not everyone has welcomed the move, however. Younger expats have been overheard worrying that it could interfere with well-laid plans to get totally messed-up this summer.

The nostalgic campaign evokes Mao Zedong’s glorious ‘100 Flowers’ campaign of 1957, during which the then-Chairman encouraged intellectual and scholars to critique the Communist Party, urging: “Let one hundred flowers blossom, let one hundred schools of thought contend.”

Due to a severe natural drought at the time, though, many of those flowers sadly perished.

Police are determined not to let that happen again, promising to visit local watering holes to ensure that any foreigners there are well refreshed, well documented and well on their way back to their native countries.

“Come on everybody, it’s summer,” urged Ping. “Let all the foreign flowers come out and taste the rule of law!”

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By SHI FU
Education Correspondent

This undated photo shows educator Kyle Majors charming the pants off an impressed student in School Bar

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – A fearlessly edgy English teacher has spoken out, after having had his visa denied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – effectively expelling him from the country.

Kyle Majors, 27, told media that his tough stance on education at the Beijing University of Technology & Agricultural Pesticides made him a thorn in the side of the administration  – and by extension, the Beijing government.

Majors’s class – ‘US sitcoms, 2004-present’ – was described by the teacher himself as “utterly uncompromising in dealing with the political reality in China.”

Majors recalls he first blew his students’ minds during an episode of season one of Game of Thrones, in which he casually compared Joffrey to Mao Zedong.

“There were a few nervous titters,” Majors recalled. “Since then, I have been taking it further and further.”

Majors’ academic-awareness campaign has included absenting himself from Saturday-morning classes, striding onto campus wearing a ‘Tiananmen Tank Man’ T-shirt and persistently mispronouncing the names of Zhao Ziyang, Hu Yaobang and Fang Lizhi.

But it was his outrageous observations on the recent Bo Xilai case that needled the faculty most says Majors, a former high-school student and McDonald’s junior operative .

Others partly agree with Majors’s assessment.

“I would certainly describe Kyle as an irritant,” agreed fellow pedagogue Jim Anderson, a PhD candidate in Ming Dynasty studies, currently doing archival research in Beijing.

At least one student backs up his claims.

“After reading about Neil Heywood, Kyle asked us if anyone would want to poison him,” recalled Li, a student in Majors’s sitcom class. “We all agreed it was highly probable.”

It was shortly after the Bo case broke that Majors had his visa application declined, forcing him to leave the country and travel to Thailand.

Local police claim the decision was made after discovering a drunken Majors curled between the feet of an unconscious prostitute, with an expired tourist visa. The former teacher dismisses this as “a convenient lie, although it’s partly true.”

Majors says he now joins the ranks of such enemies of the Chinese state as blind dissident Chen Guangcheng and recently exiled Al-Jazeera correspondent Melissa Chan.

“They can remove me but they can’t silence me,” Majors insists. “I have a new gig now at a kindergarten near Bangkok, teaching Buddhism. I won’t be afraid to expose the truth about Nirvana – and who really killed Kurt.”

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[UPDATE: Majors has since informed us that his sudden expulsion may, in part, be due to a recent series of New York Times exposes,concerning the financial affairs of, among others, Premier Wen Jiabao.  “They don’t want to make the NYT reporter a martyr,” explained the bitter pedagogue. “So they take it out on me.”]

If you see this image, you're in for an hour of primo horsecrap

Al Jazeera English announced Tuesday that its Beijing correspondent, Melissa Chan, did not have her visa renewed. The following is a transcript of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s daily briefing, where spokesman Hong Lei answered foreign reporters’ questions about the Chinese government’s action.

Hong Li: [Enters to sound of Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock n Roll Part 2’] Good morning, everybody.

Q: I just want to know whether the expulsion of Melissa Chan should be seen as a warning to other journalists operating in China?

Hong Lei: Damn straight…

Q: Under what circumstances will Al Jazeera be given press credentials and visas for a new reporter?

Hong Lei: Let’s just say we’re awaiting reports of a cold front emanating from certain underworld regions.

Q: So if there is a new correspondent for Al Jazeera, will you give them a visa?

Hong Lei: Didn’t catch that. Ask me another.

Q: Can you tell us who made the decision to deny Ms. Chan: was it the Foreign Ministry or another department?

Hong Lei: Honestly? Not a clue. I’m gonna refer you here to our mysterious laws and regulations.

Q: Can you give us any specifics on why Melissa Chan was expelled from the country… because there is a lot of confusion here and unless you’re more specific about it it’s very difficult for us to get a picture of exactly what’s going on.

Hong Lei: She was not expelled… as far as I know, she left of her own volition.

