What a welcome to Beijing!!! NOT!!!
The announcement on the aircraft, to my ears, was along the lines of if you don’t record fingerprints when you arrive at Daxing International Airport (Beijing) you are likely to be deported; that didn’t feel like the welcome I was expecting!! Anyway, we are pretty much compliant with authorities (when we feel we should be) and looked out for the fingerprint machines as we departed the aircraft. The automated message said to look out for the automated machines on the right-hand side as you made your way to immigration; do not pass go.
Well we found the machines, probably 20 of them, and only five were working… Of the five which were working only two appeared to be accepting passports to go through the procedure, and the machine we chose to use and record our fingerprints didn’t deliver the the ticket with the QR code. Our initial encounters of China weren’t going well, and we were frustrated!!
We calmed ourselves down and came to terms that within minutes we might be deported from China with a black mark because we hadn’t followed the procedure fully, and weren’t compliant as we didn’t have the slip with the QR code. I was imagining we were going to be given the walk of shame to return to the 20 machines, of which only 5 were working and 2 actually doing what they were supposed to. However, there were no flashing lights or demands and we were ushered into the immigration line for foreigners.
Talk about slow, well we didn’t for fear of being sent back to the end of a short queue, but it did take forever to get near the front of the queue. Eventually, we got to an immigration officer, who looked (and acted) very sternly. No worry about the finger prints, we weren’t asked for our slip and had to give finger prints again any way. Wendy was dealt with first, and sent on her way by the grumpy looking immigration officer. I went through with little issue, but no smile, no welcome to China, or have a great trip.
So far, so good, we thought. We picked up our luggage from the conveyor very quickly and made our way to the exit only to be chased after by some official to make sure we had got our luggage, and that it was actually our luggage. Maybe we looked too casual in the way we quickly identified, collected and moved off with our cases made it looked like we had just picked up someone else’s cases, or we were spies doing the luggage switch in the airport.
We made it out of the airport and into a taxi.
