By Yifu Dong, BR’17
[TRANSLATION]
“You need a visa,” the customs officer in Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City said to me in the few English sentences she knew.
Before that I had not been sure whether I need a Mexican transit visa or not, but now I was. I had tried to look it up online, but there was so much confusion that I thought a four-hour transfer in the airport would be just fine. But without a Mexican visa or a valid U.S. visa, my Chinese passport was not enough.
I waved to my other Yale friends to let them go ahead, and I was prepared to apply for a visa to a country that I didn’t plan to enter, miss my connecting flight to Quito and spend a few hundred dollars on another plane ticket.
None of the customs officers seemed to speak much English. For a moment I felt I was dealing with some Spanish-gibbering drug lords instead of people who were supposed to represent their own country in an international airport. Fortunately, one of the officers was understandable in English. She took my passport and boarding pass, but didn’t tell me what I was to do next. I was led into a strange room with exceptionally high ceilings and three walls of concrete and one wall of glass. The other side of the glass was a baggage claim area with people curiously looking in. I caught the stench of the room from a distance, but that was the only place for me to stay. In the room lay wary passengers who shared my fate. Some were Chinese, some were Hispanic, and one was Muslim.
Some Chinese spoke in a barely decipherable southern accent. They were not travelers, just some young people seeking opportunities in foreign lands. There was also a Chinese lady who was paranoid for fear of losing her next flight to Lima, which was in less than three hours, at 11:30 pm. My flight was at 1:00 am, so I had four hours to kill.
Two officers at the door wandered lazily about, and at the urgent request of the lady, who only spoke in English, they finally summoned Ms. English. The lady was told that she would be taken to the boarding gate 30 minutes before the plane’s departure. I was relieved to hear that.
But it was not so relieving to think that a Yale student had to get used to the stinking smell of the room and bear the brunt of a pariah passport. For a split second, everything in my world sucked.
Now was time to invite all my fanatically nationalistic countrymen to that stinking room with sketchy officers inside a huge airport half a world away from home, I thought. I would spare them the humiliation. I would just ask all of them to take off their blindfolds and get them to admit that China still has some serious work to do to seek real recognition and respect not just for the regime but also for every one of her citizens.
But as I took out Contemporary Chinese History by Mr. Jiang Tingfu, who was foreign minister in the Nationalist regime and a Columbia graduate, I began to realize why I, along with a bunch of other countrymen, was in that stinking room. Mr. Jiang wrote about diplomacy in the late Qing dynasty, whose downfall kicked start with the first Opium War in 1840 and ended with a revolution in 1911. Diplomacy indicated the maturity of a fledgling Chinese nation on the world stage and marked the milestones of Chinese history, although those milestones were often inglorious.
China had been the Celestial Kingdom for a very long time. All other nations had had to pay tribute to the “Central Kingdom.” In the eyes of the Chinese emperors, there was no such thing as equality among the states, nor was there a need for diplomacy, for China had always been a strong, self-sufficient economy. However, even after the West had forced open the entrance to China, the Qing Empire refused to change its view on diplomacy. It took many more lessons for the country to start thinking about making diplomatic efforts to defend the country.
Though it must seem incredible to the people in the Qing Dynasty that any Chinese person could be half a world away in Mexico, Chinese diplomacy today still has not done enough to grant dignity to every one of China’s citizens.
But my passport was only a part of my life. Thoughts of changing to another passport flashed through my mind, but I was quick to suppress such selfish ideas. For me, different passports mean various obligations. For now, I prefer to stand by a nation that may need her own Yale student to shoulder more responsibilities.
Thoughts from the Chinese history book jumbled in my head as the clock stealthily ticked past midnight. I was surprised to find how ignorant I had been about my country’s past, and that my nose had already been used to the stench.
An officer came in to the room with a dozen passports. “Quito!” he called out. “¡Palabra mágica! (Magic word!)” exclaimed the other Hispanic passengers who were also stranded in the room. “Qui-” stands for “center,” and “-to” stands for “land,” so the magic word means “land in the center.” And the Chinese literally call our own country “Central Kingdom!” This is just another piece of evidence that the world is one, after all.
The officer led the dozen of us through staff-only areas inside the airport and finally we arrived at our boarding gates. I reunited with my group of Yale friends chatting outside the gate. One of them told me, “Once I learned that you didn’t come through, I thought, ‘Oh my God, Yifu’s not coming to Ecuador with us.’”
A different passport has its own way of survival, and I spent my own four hours in Mexico City.
