No visa extention... yet

We went to the Exit & Entry Administration offices to try for a visa extension yesterday. We failed. Apparently, there's two ways I could do this:

1. Get a plain vanilla visa extension. I'd still be on a tourist visa, I'd still have just the one 'entry' (which I already used), and I'd have to leave 30 days after the new visa went into effect.
2. Get converted to a business visa that will allow longer stays and multiple entries. This involves a round-about tag-along wife argument and a copy of our marriage certificate.

Option 2 is what we need in the long run, but means giving the neighbors the combo to our safe, having them pull out our marriage cert, getting the cert faxed to us here at the hotel, and praying the convoluted plan works when we get back to the security officials. Right now, we're probably going to have to settle for option 1. Then give option 2 a shot at the embassy in the US next time I need to go to China.

At least I learned some things from our afternoon of Chinese Bureaucracy.

• I should always travel with a copy of our marriage certificate for occasions like this.
• If I had succeeded in getting a visa yesterday, I would have needed to leave the country on January 3rd -- so I've got to wait until after December 18 to try again.
• I should plan to go shoe shopping the day I go back to extend my visa. The opposite side of the street has at least a dozen shoe stores!