Because of a misunderstanding, we didn’t go to the police station to register until we had been in China for 4 1/2 days. The law said we had to register within 24 hours. So when we went there to register, the police officer made us go to a different station and receive a verbal warning. The officer at that station told me the law and made me sign a document saying that I had received a verbal warning. Now that I know the law, I definitely intend to obey it. I never meant to break the law, I just didn’t understand it.
So here’s a picture of a cool motorcycle in front of the police station that’s near our house.
You can see the “police station” sign on the wall in the background.
One side effect of the whole registration process is that we now have Chinese names! The police officer wouldn’t give us a temporary residence certificate without Chinese names, so the coworker who was helping us just made some up for us. I can’t write them here in Chinese characters like they should be, but this will give you some idea of what they are:
Our family name is “Zhang” because it’s a common name like Jensen and it starts with the “J” sound.
- David - Zhang DaWei (Means “big” and “great”)
- Carol - Zhang Qian (Our coworker knows two Chinese women named “Qian” who chose the English name “Carol.”)
- Andrew - Zhang Dong (Means “East” and is a very common Chinese name.)
- Nick - Zhang Kai (Means “Victory”, similar to the meaning of “Nicholas”.)
- Ryan - Zhang Rui (Sounds like “Ray”, which is Carol’s father’s name.)
- Jacob - Zhang Jie (Means “Hero”.)
We understand that these are very common Chinese names, and that’s good. We certainly didn’t want to surprise the police officer with anything unusual! And our English names are also quite common.
Anyway, we managed to complete the process of registering and now we’re legal.