[ORIGINAL]
“你需要一个签证。”墨西哥城贝尼托·胡亚雷斯国际机场的海关人员盯着我的护照，用她所知甚少的英语生硬地告诉我。
在此之前，我一直对在墨西哥城转机是否需要签证一知半解。现在我算是知道了，持中华人民共和国护照者，除非有墨西哥合众国的签证或一个有效的美国签证，否则不得入关转机。
这个规定我之前在网上也查到过，但没找到怎样办过境签证，还幻想着，如果只转机而不入关，就不用过境签证了。然而，墨西哥城的第一关，我就没有过去。
和我同行的还有几个耶鲁的同学，他们拿着美国或欧洲的护照，到墨西哥都是免签的。无奈之下，我只能挥手让他们先走。当时将近晚上九点，离我们转乘去往厄瓜多尔首都基多的飞机还有四个小时。
说实话，我是做好了落地签证并改签机票的准备的。不过墨西哥机场的工作人员并没有提申请签证的事 — — 他们对我几乎什么都没有说。他们只是相互间飞速地说着西班牙语，让我一时以为自己不是在和国际机场里的工作人员，而是在和墨西哥的毒枭打交道。 他们把我的护照和下一班的登机牌拿走，没告诉我要干什么，之后将我领到一个奇怪的屋子里。一进屋，一股恶臭扑鼻而来。屋子很大，天花板很高，三面为白墙，而一面是一个大玻璃，隔壁是提取行李的地方。墙角挂着一个放墨西哥肥皂剧的液晶电视，旁边有个饮水机。屋里躺着不少“外国人”，也有一些人无聊地坐着，屋子门外有两个身穿制服的机场工作人员，时而坐在外面，时而进屋胡乱转悠。
屋子里的外国人还真不少。有个身着白袍、双脚赤裸的穆斯林。有一些拉美其他国家的少男少女。还有几个中国人，他们应该是在国外打工的男女青年，操着我似懂非懂的南方口音。他们有几个躺在椅子上沉睡，醒着的睡眼惺忪。在我之后不久，来了一位焦急不堪的中国女士。她用英语向工作人员们讲，她紧接着去秘鲁首都利马的航班十一点半就起飞，她不确定这样无故的“扣押”是否会让她误了飞机。工作人员不懂英语，而这位女士也不懂西班牙语。语言不通，所以看门的只能去找把我护照拿走的那位会一点英语的工作人员。我心想，如果我当时报了在利马的项目，也许会和那位女士一样焦急呢。不过，毕竟我还有四个小时，先看看她是怎样处理的再说。其实我并不是很担心，因为最差的结果不过于多搭一些钱、多花一些时间。有问题只能试图解决，干着急是毫无帮助的。会英语的救星及时赶来，告诉那位女士说，在登机前半小时工作人员会带她到登机口。听了这个，我和她都长舒了一口气。
没过多久，我的鼻子也适应了屋子里的空气。看着旁边无精打采的人们，我心想，一个耶鲁大学的中国学生，只是因为拿了一本不同的护照，竟然也来到了这个屋子里。由那本护照产生的自卑是不可抗拒的。但是我知道，这并没有我想像的那样不公平。拿着我那本护照，我和与我一起呼吸那屋子里空气的人，又有什么区别呢？至少墨西哥是不太欢迎我们的。
为了熬过四个小时，我拿出了蒋廷黻先生的《中国近代史》。在蒋先生看来，中国近代史是和邦交密不可分的。中国在近代的发展不仅仅体现于政治和经济上的演变，还包括外交的发展 — — 国际社会规则的学习和与世界的融合。
可是中国在近代很长一段时间是没有外交的。“弱国无外交”，但是弱国更需要外交。然而在民族节节败退的情况下，清朝依然自诩为天朝上国，不仅仅没有外交，连外交的基本概念都不清楚，基本规则都不遵守。尽管那时的人们恐怕无法想像自己的国民会到达世界另一端的陌生国度，不过遗憾的是，即使今天到了别的国家，中国国民也很难享有尊严。
至于中国护照惹的小麻烦，只能把它看做是生活的一部分了。不同的护照有不同的责任罢了。
读着读着，不知不觉的过了午夜。一个机场的工作人员拿着一打护照和登机牌，到了屋子里。“Quito！”他招呼道。基多 — — Quito — — Qui-指中心，而-to代表土地。“基多”即为土地的中心，这与“中国”的命名有异曲同工之妙！
在工作人员的带领下，我和其他十多位被扣下的乘客穿过普通乘客不能到达的区域，来到了登机口。登机口前，耶鲁的美国同学们欢迎我回归队伍。“当我听到你被扣下之后，我心想，完了，你一定不能和我们一起来厄瓜多尔了。”一位同学说道。
其实她不必如此担心，毕竟不同的护照有不同的过关方法。我在墨西哥城也度过了四小时。