[Laughter]

Q: I think the main concern of the journalists is that the Chinese government, you use the issue of visa as a way to censor journalists’ work in China. Is this a precedent of how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will behave in the future?

Hong Lei: We do this every 14 years or so. So, yeah. No. Maybe.

Q: What could the Chinese government say if a Chinese journalist was expelled from a foreign country?

Hong Lei: Anybody else going to see Hanggai play this weekend?

Q: Chinese laws and regulations are written down, so even if we don’t know which ones Melissa is accused of violating, we know what they say. Nowhere I know is the Chinese government’s conception of journalistic ethics written down. How can we judge whether our behavior is consistent with Chinese conception of journalist ethics, and can you offer us guidance as to what that conception looks like?

Hong Lei: You’re asking me to lecture you on ethics? Oh, man. Wait till I tell the boys back in the ministry.

Q: What would the Chinese government say to accusations that it is censoring foreign media with the expulsion of Melissa Chan?

Hong Lei: We would give a convoluted and ultimately meaningless combination of diplomatic waffle and officialese, probably.

Q: Where can we see those regulations? Because we are having some problem finding which law and regulation was broken. So where can I check the regulation if I want to see some number or article was broken according to Chinese law?

Hong Lei: Look. They’re right over there – behind you! [Grabs documents, shuffles out to sound of Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’]

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Dear mean lady at the Beijing Exit-Entry Administration Bureau,

Help! I am a 26-year-old gay man stuck in a traditional Chinese quandary. I’m going back home, along with millions of other straight and gay countrymen and women, to my hometown in Anhui Province for the Lunar New Year Spring Festival. My parents have been pressuring me for years to get married and introduce my “fiancée” to them. They have even threatened to cut off the funds they send me that help keep the struggling Beijing Pink Hello Kitty Anita Mui Memorial Diva cabaret afloat. They think it is an English-language school.

I have paid a 45-year-old woman 10,000 yuan to pose as my future bride but in addition to the age difference, she presents some other problems, such as suffering from Tourettes’s Syndrome. New Year’s dinner could prove awkward. Any suggestions?

Yours lovelorn,

Fed up with Filial Piety

Mean lady at the Beijing Exit-Entry Administration Bureau says:

This is my favorite part of the job

I see you’ve supplied all the documentation needed for a working “Z” visa and are seemingly fully qualified for the position. Everything seems to be in order…. I just need your D/1046 danwei authorization release form from your previous employer. Oh, you don’t have it?

I’m afraid your visa will have to be denied. Yes, this rule was introduced at an unspecified date earlier this year. No, we didn’t mention it on our website or through any other outlet. I’m telling you now. You’ll have to find a blank copy of the D/1046 form on your own, as we have none available at the moment. This is a pilot program, subject to final approval by the National People’s Congress in the next 5-year planning session.

Yes, I understand that your flight is tomorrow and that the paperwork and deposit were supplied months ago. No, there was no conceivable way you could have anticipated this problem. But this is China. These. Are. The. Rules.  We do not break them for anybody! Unless you are able to get the form within the next 45 minutes, before we close, along with a 4,000-yuan special processing fee, I cannot return this already stamped-and-sealed visa placed here in your passport.

Last week: Ask a foreign woman who hasn’t had a date in eight months

Next week: Ask a foreign man who has had fifteen failed relationships in eight months

Send your questions to cds@chinadailyshow.com

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OTTAWA (News services) — Following recent visa policy modifications, Mark Roswell, popularly known in China as celebrity ‘crosstalk’ performer Dashan, was denied an F visa extension Thursday, prompting a furious YouTube response in which the Canadian citizen told Beijing to “cut the shit already.”

Broadcasting on his YouTube channel from Ottawa, Roswell scripted a segment similar to his unpopular language-learning program on CCTV-9.  “Welcome to today’s show,” brooded Roswell. “I’m your host, Canadian Mark Roswell, otherwise known as Mark Roswell, from Canada. Today we’re talking about attitude problems.”

His face shrouded in moody lighting, Roswell then slammed the unfairness of the sudden changes in China’s visa policies which have, for decades, allowed foreigners – otherwise unloved and unwanted back home – to live in China as perpetual vacationers without the need for real jobs. “They’ve taken that away from me,” Roswell told China Daily Show via QQ.

Roswell sprang to fame in 1988 after his performance as Dashan in the skit, ‘Ye Gui,’ was seen by 550 million viewers. The Chinese people immediately fell in love with his big eyes, sexy hair, expressive facial features and aura of cleverness. Dashan’s smile was used to sell everything from toothpaste to mechanical parts but now Roswell says he’s turning off the charm till his residence permit is renewed.

“It’s China’s visa policy or my smile,” Roswell vowed. “One of us has to go”

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This is what Dashan looks like when he's not smiling